Chapter One
Getting Found Online as a Counsellor: What Nobody Told Me
Part of Building a Counselling Practice: The Journey Beyond the Classroom
It's funny how endings begin.
Sometimes they begin in the strangest places.
For me, it happened on a family holiday in Turkey.
My counselling work with Dads Unlimited was coming to an end and, whilst sitting beside the pool, I found myself asking a question that many counsellors eventually ask:
How do people actually find a private therapist?
Like many newly qualified counsellors, I did what most of us do.
I started searching.
Websites.
SEO.
Directories.
Google Business.
Social media.
Marketing.
Private practice courses.
Suddenly everyone seemed to have the answer.
Usually for a fee.
Some promised page-one rankings.
Others promised a full diary within months.
Some insisted I needed to post every day on social media. Others told me to master Google Ads, build email funnels, create lead magnets, produce endless videos or pay someone to optimise my website.
If I'd followed all of that advice, building a counselling practice would have become a full-time job before I'd even seen a client.
The strange thing was that very little of it seemed to begin with counselling.
It began with algorithms.
Metrics.
Clicks.
Engagement.
Traffic.
Important things, perhaps.
But not the reason most of us trained to become therapists.
The more I read, the more overwhelmed I became.
I didn't want to become an influencer.
I wanted to become a good counsellor.
So I made myself a promise.
Rather than chasing every new idea, I would simply build one honest step at a time and pay attention to what actually worked.
That decision changed everything.
Instead of trying to create the perfect website overnight, I built a simple one.
Instead of writing for search engines, I started writing about the conversations I was having in the therapy room.
Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, I gradually noticed the people who kept finding me.
Men.
Fathers.
Grief.
Identity.
Connection.
Those weren't marketing decisions.
They were patterns that had quietly been there all along.
Looking back now, I realise my biggest mistake wasn't knowing too little about SEO.
It was assuming someone else knew exactly how my practice should look.
The truth was they couldn't.
Because they weren't building Me In Time.
I was.
That doesn't mean I ignored advice.
Far from it.
I listened.
I experimented.
I made plenty of mistakes.
Some ideas worked brilliantly.
Others disappeared almost as quickly as they arrived.
But slowly I realised something important.
Building a counselling practice isn't really about learning how to get found.
It's about becoming clearer about who you are, what you value and who you're hoping to help.
Once those things begin to fall into place, your website becomes easier to write.
Your articles become easier to write.
Even conversations with potential clients become easier because you're no longer trying to sound like everyone else.
You're simply sounding like yourself.
Ironically, that lesson had very little to do with Google.
It had everything to do with identity.
And that became the beginning of the next chapter.
Continue the Journey
← Back to Building a Counselling Practice
Chapter Two → The Website I Wish I'd Built First
Perhaps One Day...
These chapters began as reflections whilst building Me In Time Counselling & Psychotherapy.
The more I write, the more they feel like chapters of a book that hasn't quite realised it's a book yet.
Get in Touch
Have you found yourself asking similar questions about building a counselling practice?
I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts, experiences or reflections.