Professional Referral Directories

Hi, this is Dave Katz with Therapist Consultants, and I think it's time for you to look at your professional referral directories. Now, I know that most of you are already using Psychology Today as your professional referral site, but I think you should use more than Psychology today. In fact, I will tell you that almost all of our big practitioners are on three to five professional referral sites.

So I don't care if it's Therapy Tribe, Therapy Nation, GoodTherapy.org, Find A Christian Counselor. I don't care what sites you use, but you should get on some other professional referral directories.

Now, they only cost you about $30 a month. So if you were on two of them, that'd be $60 a month. You say, well, at $30 a month. Maybe I won't get anybody for a whole year on that directory. Well, I have two things to say about that. First of all, you don't have to get anybody in a whole year. Because if it's $30 times 10 months or times 12 months, that's $360. You could go for three years and only pick up one client and it would be worth it. You'd get your monies back. So first of all, you have to know that you can get on these professional referral directories at a very low cost.

But here's the real reason you get on professional referral directories. Not because they're going to get you so many professional referrals, but because they give you a pervasive presence. See what search engines like Google look for to rate you high is they want to see you all over the internet. It's called a pervasive presence. You have to have a pervasive presence where wherever Google looks, they see you and then they naturally rate you higher.

So I would highly encourage you to get on these other referral sites and use them just to get pervasive presence because it'll help you build your presence on the internet.

And then when people Google something like “Therapists near me”, your name will come up because of the pervasive presence. So think about joining two or three other professional referral sites.

I wanna say one other thing. You say, which one should I join? Just go to Google and type in your specialty and where you're at. So maybe you'll say,  marriage Counseling, Lakeland, Florida. And you look there on the organic listings, which are the ones below the local listings and the advertisements and local listings. That's the organic listings. Look at what referral sites come up most. You'll see Psychology today as almost always number one, but you might see something else like Thumbtack, or you might see something else like Theralive or GoodTherapy.org. And the ones that you see on the first page there, that's the ones that you should be joining and research it from a lot of different directions. Say “marriage counseling near me”, “couples counseling near me”. And just do it from a bunch of different directions and you'll see that you'll find the ones that you need to join, join them, and I think your practice will grow as a result of it. This is Dave Katz. Thanks for listening.