Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Therapists | Ep 32: How to Build a Therapy Website That Actually Gets Private Pay Clients

Released: 05/22/2026

Show Notes:

In this episode, Amanda sits down with Shayah Reed, founder of Virtuwell Balance to talk about why so many therapists struggle to convert website traffic into actual private pay clients. Shayah breaks down the four key elements of a high-converting therapy website: building trust through design, using emotionally resonant copy, creating a friction free booking process, and optimizing for SEO and AI search. Together, they explore common website mistakes therapists make, why good SEO alone is not enough if your site does not convert, and how small changes to design, messaging, and booking systems can dramatically improve inquiries and consults. They also discuss the growing role of AI in search, why blogging is still incredibly valuable, and how therapists can create websites that actually help clients feel understood and ready to reach out.sible.

About Shayah Reed:

Shayah is the founder of Virtuwell Balance, a woman-run boutique design agency serving therapists and health practitioners across the US and Canada. Since 2019, Shayah and her team have supported over 500 clinics in growing their revenue and expanding their impact through intentional web design and organic marketing. With a passion for mental health, holistic wellness, and mindful marketing strategies, Shayah is on a mission to help therapists attract and convert aligned clients through their website and create meaningful change in their communities.

3 Key Takeaways:

1. A beautiful website alone is not enough, you need strong design, emotionally resonant copy, easy booking, and SEO working together to consistently convert private pay clients.
2. Therapists often lose potential clients because their websites create friction through confusing navigation, overwhelming design, or complicated booking processes.
3. SEO and AI optimization are becoming even more important in 2026, and consistent blog content can help therapists increase visibility and attract ideal clients over time. success.

Connect with Shayah:

• Website: https://www.virtuwellbalance.com/
• Website Diagnostic Quiz: https://www.virtuwellbalance.com/diagnostic-website-quiz
• Instagram: @virtuwell.balance

Connect with Amanda:

• Follow on Instagram: @amandakbcoaching
• Check out the Amanda KB Coaching website

Make sure to hit follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Sponsors:

• This episode is sponsored by Alma – learn more here
• This episode is sponsored by Jane – use code: AMANDA2MO for a 2-month grace period

Resources & Links:

SEO for Therapists Membership

Therapy Intensives Academy

Happy, Healthy, & Wealthy Mastermind

Free Training: 3 Steps to Booking Your First Therapy Intensive

Free Guide: 3 Steps to Double Your Income

SEO Freebie

Just a quick heads up, everything I share in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It’s not legal advice, financial advice, or tax advice. Every practice and every state has its own rules. So if you’re wondering how something applies to your situation, make sure to check in with an attorney, accountant, or another qualified professional who can give you guidance based on your specific circumstances.

Transcript:

Amanda (00:02)

Hi Shayah, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.

Shayah Reed (00:06)

Hi, thanks Amanda. I’m happy to be here. I’m glad we’re collaborating. I know a lot of the people in my audience are very interested in intensives that you’re talking about and we share a lot of similar strategies on SEO. So, excited to dive into ⁓ converting more private pay clients through your website.

Amanda (00:23)

Yeah,

yeah. Because I think that that’s not just a 2026 problem. I hear a lot of people worried about everything that’s happening globally and with the economy of, you know, are people even reaching out for therapy these days? But like, regardless of what’s currently happening, it’s historically always been a struggle for therapists of, have a website, I think it’s speaking to my ideal client, but like, not as many people are as reaching out as I might like, or no one’s reaching out. So

Shayah Reed (00:33)

Yeah.

Amanda (00:52)

I’m always diving in and talking about website SEO, this trust factor, all the things that I’m sure we’ll dive into. So I would love to hear your perspective from the work that you do. But first, can you introduce yourself a little bit to tell people just what you do and just kind of why you’re passionate about what you do?

Shayah Reed (00:59)

Mm-hmm.

Sure, yeah. So my name is Shayah. I’m the founder and CEO of Virtual Balance. ⁓ We are a boutique design agency for therapists and health practitioners. It’s myself and my team of four amazing women. So we are female led and operated as well. ⁓ We have probably 70 % of our client base is therapists.

Across Canada and the US, we’ve now just actually passed the point of serving 500 practitioners, which is really exciting for us. And yeah, we also support acupuncturists, chiropractors, but a lot of therapists and mainly supporting them with branding, website design, and converting more private pay clients through their website. That’s really a big goal that a lot of our clients have coming to us is wanting to raise their prices, feel confident in selling their services for those prices and having their ideal private pay clients coming through.

