A Step-by-Step Framework for Auditing Your Psychology Practice Website

This guide is structured as a diagnostic tool, not an implementation checklist. The goal is to give you an honest picture of where your website stands across five areas that matter for psychology practices specifically. Implementation steps — what to actually fix and in what order — live in the companion checklist guide.

Work through each section in order. The sequence matters: technical issues can mask accurate compliance and content assessments, and local visibility problems are easier to interpret once you understand your technical foundation.

For each section, you'll find a set of diagnostic questions and a scoring rubric. Score yourself honestly. A low score in any single area is not a failure — it's a finding. The audit is only useful if it reflects your actual current state.

Who this audit is for: Solo practitioners and group practices who want to understand their site's current performance before hiring help, after a site redesign, or after six or more months without a structured review. It's also useful if you've had SEO work done and want to evaluate what was actually implemented.

What this audit does not replace: A HIPAA risk assessment conducted by a qualified privacy officer, a legal review of your advertising materials, or a state psychology board ethics review. This content is educational in nature and not professional legal, compliance, or regulatory advice. Verify current rules with your licensing authority and legal counsel.

Set aside approximately 90 minutes for a thorough pass. You'll need access to Google Search Console, your Google Business Profile manager, and the ability to view your website's source code or use a free tool like Google PageSpeed Insights.

Technical issues are the most common source of invisible ranking problems. A page that ranks poorly because of slow load speed or missing canonical tags looks exactly the same to you as a page that ranks poorly because of thin content — but the fixes are completely different.

Core diagnostics to run

• Page speed: Run your homepage and each service page through Google PageSpeed Insights. On mobile, a score below 60 is worth investigating. Pay attention to Largest Contentful Paint — images uploaded without compression are a frequent culprit on therapy practice sites.
• HTTPS: Every page on your site should load over HTTPS. Mixed content warnings (HTTP elements on an HTTPS page) can suppress rankings and erode patient trust.
• Mobile usability: Open your site on a phone. Can a patient tap your phone number directly? Is the navigation usable with one thumb? Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily evaluates the mobile version of your site.
• Indexation: In Google Search Console, check Coverage. Look for pages marked as "excluded" or "crawled but not indexed." Individual service pages — anxiety therapy, couples counseling, trauma treatment — should each be indexed separately.
• Canonical tags: If your site serves both www and non-www versions, or HTTP and HTTPS, duplicate content may be reaching Google. Check that canonical tags point to the preferred URL.
• Broken links: Use a free crawler like Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) to identify 404 errors. Links from your navigation or blog to deleted pages waste crawl budget and frustrate users.

Scoring this layer

Score one point for each item above that passes without a critical finding. A score of 5–6 indicates a solid technical foundation. A score of 3 or below means technical issues are likely suppressing rankings regardless of content quality.

Most psychology practices get the majority of their new patient inquiries from local search — someone searching "therapist near me" or "anxiety counseling in [city]." Your local audit has three components: Google Business Profile, directory consistency, and on-site local signals.

Google Business Profile diagnostics

• Is your profile claimed and verified under the correct Google account?
• Is your primary category set to "Psychologist" (or the most accurate available option) rather than a generic category like "Health"?
• Have you added all relevant secondary categories — "Mental Health Clinic," "Family Counselor," etc. — that reflect your actual services?
• Are your business hours accurate, including whether you offer telehealth outside your physical office hours?
• Does your profile include at least five current photos — interior, exterior, and a professional headshot?
• Have you responded to every existing review, including positive ones?
• Are you using the Posts feature to publish at least twice per month?

Directory consistency diagnostics

Your Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) information must be identical across every listing: your website, Google Business Profile, Psychology Today, Healthgrades, Yelp, and any other directories where your practice appears. Even small inconsistencies — "Suite 200" versus "Ste. 200" — can create conflicting signals.

Search your practice name in Google and audit the first ten listings that appear. Note any inconsistencies in a simple spreadsheet.

On-site local signals

• Does your homepage mention your city and neighborhood — not just your zip code?
• Do you have a dedicated contact page with your full address, embedded Google Map, and local phone number?
• If you serve multiple locations or telehealth clients across a state, do you have separate pages for each service area?

For detailed remediation guidance on each of these areas, the Local SEO for Psychologists guide covers Google Business Profile optimization and HIPAA-safe directory practices in depth.

Disclaimer: This section is educational content, not legal or compliance advice. HIPAA requirements and APA ethical standards require interpretation in context. Consult a qualified healthcare attorney or privacy officer for guidance specific to your practice. Verify current APA standards and state board rules with the relevant authority.

HIPAA website risk diagnostics

The most common HIPAA exposure points on psychology practice websites are not intake forms — they're the tracking and analytics tools most site owners don't know are running.

