If you’ve come across terms like E-E-A-T or YMYL recently and thought…

“I feel like I should know what that means…”

You’re definitely not alone.

In this episode, I’m joined by Theo Ruby - someone I’ve worked with for years and regularly refer people to when they need help with the tech and SEO side of their website.

We’re talking about what’s actually changing when it comes to Google… and why, for once, it’s actually good news for counsellors.

What we cover in this episode

We talk about:

• What E-E-A-T actually means (in plain English)
• What YMYL is and why counselling websites are treated differently
• Why this isn’t about learning a whole new strategy
• How to make small changes that can make a big difference
• Why your experience matters more than ever
• How to use AI without losing your voice
• What Google is really looking for (and what it’s starting to ignore)

Why this matters

This isn’t about trying to “keep up with SEO.”

It’s about something much simpler.

👉 helping the right people find you

👉 helping them recognise themselves in what you write

👉 and making it easier for them to feel confident reaching out

And actually…

Most counsellors are already doing parts of this.

It’s just about being a bit more intentional with it.

A simple example we talk about

Instead of writing:

“Anxiety can be managed using…”

You might say:

“In my work with clients, I’ve found…”

Same idea but now you’re showing:

• Your experience
• Your understanding
• How you actually work

And that’s exactly the kind of thing Google is starting to prioritise.

One key takeaway

This is the bit I really want you to take away:

You don’t need to:

• Write more
• Sound more “professional”
• Or become an SEO expert

You just need to:

👉 show more of what you already bring to your work

Helpful links

• Theo’s guide to E-E-A-T: EEAT for Therapists: A Practical Guide to E-E-A-T and YMYL
• Join our FREE live workshop with myself and Theo on 14th May : Make Your Private Practice Website Stand Out Online

About Theo Ruby

Theo Ruby has spent 8 years working exclusively with private practice owners across the UK. He helps therapists, counsellors, and hypnotherapists attract the right clients through SEO, website design, and digital marketing.

Theo knows the mental health sector well. He understands why generic marketing advice rarely fits a private practice, and he builds his work around the specific needs of each practitioner. Having supported hundreds of practice owners, he brings grounded, practical experience to every project. His approach is clear, straightforward, and focused on results that matter. Find out more at theoruby.com.

So your website and your blogs are being looked at more closely, you know, through things like trust and experience and credibility. Now, that might sound a little bit daunting, but actually this is really good news because it means that your training, your experience, and the way you already understand your clients isn't just useful in your work.

It's exactly what helps you to stand out online too. So today I am delighted to be joined by Theo Ruby, who works specifically with people in the wellness industries, especially counselors and psychotherapists, by helping them with their websites, with their content, and to be honest, all of the more technical things.

And together we are going to make sense of what this means for your website, your blogs, and how you can start using this to your advantage. So if you want your website to do more for your practice, then this is definitely worth a listen.

Hi, and welcome to the Grow Your Private Practice Show. I'm Jane Travis and I help counselors and therapists to get found by the right clients through simple doable marketing, especially through blogging and your website words. So if you need a little help with that, well you are in the right place.

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back and if it's your first time here. It is really great to have you here and I hope that you're having a good day so far, and today we're talking about something that, to be honest, might feel a little bit daunting at first glance, but is in fact really great news for private practice owners.

Because when it comes to your website and when it comes to the blogs that you write, it's not just about what you write, it's about how that content is seen and who gets to see it. So I'm absolutely delighted that the lovely Theo rubies here with me, and he works specifically with counselors and therapists, predominantly helping them with their websites, but also their content, and really all of those technical bits that, you know, most of us would probably prefer to avoid or I do anyway.

And what we're gonna be talking about are things like EE 80. YMYL. We're gonna have a look at what they mean, what they mean in practice, and why they matter so much for therapists, but more importantly, how this can actually work in your favor. So the experience and knowledge that you already have helps you to get found by the right people.

I hope you enjoy this one. Theo, I am so delighted to have you here again. You've been with us before. I've spoken to you loads of times privately. You are the person that I send people to when they need help with the tech side of their website. So I'm absolutely delighted that you're here today.

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna have a look at these two new acronyms. That we should all take notice of, , EEAT and YMYL if I've got those right. So what I'd like to do is pick your brain and maybe you can tell us what these are and why it is that we should really prick up our ears about them.

It's not. I mean, at the end of the day, it's about writing good quality content that she speaks to the client rather than just kind of regurgitating or using ai. And in, I mean, in essence, it's just as long as what you write is true to you and it's written well, then that's, you are ticking most of the boxes.

We can go into more detail, but then YMYL is like an extension of that, and it's basically saying therapists, because people are putting their money into something that affects their mental health. Google actually puts you on kind of a pedestal and you, it checks you more and it's even more important for you to show your experience.

And your trust in what you write and ensure that you're actually giving useful articles and you're not kind of leading people down the wrong path.

I think, oh my God, it's really serious. Am I gonna get told off if I don't do it? And it sounds too techy, why should we be leaning in towards this?

So for me, the importance of Y and YL is really about giving you the opportunity to stand out. It's always about putting the client first. You don't have to read load loads of books on it.

You don't have to overthink it too much. On my website, I've got a simple guide you can follow, and it gives you a checklist of things you can do to make sure that what you write resonates with a client.what I would say is always think about what makes your piece of content unique. You are not just copying from Wikipedia, you're not taking it from ai.

Please never take anything straight from ai. it's you weaving in your years of experience what you've learned and then things in your practice that have you found to be useful.

The, the tone's a bit different. The detail's different. It's more something they can take away and keep rather than just, uh, like a , Wikipedia article.

Connect to share a little bit of their personality. So this is just going, it's kind of doing that, but sort of slightly adding a little bit extra about, yes, connecting with people, but also letting people know and letting Google know that yes, you are a qualified counselor, you've been doing this for years, and that's gen.

That's just by doing those things, that's gonna help them to get found by more people.

So if you're working with GP practices, insurance companies, anything like that, it just shows that you're credible. It shows that other people put their trust in you.

but it's, it's really just consciously thinking. Is this relevant? Is it useful? And do I incredible?

I think that this is kind of highlighting the fact that as counselors, we do have all of this knowledge and we do have all of this experience and we have a voice and we, we should be out there letting people know that we, we know what we're doing, we know we can help you, and it's finding a way of doing that that is something that doesn't make us feel really horribly salesy or spammy.

And it's just, it comes across really much more natural, much more approachable if you do it that way.

Is is gonna help that. So rather than it being something that's a bit intimidating mm-hmm. it's something that, and you've got a fantastic guide, we're gonna link to it, but you've got a guide that goes through all of this with all sorts of ideas of things you can try and, you know, it's a really comprehensive guide that, like I say, I'm gonna share in the show notes.

So definitely grab that and have a look at it. And it's a really easy to understand guide.

Just really break it down for them as well. And it, that also shows that you are making it accessible. That's included in the guide. Oh, is for free for anyone and thank you for sharing it.

It sounds like a lot. What would you say to somebody to sort of help them to see that this could be probably easier than they think it might be?

I know I said don't use ai, but you can also use AI for planning and you can say to it. Here's my content. Tell me how I can improve it for Google, EEAT, it's really well known and it will just give you the steps, it'll give you the critique, but again, it's, it's about using it as a strategic partner, but not using it to actually write the content.

E, E, what is it? E-A-E-A-T. Yeah. So by saying to it, please make this blog post compatible with that. That's one of the ways it can really just help you and give you some more ideas to improve it.

Perfect. So it is never hallucinating. It's never generating its own content.

I just find it's just improved so much. But we have to remember that it's just a tool. We are the people, you know, whoever's writing the blog is the person who knows the most. And I think, you know, it's, we shouldn't rely on. GPT or Claude or any of the ais, it's it's a tool that can help us, but it can also, I guess when it comes to something like this, it can also trip us up because, I mean, can Google tell when it's been written by AI or when it's like a little bit thin?

So it's really, yeah, if you'd use it entirely, then it's becoming more of a weakness.

If you write and you say, I've trained for, and I've got this certification. I've worked for the past eight years helping people to overcome this challenge, and here's three things that I've found have helped my clients the most. So you're giving practical real life examples without giving any personal information.

You're showing your credibility, you're showing that it's something that's unique to you. And then also it might be worth saying, like a disclaimer somewhere saying it's not medical advice. If you have real health issues to go and seek support.

Is that the kind of way you'd put it?

something actually that's really important, I think you mentioned it in a previous blog, but if you have say a page on insomnia, it's about creating what you call a cluster. So three or four different blogs around that topic can do masses for your website. So it's not just everything in its individual strand, it's thinking about the wider picture.

So it's all, it's, you are building up your own resource for your clients. Yeah,

This is a way that you are connecting with your clients. This is a way of saying, look, I know what I'm talking about without saying I'm an expert. 'cause I know it feels really, it feels horrible. It feels a bit icky to say, Hey, I'm an expert. And you don't have to say you're an expert. You can, but you can let the fact that you've got experience and you've got this interest.

All of this knowledge speaks for itself. So it's great for Google and it's great for getting found in that way, but then it's great for your potential clients who land on your pages because it's saying, look, I know what I'm talking about. I'm interested in it, and maybe I've had some personal experience of it, which really all of that is a fantastic thing to do anyway. You know, I think, I mean, that's kind of something that I've always talked about trying to do that, but this kind of gives you a real proper reason to do it.

So thinking about if someone's going to the site and there's a video of you talking on the topic, you can't, you can't fake that. Even with AI and stuff, you can't recreate a solid video of you talking about the topic. Then having the blogs, having the page, you're showing your client that you really know what you're talking about.

So when anybody lands on it, they're like, wow, this person's really knows their stuff.

and now I'm still getting leads. I'm actually getting more traffic to my site from that than I'm from my homepage. So every page counts. Every post really can make a difference.

And so. You know, I've been doing well. I'm on episode 247 I think, and, but people are still listening to and reading stuff that goes right back, you know, years. And that's the power, isn't it? You don't, it's not like social media where you put something out there and then it kind of disappears. You write something and it's not something that's like transient.

It sort of sticks there. And if you've got these new rules to kind of think, right, okay, I need to. Do these rules 'cause it's gonna help me. it means that those things that go out are just gonna keep working really hard for you in the background long term.

Obviously if you can create a blog a month, that'd be amazing, but if you don't, if you're busy, it's about going back and just refining and adding to previous ones. So if you've already written, say, three blogs on insomnia. You can just go back and add in, maybe a reference or like an experience that you've had and that will do nearly as much for your site as creating a fresh one.

It could be go back into previous, blogs that you've done and just tweak them to add some of these things.

Yeah. So yeah, it is literally like turning on a switch and just saying, I'm here.and the other thing is. I would probably suggest looking at if you can your Google search console for what people are typing in to find you. it's quite easy if you have search console set up, it will tell you the questions they're asking.

'cause sometimes what they say in person and what they write online is a little bit different. So they might, it is normally a challenge or a question, and then you can feature your blogs around those.

You are, you are very, you are far more knowledgeable than me, and I know that you've got loads of really good blogs yourself that can help people. So again, I'll put all Theo's, details in the show notes. Theo, I am aware of the time. I know we're a bit short on time today. but I did want to talk about the fact that you and I are gonna be putting on a free event, aren't we?

It's not a raw, it should just be something that you build into the way that you write. And it should, like if you do it a few times, it's. It should just become second nature and that's what we're hopefully trying to get across in the session. Yeah,

It's more q and a really, isn't it? It's not about us particularly teaching or training. So if there's anything that's come up about your website, about blogging, about these new, new changes come along, it's very casual, you know, it's not being recorded, and you can just chat to us and then, Yeah, just ask you questions.

I personally love doing that sort of thing and I know you do too, don't you?

I can't remember now. Is it the 11th or the 14th?

It's a free event. It's very. It's a very, very, casual event. I guess it's on the 14th of May. It's gonna be at 11 till 12 UK time, and you can come along with all of your questions about websites and creating blogs and producing content, and of course. Questions about what we've covered today. As I say, it's totally free.

You'll be very welcome. And yeah, I really hope that you can come and join us. And if you have any questions that you want to share with us beforehand, then please either contact myself or Theo and that gives us a chance to make sure that we include that.

Thank you so much for finding time to be here with us today. I really hope that this has helped you to see that you don't need to become more technical and you don't need to start from scratch. You just need to make a better use of what's already there.

Okay, I'll see you soon. Take care.