[JOE SANOK]
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 712.

Well, I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I am so, so excited that you are here. Every Wednesday we’re doing these Ask Joe shows where people ask questions and I answer them live here on the podcast. So we dig into all sorts of things. For this five-week series we are talking all about starting a practice issues. If you are growing a practice, if you have a group practice, these are good things to go back to. So I’d encourage you to listen through to just really understand these basics that maybe you missed in the last show. Last Wednesday we talked about, should I start a private practice? We also talked about how LaToya is doing a podcast takeover in May of 2022. Every Friday, LaToya is going to be doing a show and super excited about that, excited about just what she has as content.

So we are going to be talking today about how do I start a website and the basics of a website, what you need to know about a website, options around a website, all of that. Next Wednesday, we’ll be talking about how to network for referrals. Then we’ll be talking about marketing plans in the next one, and then having a big picture, what all do I need to have to start a private practice? So five Ask Joe’s in a row. And these are Ask Joe questions that honestly I get all the time. So we’re going to be doing this series around those questions. If you want to submit your question, you can head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/askjoe. We have a form there that you can enter your question. If you’re selected, we will read your name on the Ask Joe show.

So really excited to have you hanging out with us today. Also some extra resources over at pillarsofpractice.com. Pillarsofpractice.com is where we have e-courses about growing a solo practice and growing a group practice. We have checklists, we have schedules, we have little eight-minute videos called Eight-Minute Experts where we interview experts around a particular topic to make sure that you’re getting all that you need. I mean, this isn’t just some email list or some cheesy little checklist. This is a robust e-course that’s going to help you get started in growing your solo or group practice. Again, that’s pillarsofpractice.com.

Today we’re talking all about how do I start a website? How do I start a website? I still remember I was texting my friend Monica and I actually did a episode with Monica early on and said, “Your website’s amazing. How did you, where’d you get it done?” This was right when I started Mental Wellness Counseling. She said, “I made it.” I was like, what? And Microsoft Office had this Microsoft Office 360 Live thing that where you could make your own website. There was no hosting fees. It was totally free and there were no ads on it for just like a year. So I started mentalwellnesscounseling.com, bought that through Namecheap, who I still use for all of my stuff. That was mostly because Namecheap had different advertising strategies than GoDaddy. GoDaddy at the time had some really provocative type of things that it felt I didn’t really like it. They’ve maybe changed some of that since then.

So I bought mentalwellnesscounseling.com, built out the website, just had no idea what I was doing. I had heard that Google would search for certain words, so the background for the website was white and you could probably use that. There’s this, I forgot what it’s called, like go back machine or something like that. You could probably go back and see what Mental Wellness Counseling looked like way back in the day. But I had all of the background was white and then in white font had angry kids, Traverse City counseling, all these keywords I wanted to rank for. I turned all of that text white to make the background, have all these keywords. Google now flags crap like that because people are just trying to game the system.

I had no idea what I was doing. So I built this website and within six months or a year, they decide they’re going to start charging. At that time I was listening to Pat Flynn and he was talking about how to build your own website. So first let’s understand the basic components of a website. First you have your hosting, your hosting is where all of the information about your website is stored. So you might want to think of the hosting, if you used a house as an analogy, as the foundation of the house. It’s the storage. It’s like the basement storage unit where you got everything, the electrical, the plumbing. All of that goes through your hosting. So we recommend using Blue Host and we have a link for that on the website. If you go to practiceofthepractice.com/hosting, that’ll redirect you to our hosting that we recommend. I think it’s like $399 a month, so super cheap.

I should actually check that before I say it. Should have done that before I started recording, but we’re leaving this in here, practiceofthepractice.com and let’s just see if it’s hosting or host. I always forget. /Hostin, oh, nope. Got an error there. Maybe it’s host. Let’s see. Oh, /host, $295 a month. Look at that, it’s even cheaper than I thought. So practiceofthepractice.com/host will redirect you to that hosting site. That is an affiliate link. We get a small commission for that. But that’s your hosting. Then we have the design of your website. So that’s going to be, if you think of a house, that’s going to be the drywall, the paint color, the way it looks.