Amanda (01:37)

Yeah!

Shayah Reed (02:01)

website.

Amanda (02:03)

Yeah. And you and I were chatting a little bit before we hit record of kind of four big things that you think about, that you focus, that you work on. So talk us through kind of what your process is. When a therapist, for example, reaches out to you, they say, here are my struggles. Here’s what’s not working. How can I essentially get more clients in? Like, what do you, how do you start?

Shayah Reed (02:24)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so after working with so many clients and practitioners, we’ve kind of realized like four main areas that are super important and whether or not like any of your listeners decide they want to work with us or hire a design agency, you can take these things and make these changes yourself as well as best you can for now at least. A lot of these things you can implement on your own if you are a little tech savvy with your website.

So if you want to write these four things down, I’ll say what they are first and then we can go into each of them. So the first thing is building trust quickly and we do this through design.

The second is clearly explaining who and how you help. So this is through copywriting and creating words that resonate. You want to make booking effortless. So having a totally friction free booking process and then attracting the right clients and the right traffic. And we do this through SEO and AI, which is a big topic these days. So building trust quickly. This is all about credibility through branding and

Amanda (03:23)

Yes it is.

Shayah Reed (03:31)

design. Now I think we’ve probably all heard the expression that you don’t get a second chance at a first impression and oftentimes your website is the first impression of your practice.

These days, everyone is browsing around, especially private pay clients. They’re also making a purchasing decision, right? So they’re really taking their time. They’re browsing around online, figuring out who they resonate with. Can you help them? Is this gonna be a good investment for not only their mental health, but their money? So when someone lands on your website, they’re often making a subconscious decision within a few seconds of landing on your website ⁓ if they think you’re a good fit.

And this isn’t always true. Like, yes, we do build credibility through branding and design, but that’s a perception. So there are a lot of really great clinicians out there who have horrible websites, and it doesn’t mean they’re doing bad work, but that’s the perception people have. So if a website looks good, they think the work must be good. If a website looks bad, they’re like, this must be bad. So you really want to make sure you’re positioning yourself well with high quality professional design.

That design is really signaling expertise, trust, making you look legitimate. And it’s honestly really, it’s pretty easy these days for people to pick out a DIY or a templated website or a website that’s not done professionally.

And when I say professionally, that doesn’t mean you’re spending like $10,000 on a website. Like that doesn’t need to happen. I know a lot of therapists are a little tech savvy and design savvy, so you can learn a lot and implement things yourself to get going. But I do believe and I do feel that once you start making revenue in your business, one of your first investments back into your business should be your website and your brand.

Because like I said, this is just going to help to position you well in a competitive market. When so many people are browsing around and they’re looking at dozens of therapy websites, they may not say like, I chose this practice or this therapist because of their website. But subconsciously, when that’s what they’re looking at to choose you, it’s pretty much coming down to your website, right? So.

Amanda (05:38)

Yes. And when you say

design, there’s so many aspects that go into design. There’s obviously like, does the, maybe not like the template, you’re not saying that, but like, what does the layout look like? What do, like the color palette, the photos that you use, like are there red flags you think about when you think of design that’s repelling private pay clients?

Shayah Reed (05:43)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so I’ll go over a couple of key design tips that are really important that you would have if you are investing in professional design. But I just want to touch on the, mentioned template there for a second.

It is okay to start out using a template or a DIY website, but when you’re designing with a template, you really have to keep in mind that you need to make your content fit into what they have. So a big mistake I see with templates is there’ll be a small paragraph and then you’re writing quadruple the amount of copy where they had a small paragraph and then it messes up the alignment and the spacing. And that’s also what makes it look really bad. So if you’re using a template, have to place your copy in the same

than same places where it has put it, if that makes sense. So that’s a big mistake we see with templates. okay, so ⁓ a few key design tips is clean, simple, static design. This is still best.

