5 Quick Fixes to Improve Google Ads for Therapists
I recently had a free consultation call with a therapist client who told me they’d be running Google Ads for a while but not seeing any results so far. Google Ads are usually very profitable for therapists so alarm bells were ringing. Having worked with lots of therapists, a lot of whom have set up their own Google Ads, I already knew most of the mistakes they’d already made with Google Ads.
Before I get into the quick ways to improve your Google Ads setup, make sure you read my overall guide on Google Ads for therapists here. That will help you avoid making these mistakes from the start.
If you’ve already launched Google Ads for your private practice and you’re not seeing good results, check these things:
Turn off search partners and display
When you’re setting up your campaign, Google Ads by default will include the option “Include Google search partners”.
“Google search partners” are third party sites that have search capability and are associated with Google, but are not Google itself. Google doesn’t share a complete list of the hundreds of sites, but sites like the New York Times, Walmart, Amazon, Lycos.com (remember that?), are all included.
And if you’re now wondering why you’d want to check that box… you wouldn’t. What happens 90% of the time is you’ll get lots of very cheap clicks and high click-through rate, so you think your ads are doing well, but then you never get any actual people filling out your website form. And by the time you realize that you’ve wasted potentially hundreds of dollars on useless traffic.
Most egregiously, when you try and uncheck it, you get the passive aggressive note from Google: “well, most advertisers include their ads on Google search partner sites, so why don’t you? (emphasis may or may not be mine)
Most advertisers include it because it’s on by default, Google. You’re not fooling me.
Also, you see that “Include Google Display Network” option? Yeah, don’t check that either. Your ads will start showing up in recipe websites when people are just trying to make a chicken casserole.
Stick to pure Google search.
Add negative keywords
When you set up campaigns on Google Ads, you target by keywords, i.e. what people actually search for. So as a therapist you want to show up for searches like “anxiety therapy” (as a very simple example).
What’s almost as important as what you target, is what you don’t target. These are negative keywords.
Do you want to show up for these searches?
How to get a job as a therapist
depression therapy reddit
best medication for social anxiety
Probably not. To start, add “job”, “reddit” and “medication” as negative keywords unless you have a specific reason for targeting them. (For example, a creative ad targeting reddit searches could be “stay off social media, trust a professional”.
Don’t use your website homepage for all ads
Your website is probably fantastic. Maybe you built it yourself, maybe you paid someone to make something absolutely amazing. And you probably focused the most on your homepage. After all, everyone will see your homepage right?
Nuh-uh.
With Google Ads, your primary goal is to give people something useful for what they’re searching for.
Imagine someone searching for “affordable couples counseling”. Your ad shows, they click it, and they end up on your homepage that, in order, introduces you, talks about your qualifications, why you use a CBT treatment approach, how you love working with individuals with anxiety, depression, trauma, and that, oh, you also offer couples counseling. There’s no way that person is booking a call.
If someone searches “affordable couples counseling”, you need to send them to a page that, at the top, says “Couples Counseling”, then explains how you can help, why you’re the best person to help that couple achieve their goals, include a testimonial from a past couples client, then have a simple booking form. In theory that person will never visit another page on your site — they’re convinced by the bottom of the page to book a call and that’s it.
Split your ad groups by specialty
This relates to the website homepage suggestion, but always split your campaign into different ad groups, with each ad group targeting a different specialty, e.g. anxiety, depression, couples counseling.
If you split it up like that, you can tailor your ad to that specific specialty.
I’ve seen accounts that target “therapy for anxiety”, “couples counseling”, “trauma therapy” in the same ad group, so you end up with the situation that someone searches “trauma counseling” and they see an ad that says “Build a Better Relationship”. Say what now?
Always use all of your headlines & descriptions for ads
The ad you’ll create for your search campaign will let you enter up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions. Use all of them. No exceptions.
Your headlines and descriptions should include the keywords you’re targeting, e.g. “Affordable Couples Counseling”, “Relationship Therapy”, etc. But you don’t need to be too repetitive. There’s no benefit to having headlines like “Affordable Couples Counseling”, “Affordable Couples Therapy”, and 15 different variants of the same thing.
Mix it up.
“Affordable Couples Counseling”, “Immediate Availability”, “Grow Stronger Together”, “Learn to Communicate Better”, “Experienced Therapists”, “Online and In-Person Sessions”.
Your ads will use multiple headlines together so imagine if you had 4 almost identical headlines that showed in the same ad. It’d look nonsensical.
Summary Quick Fixes to Improve Google Ads for Therapists
The most common methods to improve Google Ads for therapists include: not running on search partners, using dedicated landing pages that are relevant to the keyword you’re targeting and keeping these separate in your account, maintaining negative keyword lists, and using all of the ad copy options you’re given.
Hopefully you’ll be able to at least implement a few of these in your own campaigns. If you still don’t see improvement after that, or if you’re following all of the advice above already, reach out to me for a free consultation for a more specific review of your exact setup.
