SUMMARY
To optimise your mental health blog for SEO, you need to:
- Find popular mental health topics through keyword research
- Consider your audience’s intent behind their search
- Create high-quality mental health content
- Back your statements up with evidence, not AI
- Simplify your language
- Add relevant internal links
- Bring older content up to scratch
- Optimise your content for featured snippets
- Check your image formatting
- Make your URLs SEO-friendly
- Write exciting, engaging title tags
- Hire an experienced mental health writer
Imagine this. You fill your mental health blog with helpful content that you know your readers will love. You’re super proud knowing you’re making a difference, and you tell yourself that SEO can wait. Surely Google will recognise that your content is truly useful and give you your rightful place at the top of search results?
So, you post consistent content. Then, you wait. Drip, drip, drip. A few visitors. Some who stay, others who don’t. You ask, “What am I doing wrong?” Unfortunately, it’s not enough to post useful content, you also have to optimise it for SEO. Otherwise, all that helpful info doesn’t get seen.
But your specialism is in mental health, not SEO, right? And with all of the different elements involved in SEO, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and FAST, especially if your heart isn’t in it.
So, in this blog, we’ll break it down. Below, we cover 12 easy steps to optimise your mental health blog for SEO. Work through these steps one by one, and you’ll see an improvement in your mental health website’s ranking in no time.
1. Find Popular Mental Health Topics Through Keyword Research
If you want your blog to get good traction quickly, it’s worth choosing your blog topics based on trending terms. Luckily, Google makes trending terms easy to find. Here are some of the best tools to use:
- SEMrush
- Ahrefs
- Exploding Topics
- Google Trends
You can also use Reddit and Quora to find trending topics, although I’ve never needed to after using the four resources above. It all comes down to personal preference!
2. Consider Your Audience’s Intent Behind Their Search
To optimise your blog for SEO, you need to know your audience, right down to why they’re searching certain terms. So, once you’ve found trending topics, ask yourself: Why are they searching for this?
There are four main forms of search intent:
- Informational Intent: Simply, your readers are looking for information on a particular topic. For example, if someone searches “What is OCD?” they’re likely looking for answers in a blog post, guide, or listicle.
- Transactional Intent: Basically, they want to buy a product or service. For example, if someone typed in “mental health writing services” they’re looking to buy.
- Navigational Intent: They’re looking for a specific website, such as “Psychology Today” or “LinkedIn.”
- Commercial Investigation: This is similar to transactional intent, but the difference is urgency. When someone’s searching for the purpose of commercial investigation, they’re researching products they may wish to buy in the future.
Typically, people searching mental health topics are looking for information, or want to investigate commercial products like therapy services or buy a product, like a self-help book.
3. Create High-Quality Mental Health Content
High-quality mental health content will draw readers to your blog like moths to a flame. You really can’t beat it – and this is all because Google is now prioritising specialised, expert sources for its AI Overviews and top ranking spots.
Google ranks websites based on four principles: expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. When you consistently deliver high-quality content, written by mental health experts, you meet all of Google’s ranking criteria. As a result, Google rewards you by placing your website at the top of its search results.
4. Back Your Statements Up With Evidence, Not AI
AI is (allegedly) good at many things, but creating mental health content is not one of them. It’s especially awful at backing up its claims with scientific research. While it can seem like a quick fix that saves you a tonne of money, I urge you to stay away from it.
Google is penalising websites with a high percentage of AI content, and for good reason. Yes, you can create specific prompts for AI, but the output is still generic. What’s more, when it comes to mental health content, it’s so important to toe the line between informative and empathic. After all, it’s people’s mental health you’re dealing with.
Google will rank you more highly if you’re using mental health experts to create your content rather than AI. Trust me, as the Founder of a mental health writing agency, it’s very obvious when a website is using AI content!
5. Simplify Your Language
People often go to the internet for answers when they’re feeling overwhelmed and in need of support. The last thing they want to read is something that makes them feel even more out of their depth.
Simplifying your language is especially important when synthesising research because it can be easy to keep your science hat on while you’re writing. To get past this, I read back over my articles and think: would I say this in real life? If I wouldn’t, I change the wording.
6. Add Relevant Internal Links
You may brush internal and external links off as unnecessary, but they’re more important than many people give credit. Internal links serve several key purposes. Firstly, they help Google discover new pages.
They also help Google understand your page better, as it gives more of an indication of what the focal topic is. And finally, they distribute PageRank—Google’s algorithm for ranking web pages—from one of your website pages to others, which improves each page’s SEO and ranking.
But here’s a quick tip: make sure the pages you link are relevant to your current page. If they’re not, it’ll confuse the algorithm (and your audience!).
7. Bring Older Content Up to Scratch
If your blog’s been running for a little while, it may be in need of some updating. Search intent and trending topics change over time, so it’s worth checking which blog posts aren’t getting much traction.