⁓ Especially in health, medical, wellness, we want to avoid too many distractions, animation, hovering, ⁓ moving pieces. Not all trends in design apply to all industries. These work really well in media and tech, even in coaching practices, you can use things like that. But with health, wellness, and medical, people are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, anxious. They’re looking for a very personal service.

it easy. We don’t need to have a lot of moving pieces. If you want to have like your buttons change color on hover, like little things like that are fine, but these hugely interactive websites ⁓ are really not beneficial and increase bounce rate ⁓ in the health, wellness and medical space. ⁓ So keeping that in mind, also professional branding using consistent colors and typography. When you have like 30 colors on your website and 10 different fonts, that’s also very confusing.

And

Amanda (08:00)

Hmm.

Shayah Reed (08:00)

making sure you’re, this is a little bit off of websites, but making sure you’re using consistent branding also on social media and all of your marketing because consistency builds trust and recognition and credibility as well.

Another thing is photos. So you can use some stock photos, but browse around to really find ones that are in alignment with your brand. And it’s actually better if you pay for a platform to have stock photos instead of getting free ones. You can get a membership, like a monthly membership or a quarterly membership to a stock photo platform. That way you’re getting photos that aren’t being used everywhere because you can probably picture in your mind right now, like 10 therapy stock photos that you see on like every website.

right? And you don’t want that to be you. Yeah, so those are a couple of the big ones. Also text formatting is something that’s done in professional design as well. So nobody really reads all the words on your website anymore. And this used to be

Amanda (08:42)

Yep. No.

Shayah Reed (08:59)

like something really common we would do for ADHD and neurodivergent folks who are on your website, but this is honestly just everybody now. So people are skimming through and trying to pick out pieces. So a way we can help them with this is using text formatting. So splitting up paragraphs into smaller sentences and making use of bold italicized underlining certain words and sentences so that when they’re skimming, certain things you want them to see will pop out and like, you know, stick in their mind.

Yeah, those are, maybe, yeah, neither do I. One other thing in terms of design would be avoiding pop-ups. So I still see a lot of people wanting to use pop-ups. Again, this is one of those marketing. ⁓

Amanda (09:29)

Makes so much sense, because yeah, I don’t read everything. Yeah.

Shayah Reed (09:44)

trends or tactics that work in some industries, but not all. In medical health and wellness, they’re still shown to increase bounce rates and just be found as very annoying. So if there’s something that you want people to opt into or sign up for, you can embed those forms right onto the pages of your website throughout multiple pages of your site. Also, ⁓ announcement bars work really well. So like in the header of your website, you can have like a little announcement bar that can be clickable if you want someone to like sign up for your email newsletter.

or download a free guide or something like that. They’ll see it and if they want to opt in, they will. That way you’re not popping something up on the screen in front of their face. So those are definitely a few key pieces that a professional designer should always have in mind that you typically don’t see happening on a DIY website. And they all help with conversion as well.

Amanda (10:24)

Yeah.

Yeah, I like you’re saying that the trust piece around it’s consistent, it’s, you know, easy to navigate, it looks good, like all these things that show you care about your website and how you market your practice. You must care about, you know, the therapy work that you do. I think it’s an assumption all therapists must care, but it is that little implicit messaging of, wow, like you just threw together this website, like.

Shayah Reed (10:45)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I’m like, yes, like we said, it’s definitely not necessarily true, but I think that is a feeling that comes out like, why should I invest in your business if you’re not investing in your business? And you can tell when.

Amanda (11:02)

Compared to all the other ones I’m seeing, know, others must be better if the website is better. So not necessarily true, but that’s what we believe.

Shayah Reed (11:20)

you know, that’s happening or not, unfortunately, because like we mentioned before, there are so many good therapists and clinicians who just haven’t invested in their website and it is affecting their leads and the rate they can charge and things like that. yeah, website’s definitely foundational. Okay, so the second piece is clearly explaining who and how you help. A big mistake.

Amanda (11:35)

Yes, yeah, I 100 % agree with you. Yeah.

Shayah Reed (11:46)

that we see often is, especially with therapists, because you guys are so educated and you have so much passion and so much information to share, that you end up just having an educational, informational-based website. Just sharing everything about your services, your modalities, and also then leaning into… ⁓

talking about your experience and your credentials and your expertise and why you or your practice is the best choice because of those things. Opposed to the approach that we like to take and we see work is, have you heard of the Story Brand Method by Donald Miller? It’s a copywriting method. okay, so that’s a really big book that is like, not a really big book, a really big strategy. It’s not a big book.

Amanda (12:28)

I’ve heard of it, yeah.

