We have worked with countless Private Practice websites (literally, we’ve lost count of how many!), and we tend to see mistakes repeat, one of which is the inclusion of pages that don’t need to exist.
The way we determine whether a page needs to exist or not, we look at the following checklist:
- Is the page weak content?
- Is the page providing value to potential clients?
- Is the page providing information without context?
- Is the page sending people away from your site for no reason?
And if the answer is Yes to the above, these superfluous pages at their best provide no benefit to a private practice website, and at their worst, can be a negative ranking signal for Google.
Every page and post on a site should provide value.
In this article, we’re highlighting a few common pages we see that don’t need to exist, and letting you know what to do with these pages, so that your private practice website has the best possibility of ranking for keywords that connect you with potential clients.
Services Pages
The biggest offender of non-useful pages are Service Pages. We see these a lot. Typically, they’re linked from the menu item that says, “Specialties,” or “Services” or “Offerings”.
Why they don’t need to exist:
Your homepage should already be doing the work of a Services Page. A sound homepage already includes a visual representation of all of your Specialties.
So, why would they be relisted on another page? You’re just doubling up information then—which is a duplicate content error and that’s a big no-no (i.e. that’s a negative ranking signal as far as SEO).
The problem with Services Pages is that they don’t add anything new, as far as information on your site. All of the information should already be provided. And if a Services page is a redundancy then it doesn’t need to exist.
And when you integrate information from your Services page into your homepage, then you end with a stronger homepage, which, in turn, increases your site’s overall rankings.
Whereas a Services page diffuses the site’s overall ability to rank. In this case… one is better than two.
Here’s a golden rule for site organization: always remove redundancies and duplicate information.
A List of Links
Some site builders (particularly in the Private Practice digital marketing world) include a separate page with a whole list of external links. Typically, this page will be called something like “Resources” or “Guides” or even just plain old, “Links”.
Link pages add nothing of value. In fact, they can take away value by sending potential clients away from your site.
Links are good (internal are better than external), but they’re only as good as the context in which the link is included.
(This is why you should never link the phrase, “Click Here”, because there’s no context for the URL. Instead it should say something like, “Contact Me” or—better—something like “Anxiety Therapy”, and that link should be included in a larger context like, “If you’re struggling I can help through anxiety therapy.”)
A list of links to journals, papers, citations, is weak because there’s no context.
Not only that, but some SEOs like to claim that having a lot of external links helps your site’s rankings. And they are wrong. Just recently, Google’s John Mueller said that external links do nothing for SEO.
Ask yourself, “Who is this link page for?” Are potential clients going to comb through a gatekept Psychological Medicine article? In the vast majority of cases, the answer is, “No.”
Now, you could make links pages valuable. How? Provide a description for every single about what it’s linking to, e.g. the name of the study, why it’s relevant, how it relates to your Specialties and your Practice’s philosophy.
Answer the “Why” of why you’re choosing to link the site at all.
Otherwise, nix it.
In other words, if a page is not something a potential client would engage with, then don’t have it.
Media Pages
Appearing on Podcasts, getting a credit in the New York Times, participating in conferences, are great ways to build your site’s credibility, reputation, and backlink profile—particularly if you’re an extrovert who enjoys such media participation.
But then it’s tempting to highlight all of those media appearances on a separate “Media” page, which is often a long list of links—which, like our above example—provide little value because they are contextless.
(If there’s one lesson we want to hammer at in this article, it’s that everything needs to provide value for potential clients.)
That doesn’t mean, don’t highlight your media appearances, but it does mean don’t make a separate page for them.
There are two places where media links should be featured:
- Your homepage is a fine spot, somewhere below your welcome message, and visual representation of your Specialties.
- Your about page is often a better spot.
The About page tends to be the more appropriate spot to feature your media appearances, as it’s the page where you highlight you.
Following our rules laid out above, this is about making particular pages as strong as they can be (in this case your About page), and serving information within a particular context.
No loose-hanging links allowed!
Every Page Needs to Work For You And Your Potential Clients
What binds all of the above examples are that they are weak pages. They don’t serve your potential client on their own, which is why they need to be integrated into the pages that do serve your potential clients.
Integrating information across your site makes the site stronger, thereby improving its ranking potential.
Of course, they are not the only examples of weak pages. But they do tend to be the most common examples of extraneous content: those that don’t help and shouldn’t exist.
So, don’t let Service pages, Link pages, and Media pages hold back your site. Take steps to remove or integrate them, so that your private practice website works for you and your potential clients.