To do this, I hop onto Semrush. Semrush’s “Organic Research” tool is great for checking organic traffic. If you see a drop in traffic over time, it’s worth updating it.
The best ways to update your old content is to:
- Remove any old statistics, factors, or sources and replace them with newer ones.
- Add expert insights, more current advice, or useful strategies and tips.
- Remove any sections that are irrelevant or out of date.
- Alter the content based on the changes in your readers’ search intent.
And while it may seem like a lot of work, some posts may need a whole rewrite. It’s better to spend time doing this than having lots of dead blog posts weighing your website down.
8. Check Featured Snippets & Optimise for These
Featured snippets are those short, highlighted boxes that appear right at the top of a Google search. When it comes to Google ranking, these are the crème de la crème (right now, anyway. AI overviews are quickly taking over).
You can optimise your blog for featured snippets by:
- Format your headings as questions: The best one to go for is a “what is” heading because this is likely what people will search for.
- Ask and answer: Answer the question as soon as you ask it. This may seem strange if you’re used to introducing the section beforehand, but trust me. Asking and answering will help you get that featured snippet spot.
- For example, for the heading “What is OCD?” start the paragraph with “OCD is…”
- Offer a full definition: Now isn’t the time to be vague. Go into full descriptive mode and offer a full definition.
- Steer clear of 1st person: Google is looking for description in its featured snippets, not first-hand accounts. So, steer clear of 1st person and stick to 3rd.
- Read your paragraphs aloud: Many people use the voice search tool when a featured snippet pops up. So, if you’re trying to optimise for these, make sure it sounds right by reading it aloud.
It’s best to optimise your website pages that are ranking in one of the top 5 spots for now, as these are most likely to nab that top featured snippet spot.
9. Check Your Image Formatting
This is a nice easy one for you. While image formatting may seem unimportant, it can have a big impact on your readers’ overall experience when landing on your blog posts. Here are some key things to check:
- Convert small, high-quality images into PNGs. They tend to have better quality when compressed.
- Compress your images to improve the loading speed of your page.
- Choose an image size and stick to it. For WordPress, the typical featured image size is 1200 x 900 pixels, while in-blog images are best at 1200 x 630 pixels.
- Add descriptive alt text and captions because this helps search engines understand your image and blog post better.
10. Make Your URLs SEO-friendly
Making your URLs SEO friendly is another one people often forget, and it’s so easy! For WordPress, all you have to do is go into the “Posts” tab, click on “Quick Edit” on the post you want to alter, and under “Slug”, write your URL.
Make sure you use your target keyword as your slug. For example, if your article is, “What Is Anxiety?” your slug could simply be “your website URL/blog/what-is-anxiety/”. This will show Google your post is highly relevant for your main keyword. Winner, winner!
11. Write a Title Tag That Grabs Your Audience’s Attention
Your title tag is how your post’s title appears in search results. It’s SO important to optimise this because if it’s unclear or uninteresting, your ideal customers will simply scroll on by. Here are some top tips for optimising your title tags:
Be short and sweet. Google sometimes shortens title tags that are more than 70 characters, so stick under this limit. I like to aim for 65 characters, just to be on the safe side!
Integrate your keyword. Your keyword should 100% be in your title tag, as this encourages Google to rank the post for this phrase.
Evoke emotion. If readers don’t feel anything, they won’t be compelled to take action. So, in your title, use words that evoke emotion. Some of my go-to’s for mental health are:
- Overcome
- Transform
- Heal
- Discover
When writing title tags, I always use Capitalize My Title’s “Headline Analyzer Tool” – it shows approximate scores for readability, SEO, and sentiment.
Stay away from clickbait. Your readers may click on an exciting title tag, but they won’t stick around on your page if it’s irrelevant, and this will damage your Google ranking.
12. Hire an Experienced Mental Health Writer
Hiring an experienced mental health writer is the best thing you can do for your mental health blog. Not only will they help you meet all of Google’s ranking criteria (expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness), but their writing will resonate with your readers, bringing them back time and time again.
If you want to hire a mental health writer but don’t know where to look, check out our article on Where to Find the Best Mental Health Content Writers.
Final Word on Optimising Your Mental Health Blog for SEO
Optimising your mental health blog for SEO is no piece of cake, and there are scarily few resources out there specifically focusing on the mental health niche.
However, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With these 12 simple strategies, you can increase the eyes on your website and produce content that your readers will keep coming back for.
But if this all still feels like too much on top of everything else you have to do, don’t stress. That’s where an expert can come in.
At PsychWrite, we have a whole team of mental health professionals who are also experienced SEO writers. They know how to speak to your audience from a place of compassion, while also levelling up your website with credible, authoritative, and SEO-optimised content.
If you’re looking for help optimising your mental health blog, get in contact today!