Shayah Reed (12:39)

I would suggest your audience maybe take a look at it. can get it on Audible or…

you know, buy it on Amazon is a really good marketing book that teaches you how to talk about your services in a way that relates to your clients and your customers. So what we want to do here is use client focused copy all throughout the website and shifting from about me or about us to about you and how we help. ⁓ So the framework in this book is like really great. We use it a lot. We use it like with all of our clients and copywriting as well, ⁓ especially now. This is even more important.

to switch to emotionally resonant copy because the audience is informed through AI, chat GPT, claw, Gemini. They’re getting a lot of information about therapeutic services, even modalities. I think that’s why we’re seeing a big ⁓ increase in modalities for search volume on Google because people are now looking them up because they’re learning about them more through AI. Things like I

and EMDR, people didn’t used to search for those terms, but now they’re educated on them. Right? So when people are coming to your website, we don’t necessarily need to educate them. That content and that information is still great to like dive into in a blog for sure. But on your website pages and your service pages, we really want to be creating emotionally resonant copy. So talking about their root cause of their problems, not just their symptoms and the transformational process that you’re going to bring them through, understanding

Amanda (13:47)

Yeah.

Shayah Reed (14:12)

how they feel and what they’re gonna experience after working with you. So that type of content is really helpful in conversion as well and just making people feel like you understand them and they’re in the right place. Again, super important for those private pay clients who are searching for someone who honestly they just resonate with.

Amanda (14:34)

Yeah, I read so many therapist sites because people want my help with booking these private pay clients and these therapy intensives. And I think a lot of us miss that last piece of like, here’s who I am, what I do and how I do it. Come work with me. But forget that piece of like, what could life look like afterwards? How are your relationships going to feel different? How is work going to feel different? How are you going to feel different? And that’s ultimately what people are looking for.

Shayah Reed (14:50)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Amanda (15:01)

They want to know you can help, but they need that reassurance that you’re also in alignment with what the end goal is of what we’re working on and how we want life to be better.

Shayah Reed (15:04)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

yeah, it’s so important that like aspirational ⁓ type of copy. Yeah. So that was the other big piece.

for copywriting and then okay so let’s say you have really great design and words that resonate but this is number three if someone is not able to book with you then you’re going to be not bringing in clients either so the next piece here is making booking effortless we want to remove any friction or roadblocks to booking that we can so

Another big mistake that we see with therapy websites is the booking process is just way too complicated. It’s hard to find or

Some people have almost like an intake form on their website to book a consult call, right? So we wanna remove all of those barriers and just make it super easy to book a consult if you’re offering a free consult and then you can gather all of that information afterwards, right? ⁓ We always suggest having an online booking schedule or a tool built into the website. We love Jane app. Jane app, what do you usually recommend Amanda?

You do? Okay, great. Yeah, we love Jane. We also see like simple practice, practice better, OWL, like there’s lots out there. ⁓ We honestly really love Jane, especially for group practices. I feel like there’s a lot more capability. ⁓ But this, okay, we, our clients who have online booking, honestly see such an increase in… ⁓

Amanda (16:33)

Yeah.

Shayah Reed (16:44)

scheduled consults than clients that don’t have it. So whenever I explain this to people, I’m always like a little mind boggled as to why they’re so hesitant to implement it. And the main resistance that I always hear comes up from therapists is like, I want to have control over my schedule. And I’m just like, but you do have control over your schedule. You set your availability like you have full control over it. Like, yes, people can book in, but you are still in control of it, right? That’s just going to make the whole process so much easier.

Amanda (17:02)

Yes.

Shayah Reed (17:13)

One of one of our clients, I think this is the end of the end of the year last year. I have a statistic to share with you guys on this is the data does show that.

website therapy websites with online booking convert more clients but I kind of wanted to create some of our own data on this and we had a client who was really resistant and to having online booking and she’s like well I think a lot of my clients want to call me during office hours or they want to like fill out a form and then I’ll contact them and book the appointment for them. I’m like do you actually think they want to do that or that’s how you want to do it so we’re like let’s let’s test it out. So what we did was on the website we created a booking page so it was like her domain.com

Amanda (17:44)

huh. ⁓

Shayah Reed (17:52)

Book an appointment or something like that then on this page. We had three options they could ⁓ Book now

using the Jane or your online booking platform. You can call me during office hours or you can fill out this form and I’ll get back to you and we’ll communicate via email to book an appointment. So we made this booking page and after six months of launching the site and having this booking page, she had an increase of 120 % of booked consults and

79 % of them booked through the Book Now booking button with Jane. So this was just a really cool experiment that we did. So yes, there were still like 20 % of her new leads that were calling or filling out the form. So maybe you don’t want to remove those completely. That’s why we like doing this option now is like making a booking page on your website and giving people the option. But what we are seeing is that you will have increased bookings and most of them will book through the online platform.