We recommend using WordPress. There’s lots of options out there. I’m not a huge fan of Wix or Squarespace, because if you ever want to move off those platforms or change how your website looks, it can be really, really difficult. It can be sort of intuitive, but WordPress, it’s more agile if you want to switch things up at some point. So within WordPress and I’ll speak to that, you’re going to pick a theme. So oftentimes it’s a lot cheaper and smarter to pick a theme that someone else installs. So there’s lot, there’s like Theme Forest, there’s all these different themes. You look at the theme, you say, oh, I like that, then pay for that. This is all if you’re building your own website, but I think it’s good for you to just know what goes into it, whether or not you do it, or you have someone else do it.

So you have a theme. This is the basic bones of the website. How does it look? How’s the structure? What I like about WordPress is if you ever want to change your website to a different theme, you don’t lose all your content. There may be different sizing things that switch around and change a little bit that need some cleanup, but it’s a lot easier to change the whole look of your website if you want to, if you’re in WordPress. That’s your theme. That’s WordPress. That’s what drives the website, the behind the scenes.

You also have your URL. Your URL is the www.mentalwellnesscounseling.com. Usually we buy through Namecheap, so practiceofractice.com/namecheap if you want to buy a URL. Anytime I have an idea for a URL, I see if it’s available and I buy it even if I don’t know how I’m going to use it. I probably have 15 or so URLs that are just on an annual plan that I’m paying 10 bucks a year for it. It’s just maintained that I may use at some point, I may not. I think I bought sixfiguresponsors.com. I think I bought all sorts of different things. So whenever I have a product idea, or like Podcast Launch School, before we launched that, I bought that URL a year before thinking at some point I might want to do a podcasting training. Then I was like, okay, yes, podcastlaunchschool.com. We own that already instead of saying, oh, darn somebody bought that. I love that name. Go buy those URLs if you have the idea. So that with our house analogy would be like the address of the house.

Then the ongoing content of a website, so the blog posts, the pages that would be like the furniture in the house. That’s the stuff that keeps it updated, keeps it moving. It adds the life to your website. So just understanding and the basics of a website is really important in deciding what website do you want? So the next question to ask yourself is, do you want to own your website or do you want to lease your website, own or lease? So when you lease a website what that looks like is someone else builds it, you pay a monthly fee, usually it’s much lower than the cost if you were to pay someone to build it and for a monthly fee of anywhere from 59 to a hundred bucks a month, they’ll do all the IT support, they’ll do all the design, they’ll do oftentimes some SEO.

Brighter Vision would fall in this category. They’re a sponsor of the show. Their therapy sites, their sites would fall in this category. There’s lots of those types of things that are out there and a lot of different options there. Then if you want to buy your website, usually there’s a fee if you want to move away from having them manage it. So say you want your own team to do it. You just don’t want to have the ongoing fee or ongoing support. Usually there’s a fee then to own the website, sort of like when you buy a car after you’ve leased it for a number of years. Then on the other side, there’s buying your website or having it built. That’s where either you do it yourself, all those things that I just talked through, and we’ve got some walkthroughs on Practice of the Practice of how to do that or you just pay somebody.

So we have someone on our team that builds websites for therapists. For us, it’s just a flat $2,000, unless there’s a lot of add-ons that people need. You can just email [email protected] if you want a quote on that. Or you can go find your own people, go interview people, look at their portfolio, see what you like from that and then you just own it. All you pay is that hosting fee and that annual fee for owning the URL. So you’re talking three bucks a month for your hosting and then you’re talking 10 bucks a year for your URL. So not very expensive.

Now, you don’t have the IT support if something breaks so you probably want to have someone that does some of those behind the scenes in case something breaks or breaks down. You want to have someone that can update the plug-ins. Those are the things that drive WordPress, and sometimes they can break or update funny. So you want someone that you can call to update your plugins.
[NOBLE]
Our friends at Noble believe in using technology to enhance, not replace human connection. With Noble, your clients will gain access to between session support through their automated therapist-created roadmaps, assessments to track progress, and in-app messaging. These tools will help you and your clients gain a better understanding of their progress between sessions, how they’re feeling and what areas may need more focus so you can tailor your one-on-one sessions to their needs more effectively. Not only will Noble help you offer your clients the more transformative experience possible, but you can also earn passive income while doing so. Learn more and join for free at www.noble.health/joe. Again, that’s www.noble.health/joe.
[JOE SANOK]
Next, we want to look at the core pages of a counseling website. So the core pages of a counseling website are your main homepage. You’re going to want an about me or about us page. You’re going to want a who we help type of page, so what are the specialties? You might want to have a new question mark, start here, which is nice to have right next to the homepage. New? Start here. That allows people like, oh yes, I’m new. Then they go to the particular page you want them to go to. Then you definitely want a Contact Us page and then you also want some blogs. You always want your Contact Us, or schedule an intake or schedule a phone call in your upper right all the way to the right. We often want that to be a button that’s a different color so it really stands out. Here’s how you contact us. People naturally look in that corner.