• Google Analytics / Meta Pixel: Standard implementations of these tools may collect IP addresses, search terms, and behavioral data that, in combination, could constitute Protected Health Information (PHI) when a visitor is seeking mental health treatment. As of the HHS guidance issued in 2022 and updated interpretations since, covered entities should evaluate whether tracking pixels require a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). Verify current HHS guidance with your privacy counsel.
• Contact and intake forms: Any form that collects information about a patient's condition, insurance, or treatment history before a BAA is in place warrants review. Standard form tools (Gravity Forms, WPForms, Typeform) are not HIPAA-compliant by default.
• Chat widgets: Live chat and chatbot tools that collect visitor messages may inadvertently capture PHI. Review whether your chat provider offers a BAA and whether your current configuration qualifies.
• SSL and data transmission: All form submissions should be encrypted in transit. Confirm your hosting provider's SSL certificate covers form data handling.

APA ethics diagnostics (as of 2023 APA Ethical Principles)

• Standard 5.01 — Avoidance of False or Deceptive Statements: Review every claim on your website. Phrases like "designed to results," "cure anxiety," or "become your best self" may qualify as false or deceptive. Audit your homepage hero copy, service page descriptions, and any testimonial content.
• Standard 5.05 — Testimonials: APA ethics prohibit soliciting testimonials from current therapy clients. If your website includes patient reviews or testimonials, verify they were not solicited and assess whether their presence is consistent with your state board's rules.
• Standard 5.06 — In-Person Solicitation: This standard addresses uninvited direct solicitation of vulnerable individuals. While primarily relevant to outreach, some digital advertising targeting behaviors may warrant review against this standard.

Technical health and compliance are necessary conditions for ranking. Content authority is what determines whether you rank above a competitor who has also cleared those bars. This layer evaluates whether your content is structured to capture the searches your prospective patients are actually running.

Service page diagnostics

Every clinical service you offer should have its own dedicated page — not a bullet point on a general "Services" page. Run through this checklist for each service page:

• Does the page title and H1 include the service name and your city? Example: "Anxiety Therapy in Portland, OR."
• Is the page at least 400 words, covering what the condition is, how you approach treatment, what patients can expect, and who is a good fit?
• Does the page include an internal link to your contact page and at least one other related service page?
• Does the page have a unique meta description — not auto-generated or duplicated from another page?

Blog and educational content diagnostics

Educational content on psychology topics — anxiety, depression, relationship issues, trauma — can generate consistent organic traffic from people who are not yet ready to book but are researching their situation. Audit your existing blog or resource section:

• Do your posts target specific informational questions ("how to tell if you have generalized anxiety") rather than generic topics ("mental health tips")?
• Do posts link internally to relevant service pages — not just to other blog posts?
• Have any posts been published in the last six months? Google treats content freshness as a relevance signal, particularly in healthcare.

Keyword gap diagnostic

In Google Search Console, go to the Search Results report and filter by impressions. Look for queries where your site appears in positions 11–30 — these are pages within reach of page one with targeted improvements. Service pages appearing at position 15 for their target keyword often need only a content depth or internal linking adjustment, not a full rewrite.

Once you've worked through all four layers, you have a picture of your site's current state. The question is what to prioritize. Not all findings carry equal weight.

A simple prioritization rubric

Score each finding on two dimensions: impact (how much will fixing this improve rankings or reduce risk?) and urgency (does this create compliance or professional exposure right now?). Use a simple 1–3 scale for each.

• Fix immediately (urgency 3, any impact): HIPAA-related tracking tool exposure, APA ethics violations on public-facing pages, broken HTTPS. These carry professional and legal risk that is not proportional to ranking benefit.
• Fix next (impact 3, urgency 1–2): Missing service pages, Google Business Profile gaps, unindexed pages. These are the highest-use ranking improvements and typically don't require compliance review.
• Fix in the next quarter (impact 2, urgency 1): Page speed improvements, directory inconsistencies, blog freshness. Real improvements, but not emergencies.
• Monitor, don't fix yet (impact 1, urgency 1): Minor on-page refinements, schema markup, image alt text. Worth doing eventually, but not where a limited budget should go first.

When to handle this yourself versus hiring help

Technical and compliance audits in this space have a specific failure mode: practitioners fix the easy visible things (page titles, contact info) and miss the less visible things that carry the most risk (analytics tracking, intake form data handling). In our experience working with health and mental health practices, the compliance layer is where DIY audits most commonly stop short.

If your audit surfaces findings in the HIPAA or APA ethics sections, consider whether those specific items are better handled with professional SEO support built for mental health professionals who understand both the ranking mechanics and the professional constraints. You can get expert help with your psychology practice SEO through our practice-specific engagement — details at /industry/psychologists.

For practices where the audit reveals primarily technical and content gaps without compliance exposure, the companion checklist guide provides step-by-step implementation instructions you can follow independently or hand to a developer.