Service pages for a psychology practice: by issue or by therapy?

Build your service pages around how clients actually search, and that usually means by issue first and by therapy second. Someone lying awake at 2am is typing "help with anxiety", not "CBT". So the issue is the headline and the therapy is the detail. Most practices need a page for each main issue they treat, plus a smaller number of therapy pages for the clients who do search by method.

Start with how people search, not how you think

Clinicians tend to organise their world by modality (the type of therapy you deliver, like CBT or EMDR). It makes sense internally, because that is how training and supervision are structured. But a person in distress does not think in modalities. They think in problems: "I can't stop worrying", "we keep having the same fight", "I feel numb". When they open Google, that is what they type.

So the safest default is one page per issue you genuinely treat - anxiety, depression, trauma, relationship problems, and so on. Each page speaks to the person living with that specific thing, in plain language, before it ever mentions the method you would use.

Clients search for the problem they have, not the method you would use to fix it.

One page, one intent

The single most useful rule here is one clear intent per page. If a page is trying to be about anxiety and depression and stress and burnout all at once, Google cannot tell what it is for, and neither can a worried reader skimming it. A focused anxiety page will nearly always out-rank a vague "our services" page for anxiety searches. This is the same principle I cover in service pages for clinics - depth on one topic beats a shallow list of everything.

A good issue page usually covers:

• What the problem looks and feels like, in the client's own words
• How you actually work with it, described without jargon
• What a first session and the following few sessions tend to involve
• Practical details: fees, funding, telehealth or in-person, how to book
• A calm, human call to make contact - no pressure, no hype

When you need a therapy page too

Some therapies are searched directly. "Couples counselling", "EMDR", and "ACT" (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) all get typed in by people who already know what they want, often because a GP, friend, or previous therapist named it. Where there is real search demand and a genuinely distinct intent, a therapy page earns its place.

Couples counselling is the clearest example. It is really an issue and a therapy at once - the client thinks "our relationship", not "a modality" - so it deserves its own strong page. But do not build a page for every acronym in your training just because you can. Only create a therapy page when people are actually searching for it and the page can say something distinct.

Link them, and do not over-build

Where an issue and a therapy overlap, link them together. Your anxiety page can link out to your CBT page for the reader who wants to understand the method, and your CBT page can link back to the issues it helps with. That internal linking helps clients navigate and helps Google understand how your pages relate.

The trap to avoid is spinning up thirty thin pages to "cover everything". That usually backfires - a pile of near-empty pages can drag the whole site down rather than lift it, which I explain in why more pages can mean worse rankings. Better to have eight genuinely helpful pages than thirty hollow ones. Start with your core issues, add therapy pages only where demand is real, and let the site grow as your practice does.