Psychiatry practice marketing: help patients understand your care before they call.

The psychiatry practice playbook

Eight things that decide whether a psychiatric practice gets found and gets the right calls, drawn from the outpatient practice LunahUP grew out of.

Separate the three services patients mix up

Evaluation, medication management and therapy sound alike to someone searching at night. Each needs its own explanation: what happens, how long it takes, what it costs and who it is with. Family Hope Healthcare’s pages, for example, state that a first evaluation runs 60 minutes, that follow-ups run 30, and that the practice does not offer talk therapy.

Saying what you do not do is as useful as saying what you do. A patient who wants weekly counseling learns that before booking, and your intake staff stop having that conversation on the phone.

Treat insurance as its own search

People search “psychiatrist that takes Aetna” or “Cigna psychiatry near me” long before they read a fee page. A short list buried in an FAQ cannot answer that. Family Hope built a page for each plan it accepts in each major city it serves, and each one says which plans are not accepted, so nobody books under a wrong assumption.

Insurance facts go stale quickly. Whoever maintains the pages should confirm the list against current contracts before anything is reused, and every page should show the same answer.

Build condition pages around the words people type

Searches like “adhd treatment chattanooga” and “depression treatment knoxville” are where much of a psychiatric practice’s traffic starts. Each condition you treat deserves a page for each place you serve, written for that search rather than copied from the last city.

Small wording choices matter here. One of our Nashville pages was titled for an “ADHD evaluation” while people were searching for “ADHD treatment”; the title, heading and page now use the searcher’s word, without changing what the practice offers.

Say which ages you see, and who sees them

Parents scanning a page want to know at once whether their eight-year-old can be seen. Two of our own ADHD pages spoke only about adults, even though the practice sees children from age four. Each now has a section for children and teens, linked to a guide on what a child’s evaluation involves.

If different clinicians see different age groups, say so on the page. It saves a call and sets the right expectation before the first visit.

Put crisis information where people can find it

An outpatient practice is not an emergency service, and its pages should say so plainly, next to what to do instead: call or text 988, or call the local crisis line. Family Hope lists the crisis line for each county its city pages cover.

This protects patients first. It also tells search engines and AI assistants that the page is responsible about care it does not provide.

Run ads inside the health rules

Google restricts how health information can be used to target personalized ads, so remarketing to people based on mental health interest is off the table. Search ads that answer what someone types, such as an evaluation in a named city, are still allowed.

Before any campaign starts we agree which services can be advertised, in which states, with what budget, and who approves the wording. Nothing goes live on an ad account without that sign-off.

Read the numbers that show the real gap

Over three months in 2026, Family Hope’s site appeared in Google results tens of thousands of times but drew under nine hundred clicks, an average position around fourteen. The site was being seen; it just was not ranking high enough for people to choose it.

That pattern points to specific work: titles that match the search, pages that answer the whole question, and links between related pages. It is a better starting point than writing more pages before the existing ones earn their place.

Earn referrals from the clinicians around you

Therapists, primary care doctors and pediatricians send many new psychiatric patients, and they decide quickly. Before referring, most want the same facts a patient does: which conditions you treat, which ages you see, which plans you accept and how soon someone can be seen. A short page written for referring clinicians puts those answers in one place they can bookmark.

Say how to refer, whether by form, fax or secure message, which records help, how quickly your team contacts the patient and whether the referrer hears back. Keep it current, because a referral page with an old fax number loses the relationship it was meant to build. A therapist with no prescriber on staff is often looking for exactly this page.

Your first three months, step by step

Month one is about facts and a baseline. Confirm services, ages, insurers, locations and telehealth states with your team, correct every page and listing that disagrees, and export your Search Console numbers so later changes have something to be compared against. Nothing new gets written until the existing pages tell the truth.

Month two goes to near misses: searches where a page already appears just off the first screen. Retitle, complete and link those pages first. Month three fills real gaps, such as a condition you treat in a city you serve with no page for it, or a plan nobody can find. Search engines take weeks to re-crawl and re-rank, so judge each change over matching periods, not on the day it went live.

Where LunahUP comes in

Every piece of work begins with a finding your team can verify, such as a search sitting on page two, an insurance list that no longer matches your contracts, or a page that never names the ages you see. A draft is prepared from your confirmed facts and waits for approval.

Once a change is approved and published, you can see the date and the exact wording that changed. Ranking gains are never promised; the record of what was done always is.