1.
Name: each counselor must be licensed or registered in the State of Washington.
The therapist provides license or registration number and information is
subject to verification with the Health Department Quality Assurance Division.
To achieve maximum benefit from word of mouth counseling,
CounselingSeattle.com recommends that you use the name that you
would expect your client to use in referring to you, thus Sillicia
B. Jenson should be listed as Sally Jenson, if that is what your
client call you. Otherwise, the highly recommended (by your
client) Sally Jenson, will not show up at all in internet searches!
NOTE: All
licensed counselors are eligible to be listed on
CounselingSeattle.com. Registered Counselors must have a master's degree or
higher to be published on CounselingSeattle.com. