A Self-Audit Framework That Shows Exactly Where Your Counseling Website Is Losing Ground

This guide is structured as a diagnostic tool, not a checklist of best practices. The goal is to surface what is currently wrong on your site — not to describe what an ideal site looks like. That distinction matters because it changes how you read the results.

Work through each of the five areas below. For each item, assign a simple status: Pass, Needs Attention, or Critical Issue. By the end, you will have a prioritized picture of where your site is losing ground in search.

A few orientation points before you start:

• You do not need SEO software to begin. Most of the checks in this audit use free tools — Google Search Console, Google's PageSpeed Insights, and your own browser. Some deeper diagnostics benefit from paid tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs, but they are not required for a first pass.
• Context matters. A counseling practice in a rural area with little competition has different thresholds than a group practice in a major metro. Score your findings relative to your actual competitive environment.
• This is not legal or licensing advice. Where this guide references HIPAA compliance, ACA ethical advertising standards, or state licensing board rules, treat it as general educational context. Verify current requirements with your licensing authority and legal counsel.

Set aside 45 to 60 minutes. If you find yourself spending more time than that on a single area, that area likely warrants professional attention rather than deeper self-investigation.

Technical issues are the foundation. If Google cannot reliably crawl and index your pages, every other optimization effort is partially wasted. These checks take less than 15 minutes and reveal whether you have foundational problems.

HTTPS and Security

Open your site in a browser. The address bar should show a padlock icon. If it shows a warning or your URL starts with http:// rather than https://, this is a critical issue — Google treats unsecured sites as untrustworthy, and for a healthcare-adjacent practice, it also raises patient trust concerns.

Page Speed

Run your homepage URL through Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). Check your mobile score in particular — most prospective clients are searching on phones. Scores below 50 on mobile represent a meaningful ranking disadvantage. Common causes include uncompressed images, slow hosting, and bloated theme code.

Mobile Usability

In Google Search Console, navigate to Experience → Mobile Usability. Any flagged errors here — text too small to read, clickable elements too close together, content wider than screen — should be treated as high priority. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it evaluates your mobile site as the primary version.

Crawl Errors and Index Status

In Search Console under Coverage, look for pages marked as Error or Excluded. A handful of excluded pages is normal. A large number of crawl errors, or important service pages showing as excluded, indicates a problem worth investigating. Also check that your site has a submitted XML sitemap under Sitemaps.

Broken Internal Links

If you have access to Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs), run a crawl and filter for 4xx status codes. Broken links erode crawl budget and create dead ends for visitors who are trying to learn about your services.

On-page optimization is where most counseling practices have the most room for improvement. The core question here is whether each page on your site is clearly telling Google — and prospective clients — exactly what you do, who you serve, and where you practice.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

View the source of your homepage and key service pages, or use a browser extension like SEO Meta in 1 Click. Each page should have a unique title tag under 60 characters that includes your primary service and location (example: Anxiety Therapy in Portland, OR | Westside Counseling). If multiple pages share the same title tag, or if title tags are missing entirely, that is a critical issue.

Service Page Structure

Does each mental health specialty you treat have its own dedicated page? A single homepage paragraph listing anxiety, depression, trauma, couples counseling, and grief does not give Google enough signal to rank you for any of those terms specifically. Each specialty deserves a page with at least 400 words of substantive content describing the condition, your approach, and who you typically work with.

Heading Hierarchy

Your H1 heading — the main heading on each page — should appear exactly once per page and clearly describe what that page is about. Use your browser's Inspect tool to verify this. Subheadings (H2, H3) should follow a logical hierarchy rather than being chosen for visual styling.

Internal Linking

Your homepage and service pages should link to each other using descriptive anchor text. If your navigation is the only internal linking on the site, you are leaving structural equity on the table. A simple internal link from your anxiety page to your therapy approach page, for example, helps Google understand how your content relates.

Schema Markup

Use Google's Rich Results Test to check whether your site has structured data. For counseling practices, LocalBusiness or MedicalBusiness schema helps Google confirm your location, hours, and services. Its absence is not a critical error, but its presence is a meaningful advantage in competitive markets.

For most counseling practices, local search is the primary acquisition channel. Clients search for therapists near them — and your visibility in that local context depends on a set of signals that are entirely separate from your website's content.

Google Business Profile

Search your practice name on Google. Does a Business Profile appear in the right panel? If not, claim or create one at business.google.com. If it does appear, verify the following:

• Name matches your legal or DBA practice name exactly — no keyword stuffing
• Address is accurate and matches what appears on your website
• Phone number matches your website and all directory listings
• Primary category is set to a relevant mental health category (e.g., Mental Health Clinic, Counselor, Psychotherapist)
• Business hours are current
• Services section is populated with your specialty areas

NAP consistency — identical Name, Address, and Phone across all platforms — is a foundational local ranking signal. Even minor formatting differences (Street vs. St., Suite vs. Ste.) across listings can dilute your local authority.

Directory Citations

Search your practice name in Psychology Today, TherapyDen, GoodTherapy, and the AAMFT directory if applicable. These are the high-authority directories specific to counseling and therapy. Listings in these directories serve dual purposes: direct referral traffic from people browsing therapist profiles, and citation signals that reinforce your local relevance to Google.

Check that each listing is claimed, accurate, and links back to your website. Unclaimed profiles may have outdated information that you cannot control.

Review Profile

Review quantity and recency matter for local rankings. Check how many reviews your GBP listing has and when the most recent one was posted. Note that soliciting reviews from current or former clients raises ethical considerations under ACA Code of Ethics Section C.6 and potentially your state licensing board's advertising rules. Review your obligations before implementing any review generation strategy. This is educational context — verify current ethics guidelines with your professional association and licensing authority.

Content gaps are missed ranking opportunities. They represent searches that prospective clients are making that your site has no page to answer. Identifying them is straightforward once you know where to look.

Specialty and Condition Pages

List every issue, population, and modality you work with. Now check whether each one has a dedicated page on your site. In our experience working with counseling practices, the gap between what a therapist treats and what their website covers is often substantial. A practice that works with adolescents, trauma survivors, couples, and LGBTQ+ clients may have a single homepage paragraph touching all of these — with no standalone pages that could rank for any of them individually.

Location-Specific Pages

If you serve multiple locations or offer telehealth across multiple states, each service area may warrant its own page. A page titled Online Therapy in Colorado can rank for searches that a generic telehealth mention on your homepage will not capture.

FAQ and Educational Content

People searching for therapy often research before they reach out. Questions like what is EMDR therapy, how long does anxiety treatment take, or what's the difference between a therapist and a counselor represent real search volume. Pages or blog posts that answer these questions build topical authority and capture prospective clients earlier in their decision process.

Competitive Gap Analysis

Search for your primary specialty and city in Google (e.g., grief counselor Denver). Look at the top three organic results. What pages are ranking? How much content do they have? What topics do they cover that your site does not? This comparison reveals the content bar you need to clear — not an abstract ideal, but the actual pages currently outranking you.

Document your gaps as a simple list. This becomes the content roadmap for your next 90 days, whether you execute it yourself or hand it off to someone else.

For a counseling practice, trust signals do double duty: they reassure prospective clients, and they contribute to Google's assessment of your site's credibility in a health-adjacent context. This area of the audit also overlaps with professional and regulatory obligations. The following is educational context, not legal or licensing advice. Confirm current requirements with your licensing authority and legal counsel.

Credentials and Licensing Information

Your website should clearly display your licensure (e.g., LPC, LCSW, LMFT), the state(s) in which you are licensed to practice, and your license number where required. Many state licensing boards treat omission of this information as a potential advertising violation. At minimum, it is a missed opportunity to build immediate trust with a prospective client evaluating multiple therapist options.

Privacy Policy

A substantive privacy policy page is required under HIPAA if you collect any patient health information — and contact forms, intake questionnaires, and appointment scheduling tools all potentially qualify. The policy should explain what information is collected, how it is used, and how it is protected. A one-paragraph placeholder does not meet this standard. Verify your current policy against HIPAA Privacy Rule requirements (45 CFR §164.508) with appropriate legal guidance.

HTTPS and Form Security

Already covered in the technical section, but worth re-flagging here: any contact or intake form on an unsecured (non-HTTPS) page creates both an SEO problem and a compliance concern. Confirm that your forms transmit data securely.

Testimonials and Client Quotes

If your site features testimonials, verify that they comply with ACA ethics guidelines. Soliciting testimonials from current clients is generally prohibited. If testimonials are present, confirm their source and how they were obtained. Google does not penalize testimonials themselves, but compliance risk is real and the downside extends well beyond SEO.

Author and About Page Quality

Google evaluates health-related content against Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) standards. Your About page and any blog content should clearly attribute authorship, display credentials, and demonstrate genuine clinical experience. Thin or impersonal About pages are a missed EEAT signal.

Once you have worked through all five areas, you will likely fall into one of three categories:

Mostly Technical Issues

If your critical flags are concentrated in Area 1 — [SEO mistakes](/resources/1-page-website/one-page-website-seo-audit), slow load times, HTTPS errors — the good news is that technical fixes are discrete and often resolved without ongoing monthly investment. A developer or technical SEO specialist can typically address a defined list of technical issues in a one-time engagement. After the fixes are in place, re-run your technical audit to confirm resolution.

Mostly Content and On-Page Gaps

If your flags are concentrated in Areas 2 and 4 — missing service pages, no specialty content, thin on-page optimization — you are looking at a content buildout project. This is typically a 3-to-6 month effort depending on how many specialty areas you treat and how competitive your market is. It is DIY-feasible if you write comfortably and have 2-3 hours per week to dedicate to it, but it is also the area where professional SEO support creates the most compounding value over time.

Distributed Issues Across Multiple Areas

If you are flagging problems in three or more areas, attempting to address everything simultaneously on your own often results in partial progress across all fronts and meaningful progress on none. In this scenario, the self-audit has done its job — it has surfaced the scope of the problem. The pragmatic next step is a professional SEO audit that produces a prioritized remediation roadmap, so you are fixing the highest-use issues first rather than the most visible ones.

Industry benchmarks suggest that practices with distributed, unfixed issues tend to stay stuck in the same ranking position for 12 months or more — not because SEO is slow, but because without prioritization, effort diffuses across issues rather than compounding on any single signal. If your audit results look distributed, let experts handle your counseling practice SEO and focus your own time on client care.