Amanda (18:30)

Mm-hmm.

Shayah Reed (18:56)

you

Amanda (18:57)

That’s 100 % what I’ve seen too, and it is honestly what I prefer.

I understand people who want to call first or people who want to submit a contact form to ask a question first. Most people are on their phones 10 p.m. or 1 a.m. in the morning, and they just want to book something right then and there and know that they for sure have a consult.

Shayah Reed (19:16)

Oh, that’s true too.

Yes, after hours if they’re browsing and they want to book their appointment right now, if they can only call you or fill out the form, I guess filling out the form, they maybe still feel like they’re taking an action, but that’s not going to get booked until the next day or 24 hours, right? So them scheduling them on their own time in the evening. Yeah, that’s a really good point too.

So booking.

Amanda (19:40)

like your point

too about the like, I’ve seen even like booking forms that have all these questions of like, they have to answer all these questions before they confirm the appointment. And I think it’s just the more effort we have to do to confirm an appointment. Like I think I was trying to make an appointment the other day for not something therapy related, like some service. And they wanted me to put a credit card on file, not to get charged, but just to hold the appointment. And I was like,

Shayah Reed (19:52)

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Amanda (20:07)

My

credit card is across the room. I’m not going to get up. Like there’s just any points where we exactly. Yes. Yeah. So the more friction there is, the less likely.

Shayah Reed (20:10)

You’re like, don’t have to pay for this right now. Why do I need to put this in? Yeah. Yeah. So if you have options, yes,

exactly. Exactly. If you have those options to remove those from your booking platform, to not take credit card until later, or just have like name, email, phone number for someone to schedule, like I think that’s probably the most simple.

So, okay, booking super important. So now we have a beautiful website, we have words that resonate, and we have ⁓ friction-free effortless booking. Then, this is all amazing, but not if you’re not bringing in traffic. So the fourth important piece is bringing in and attracting aligned traffic through SEO and AI search. So first, I’ll touch on SEO. ⁓

Amanda (20:49)

Mm-hmm.

Shayah Reed (21:03)

All the work we do with our clients is organic SEO. I think ads can be great as well. It’s just not something that we offer in. ⁓

business to clients, always focus on organic SEO. So through content marketing, ⁓ blogging, email marketing, things like that. And the thing that I love about organic marketing is that it compounds over time. So ads can be great. You do have to have a lot of money to invest, but when you turn it off, it stops. You have to keep investing in it, but it can bring in a lot of leads and be super beneficial for the practice. What I love about content marketing is it doesn’t have as big of an upfront cost, but the con is it does take longer to build and

see results but those results are compounding over time and you’re never gonna lose the effort that you did in the past. Even for my business we have blog posts that we wrote like three years ago that still bring in traffic and leads which is just great. You spend like an hour on it and then it’s done. So that’s one of the reasons why I love SEO. I think Amanda you’re probably in the same boat with that. heard you talk about how you used to use it for your own therapy practice.

Amanda (21:54)

Yes, exactly.

100%, yes.

Shayah Reed (22:08)

And ⁓ so another, okay, one important piece with SEO that a big mistake we see is, especially therapy practices who are just starting out, either they DIY their website or they don’t have a big budget to spend because typically when you’re building out pages, it costs more money if you’re working with a design agency. But it is very important to have your service pages or your specialty pages split out on their own individual pages. So a big mistake we see is like you’ll have a therapy services page and on there you’ll talk about like couples therapy.

EMDR, trauma, like all these different things that you offer and that’s really confusing for Google. So that page you think is great because you’re putting in all this information and keywords but it’s very confusing and it’s likely not going to bring you in any traffic because how this works is when someone searches for something on Google

let’s say trauma therapy, and then in your city. Then Google’s gonna see your page, for example, that service page with everything on it, and it’s gonna say, hmm, okay, they talk about this city, they talk about trauma therapy, but they also have all this other information on here, so I don’t think it’s a good match, and I’m not gonna show that page to that person searching. So this is why you wanna have a…

service page or specialty page just on trauma for your city, go into all different types of details about how you work with people, the emotional resident copy, next steps to book, have all that on there, and it’s gonna be way easier to get that page ranking for those local searches. Google will see that as way more valuable. So, individual page is super important.