People also are so, so, so short on time. So when they land on a website, they really only ask themselves two things. This is within the first 10 seconds, first, am I in the right place? So I’m looking for a counselor or a therapist for my son. Am I even in the right place? I’m looking for a marriage counselor, is this even a marriage counseling website? So you want to have the words counseling, marriage counseling, things on your niche. You want to have pictures that show the outcome of therapy, not the reason they’re coming. So don’t show a couple that hates each other. Show a couple that is on their last day of counseling and they love each other again and they’re excited about their marriage.

So you’re showing that, you want to have those words, counseling, therapy, whatever you use to best describe yourself frequently on that webpage. I hate seeing websites that either have a tree with a river running through it and it says something like there’s hope for your family. That could be a funeral home, as much as it could be a counseling practice. Or the other one is a person with their hands extended over a mountain range. I see that everywhere in counseling websites. Now, if you live in the Rocky Mountains or you live in Utah or Arizona, sure, that picture, if it’s actually of your location may work for you. But for the most part if you don’t live by mountains, don’t put mountains on your website. Have local things there even if you take the pictures on your own iPhone.

All right, so people think that am I in the right place because they’re used to getting out of websites that aren’t necessarily accurate. Then second question is, can this person help me? Can this person even help me with what I’m looking to do? So that person is asking themselves, is this person a specialist? Is this therapist a specialist in marriage counseling? Or do they help kids? So you’re be very clear about the niche that you serve.

All right, next, we want to start looking at SEO, which is search engine optimization and blogging. So early on in your website, take some time, take a couple days to sketch out at least 26 blog posts. Now that sounds like a ton of blog posts, but if you think about it, that’s a weekly blog post for half a year. If you do that and then just take a break for a year, you will be fine even if you just have those go out every other week. Think about it this way. What are five different, big areas that you serve? So depression, anxiety, relationship issues, toxic relationships and then break each of those things into a five-part series. So when we think about anxiety, what are five blog posts about anxiety?

First, what is anxiety? Second, what are the symptoms of anxiety? So we’re thinking through what people actually search. What are common treatments for anxiety, anxiety in a marriage, anxiety with your kids, anxiety with relationships and then maybe thinking through like a full like complete top to bottom A to Z guide of anxiety. So we right there have five solid blog post ideas just by digging into it. Think about depression. Could be the same sort of thing where, okay, what is seasonal effective disorder? What is the winter blues? How to get through the holidays when you deal with depression. So thinking through just five blog posts ideas, and then within there thinking what are my three to five tips?

If you just think about this as a list of lists, it’s a lot easier than saying, oh my gosh, I have 26 blog posts to write. Then we want to do internal links between those blog posts where say you have an anxiety blog post. If you reference one of your depression blog posts, you’re going to say effects of depression or symptoms of depression, and then link to that other post. The more you do that, you don’t want to have hundreds within one blog post, but doing it two or three times within a blog post is going to help you rank higher in Google and show Google that you’re relevant, you’re creating ongoing content.

Then last thing you want to do is you want to have external links. You want to have links from other websites to you. So maybe you apply to be a writer with Practice of the Practice, so we link to your website. Maybe you submit to your local newspaper and so that goes back to your website. Maybe you’re on Psychology Today or on other things, getting other ways that those links come back to your website. That’s going to help with your SEO as well.

Boom, we covered a ton today, ton. Well, and we really couldn’t do this show without our sponsors. Noble is one of our sponsors. Our friends over at Noble has some exciting news to share where they are helping over 50,000 mental health professionals on their platform. In the next few months, you can join Noble totally for free right now over at noble.health/joe. Again, that’s www.noble.health/joe. Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing day. I’ll talk to you soon.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.