Is your website copy working? If it is, you’ll know because incoming clients will tell you it’s working.

They’ll share stuff like,”It was like your website was speaking to me!” or like, “I knew you would understand me, just from reading your website” or “your website overheard what I was saying to my bestie last week”

But what if you aren’t getting clients in your door? And much less ones praising your website?

Worse still: What if you read your own website and you get that sinking intuition that your copy just isn’t quite right?

If you’re worried about your website copy and interested in getting results, this post will help you identify some of the major indications that your website copy could use some improvement.

Here are the top 4 warning signs that your therapist website copy is in need of a rewrite:

1. Your Copy Is Full Of Psychobabble

Psychobabble are all those words that you learn in grad school to describe stuff. Words like “cognitive” or “psychodynamic” or even like “integrate.” These words hold meaning to you but don’t speak to most people’s heart space, that same space where they are hurting.

The rule-of-thumb is this: if your best fit client wouldn’t describe their problem or their solution with the language, it doesn’t belong in your website copy.

If you discover your website copy is full of psychobabble, it’s rewrite o’clock!

2. You Read Your Copy And All You Read About Is You

Effective website copy reflects both the solution being written about but also the person that the solution is for. There are many ways to do that. Your copy could empathize with their pain, it could walk with them through what the journey of healing could be like, it could inspire hope in them for their future.

But if your website is overwhelmed with “I” statements, it might not be achieving that.

  • “I went to Stanford”
  • “I’m experienced”
  • “I published a paper on…”

It is very important to show that you are a credible, professional, and licensed therapist, but you most likely can condense that to a few sentences on an about page.

If your copy is “too you”, it may be time to write it anew.

3. Your Copy Reads Like Educational Material

A superpower that a lot of therapists have is their ability to share their wisdom with others. However, if your service page for “Depression Therapy” includes answering questions like “what is depression” and “12 signs you have depression” than these are educational.

Your service pages shouldn’t educate (or worse yet, help someone self-diagnose). Your service pages are for helping a website visitor understand who you help, how you’ll help them, and what the benefits of your help are. None of those questions are answered by a dry list of symptoms paraphrased from WebMD.

If your website is educational instead of selling your services, it’s a sure sign you need to make a shift and do some rewrites.

4. You’ve Shifted Who Your Best Fit Client Is

Sometimes your website copy might actually be awesome but you’ve changed. You know, chchchanges.

Perhaps you’ve finally discovered your niche, perhaps you’ve decided on a new niche, or maybe you just got trained in EMDR which inspires you to speak to trauma survivors as well now.

Whatever the reason, your audience has shifted. And that’s not a bad thing. The bad thing would be to let your website copy stay the same. It’s certainly time to rewrite your copy if you are trying to attract someone new.

Rewriting Your Website

The truth is that writing great copy for your therapist website is about more than noticing these warning signs. It’s about discovering who you help, how you can help them, and making that clear.

Beyond that, it will be possible to inspire your visitors to reach out.

Rewriting your website copy can help you get there.

Posted in Website Copy