Amanda (23:36)

Exactly.

Yes, yes.

I tell people it’s like your information is competing with itself and then confusing Google and AI.

Shayah Reed (23:44)

Yes,

yes, they actually in ⁓ SEO, they actually call it keyword cannibalism. So they’re like eating each other because then they’re canceling each other out, right? So you basically want to have one main keyword per page. ⁓ And so that’s why it’s good to have your services and specialty pages split up.

Amanda (23:55)

Yes.

Shayah Reed (24:03)

And then you also want to make sure that you’re just doing all of your on-page optimizations. So setting like your page titles, page descriptions, optimizing your URLs, your heading structures, adding alt text to your images and using keywords and all of these pieces as well. Those are like the basics that you need to have optimized these days, like for sure. And then all of this is also just going to help you with AI. So…

A lot of people think that AI and SEO, AI Search and SEO are separate, but they are very much connected. And the websites and the businesses that are getting a lot of traffic from AI, guess what, are the ones who have done a lot of work with SEO in the past. They have really great websites for SEO, and that’s why they’re coming up in Google, Gemini, Cloud, all these different platforms. ⁓ One area that does really help with not only SEO, but AI Search in particular is blogging. So again, another…

Amanda (24:42)

us.

Shayah Reed (24:58)

thing we hear people say is the blogging still relevant? Is blogging dead? Blogging is actually more relevant now with AI search because the more aligned content you have on your website that is talking about your services, your location, who you help, modalities you use, when people are having those conversational based… ⁓

conversations with AI, it’s going to pick up all of that content and it doesn’t just necessarily read one blog post like Google would pick one blog post to show to someone’s AI can read over your entire website to figure out if you are in aligned option with what the person is looking for before it refers you. So the more content you have in your blog, the better.

which may not sound good for people who are like, I don’t want to blog. But also AI can help with this. You do have to be careful and it does take time to learn and get it right because I’ve seen a lot of blog posts. I don’t know if I just recognize it now because I’m in the industry and I work with AI so much, but I can like recognize AI content so fast. I don’t think the common person does as quickly if they’re not using AI all the time. Amanda, maybe you feel the same way, but I think it’s important the more you start using it.

you will recognize certain things that it does and ways that it says things and you just want to remove that from your content. So if you are using it to help write your blogs and your copy, just make sure you are reading it over and changing quite a few words here and there so that it does sound like you.

Amanda (26:29)

Yeah, which is important because we don’t all say, I was just talking with a therapist yesterday who was using AI and they’re like, I do not say, hey, babe, hey, love. Like that’s not how I want to start my blog, but you know, some AI will think that you do. So yes, read it over, put your you in it. Coming back to your brand that you talked about of how do you actually talk to your clients? What do you say? What’s your opinion on something? Cause it’s not just information on.

Shayah Reed (26:48)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Amanda (26:56)

tips for this or what is this helpful for. It’s also how you explain it and you can infuse that even if AI has helped you start the blog.

Shayah Reed (27:00)

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, think of it as a first draft, I guess. Or even people who do like writing, I still encourage them to lean on AI, not for the writing process, but for ideating and coming up with topics and brainstorming. Like that’s honestly what I really find more valuable with AI is like something to bounce ideas off of and like check things for me and like help me come up with ideas and topics and brainstorm things more so than the actual copywriting itself because I still don’t feel super aligned with the way that it’s producing content.

content a lot of the time. yeah, that’s basically how you can really leverage AI is having your website optimized for ⁓ SEO and then leaning into your blog.

Amanda (27:49)

I appreciate that you’re talking about all of this holistically because I think it is a holistic process. can’t just be your SEO is amazing and your website’s AI optimized because sure, you get the traffic, but then what happens once you get the traffic? And then it’s vice versa too of like you’ve developed this beautiful, well-branded website, but no one’s seeing it. Why? We don’t have the SEO or the AIO. So it really does have to be like a good…

Shayah Reed (28:00)

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amanda (28:17)

website is all of the things and when you have all of the things those four kind of steps and pillars that you laid out it does make it easier and those therapists who are booking private pay clients not just now in the economy but that will continue to because all of this stuff is compounding with time like you said.

