Digital Strategy Planning · Local Google Ads · Multi-Location SEO

Smart SEO & Google Ads helped PsychologyCare grow to 28 associates

Building a predictable, long-term stream of inbound leads from organic search, backed by a high-return Google Ads campaign that scales with capacity.

PsychologyCare

Digital Strategy Planning · Local Google Ads · Multi-Location SEO

The Challenge

PsychologyCare came to me looking for solutions to control the volume and quality of their inbound lead flow.

Traditionally reliant on word of mouth referrals, as are many local clinics and practices, PsychologyCare sought a solution to build a steady, long-term stream of inbound leads from organic search, while establishing a high-return Google Ads campaign that would allow them to quickly scale up or down in accordance with capacity.

650%

Organic Traffic Growth Over 3 Years

With 108% organic traffic growth from the first monthly report, the campaign was off to a great start from day one - but it’s the longer time frame that really conveys the power of good strategy. Three years into managing their accounts, PsychologyCare’s traffic is still growing month on month and is now approximately 650% the campaign start baseline.

32x Top #1-3

Google Organic Rankings

On both Maps and website results, the clinic now ranks #1 for ‘Malvern psychologist’ and ‘psychologist Prahran,’ in addition to numerous secondary keywords relating to individual therapy types. The clinic now has a total of 32 strategically important keywords ranking in the top 3 organic results.

$4300/mo

Saved On Advertising

A good way to measure the effectiveness of SEO is to look at the ‘Organic Traffic Value’ - this is the approximate cost the clinic would need to pay to acquire the same search traffic via Google Ads. In PsychologyCare’s case, they are effectively receiving close to $4500/mo of Google traffic from their organic streams, every month.

On the map

Google Maps rankings measured from a grid of search points around the business, straight from the monthly reports.

Google Maps rankings for psychologist Malvern across a 5 km grid, June 2026 — ‘Psychologist Malvern’ on Google Maps: top 3 at 24 of 25 points across the suburb and #1 at 10, June 2026.

"Tom has been looking after my SEO for a number of years now and we have gone from a small business with just a few people to a business with 28 associates and counting. We rely very heavily on our website traffic as this is how we ensure we have a healthy referral stream and thus can support the psychologists that work in our practice as well as the wider community with their mental health needs. Tom has enabled this by being so good at his job, and knowing the secrets to SEO. Thanks Tom."

David Spektor

PsychologyCare Director

The Process

The psychology practice can experience large and sudden shifts in demand - both sudden increases and unexpected quiet periods. I needed to build a strategy that would maximise building a more solid, predictable baseline, while also having a “modular” component which would allow us to quickly increase or decrease the lead volume on short notice, while keeping cost-per-lead under control.

As the business added a second practice location and more psychologists with schedules to fill, this strong baseline plus short term adaptability became even more critical.

Google Business Profile optimisation for both locations

We took steps to optimise Google My Business (Business Profile) listings for both clinic locations to maximise organic traffic share, both from Google Maps and the Local Map 3-Pack on the website search results.

On-page optimisation plus sustained white hat link building

On-page optimisation of existing content provided quick Google ranking gains and an ongoing campaign of targeted, high-quality, white hat link building helped to create long term, stable top 3 rankings on critically important keywords.

A profitable, low cost-per-lead Google Ads campaign

A profitable, low cost-per-lead Google Ads campaign was established to add volume to the inbound leads, and which now allows the business to quickly increase or decrease short term demand in line with capacity.

One of the most striking aspects of this case study is not only the rapid growth that was achieved early through 80/20 strategic thinking and “harvesting low hanging fruit” - it’s that the results, both in terms of organic traffic and Google Ads cost per lead, have continued to improve consistently over a 3 year time period.

In this case, we continue to find new opportunities to add additional content which allows us to target service keywords that are not being targeted specifically by other clinics in the market. This allows new rankings to be built fairly quickly, continually adding to organic traffic growth. This approach to building the ‘long tail’ is an effective way to continuing growing the ROI of an SEO campaign over time.

Where most agencies fail is they focus ONLY on the long tail, because they don’t have the knowledge or skills in-house to confidently rank on higher volume keywords. That typically doesn’t work well for local businesses, where getting top rankings for a handful of critically important main keywords tends to make or break the ROI of the campaign. But after those key rankings have been achieved, expanding content to target additional long tail phrases will keep building that steady baseline of inbound organic leads.

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