Module 9 · Be found, and keep it working

Your directory profile and your website say the same thing

Most practices get their first contacts from referrals and directories, not from a website. This lesson is about the moment after that: the person who found you on a directory and goes to look at your site. By the end, your directory profile and your website will say the same thing and point to each other.

Directories deliver the volume

In Heard’s 2026 survey of 1,950 therapists, 83% named referrals and word of mouth as a source of clients, and 82% named online directories. Know two limits: Heard sells services to therapists, and the survey never asked about therapists’ own websites. Psychology Today, the largest directory, lists therapists for $29.95 a month, the same price for everyone (as of September 2026).

Psychology Today’s own sign-up page says many members find they no longer need a website after joining. That’s the market leader’s position, and some practitioners do fill their practice without one. This course doesn’t argue otherwise. Its case is narrower: the directory decides who sees you, and your website is the one surface you own, where the decision gets made after the directory has done its job.

You can’t be number one on Psychology Today

In a controlled test for this course’s research, eight separate visitors loaded the same Psychology Today city page. Each saw an almost entirely different set of twenty therapists: no more than one of the twenty overlapped with the first visitor’s list. The order holds for one visitor’s session and reshuffles for the next. So there is no top spot to hold. What you control is whether your tile earns a click when it does appear.

The second look

Psychology Today shows each therapist a count of how many people clicked from their profile to their website. The link only appears inside the profile, so every one of those clicks is a person who read the profile and went looking for more. Two therapists posted their own counts publicly:

These are two practitioners’ posts, not an audit, and nobody has measured the path from directory to website to contact in psychotherapy. What they suggest, and what clients describe, is that many people use the directory to find names and the website to decide. One client put it this way on a therapists’ forum: websites “have more info than Psychology Today, so I use it to make the actual decision.”

Two more things practitioners report. Many describe fewer Psychology Today contacts since late 2024, with profile screenshots shared with journalists at ClearHealthCosts; that’s self-selected reporting, not a count across all therapists. And the link from your profile to your site is marked “nofollow,” which means search engines don’t count it as a vote for your site. A listing can help people find you, but it isn’t an SEO backlink.

The referrer hands over your website

A case manager or a colleague who refers someone to you usually passes on your phone number and your website, not a directory tile. So does the friend who says “look her up.” A referral lands on your name, and your name gets searched. Neither the directory nor the referrer gets credit, and the site does the work.

Make the tile and the site agree

A person who clicks from your profile to your site is checking whether you’re the same, current, real person. Every mismatch costs trust. Make these identical:

• Your name and credential, written the same way.
• The same photo of you.
• The same fee, or fee range.
• The same openings line with the same date, such as “Openings on Tuesday afternoons, updated [date].”
• The same specialties, and no more on the profile than on the site.
• The same first sentence, or close to it.
• Links both ways: the profile’s website link goes to your site, and your site’s structured data lists the profile in sameAs.

Compare my Psychology Today profile text with my homepage's first screen and my fees page.
Here is my profile, copied from my own listing: [paste your own profile text].

List every mismatch in name, credential, fee, openings (and the date on them), specialties,
and first sentence. For each one, propose a single version that fits both the profile and the
site. Don't change any files yet; just give me the list.

What to check: the list covers all six items, each mismatch shows both versions side by side, and nothing has changed on the site yet. You decide each wording, then ask Claude to update the site and you update the profile yourself. Proposed profile wording is advertising copy, so the same Module 6 check applies to it.

Directories and networks are not the same deal

Heard’s spending data found therapists listed on several directories tended to do better than those on one. Treat that carefully: it’s a correlation in one company’s customers, some groups were small, and it doesn’t show that adding a directory causes growth. If you add one, check its price on its own page on the day you sign up, and apply the same checklist above to it.

Watch this step

A clinician walking through a Psychology Today profile that earns the click to your website. It ends with a pitch for his marketing help. It’s from an independent creator — credited below, so go give them a follow.

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