Shayah Reed (28:23)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I think if you’re doing a lot of your own marketing

I mean you still want to have a good ROI in your time but especially like an issue that we see is sometimes people will come to us or they work with another company who did their SEO or their marketing and I look at their website and I’m like, no, your website is so bad. I’m like, why would you invest like hundreds or thousands of dollars in bringing traffic to your website when your website isn’t set up to convert? So you always kind of have to start with that first. People are like, why aren’t my leads converting? Or like, oh I have lots of traffic and then that’s actually a really good sign to pay attention to.

Amanda (28:54)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shayah Reed (29:10)

an amount of traffic and you’re not getting the leads that you want, you probably need to take a look at your design or your copy. ⁓

Amanda (29:20)

You had said something earlier that I’m very aware of it because I speak more tech at this point, but you’ve said a couple of times that the bounce rate thing, and I think a lot of people don’t know what that is, but it’s literally like people come to your site, they see one page and they bounce, they exit. They’re just like, this is not the thing for me. ⁓ So yeah, whether it is design things, I actually really like that you said that because I think something has felt.

Shayah Reed (29:28)

Okay.

Very bounce off. Yes.

Amanda (29:45)

off to me when I’ve seen therapist websites that have this movement and flow, whether it’s a body of water or a video with flowers moving in the background or something. Something about that has always felt off, even if it kind of looks good, but you’re saying literally it’s not industry standard and that’s not what clients or patients are looking for. So to even know, that’s something that can increase your bounce rate. So if you are listening and you have some movement on your website,

Shayah Reed (29:56)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amanda (30:13)

Maybe consider taking the movement off your website.

Shayah Reed (30:16)

Yeah, yeah, I mean like a little bit of animation is okay. Like I said hover interactions or cover ⁓ color changes on your buttons or like scrolling ⁓ features if even if you have a team it’s nice to put like their headshots and like you can scroll through the team stuff like that still counts as interactions but when I think about like a highly interactive scrolling website think of like Apple or like one website where you go to and you’re scrolling and everything like moves and interacts it feels very like interactive and like pulls

you in. That is a really cool design feature but it’s just not something that works in medical health and wellness. So I try to tell people to steer away from it and it’s really not a design feature that that we use with our clients. Yeah but not something that people think of. They see it and they’re like that looks cool I want to do it on my website. Not really thinking.

Amanda (31:02)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. yeah.

Shayah Reed (31:08)

Yeah, so I think

that pretty much wraps up the main four pieces that I wanted to share with everybody. I hope that you guys are able to take some valuable pieces away from this and even be able to implement a lot of these things yourself if you are taking notes. And if you do have a DIY website and you know how to do some things on the back end, hopefully you can go in and make a few changes and see if that makes any difference in your traffic leads or conversion.

Amanda (31:35)

Yeah, you should a lot of valuable information. So for those people who are more DIYers, you know, we’ve got summer coming up and traditionally that is a little slower for therapy practices. And if that’s the case for you, then you’ve got some time to DIY some stuff. But also if you want to enjoy your summer and take some time off, maybe you reach out to Shayah and say, I need some help. Will you just do this for me? And then you’ve got this nice, lovely website done by the end of summer.

Shayah Reed (31:51)

Good time.

Yes. And I’ll enjoy my summer. Thanks,

Amanda.

Amanda (32:05)

Yeah,

thanks so much. We’ll be sure to link your information in the show notes of how people can find out more information about you and what your team provides. Is there anything else that you want listeners to know of ways that they can get support from you? You mentioned a newsletter that you have.

Shayah Reed (32:11)

Mm.

Yeah, if you guys visit our website, you’ll probably see the mindful market or newsletter. We send that out every Monday and ⁓ we also designed a quiz, which is really great. I’m super proud of this. My team and I spent a lot of time putting it together and there’s a lot of customized outcomes based on how you answer it. So it’s basically going to help you to decide if your website is performing well and what changes you need to make to improve it. It’s called our diagnostic website quiz and I’m sure we can link that in the.

And the show notes for you guys too.

Amanda (32:52)

Well, thanks so much for everything you shared today. I really appreciate your time.

Shayah Reed (32:56)

Thanks, Amanda, you too.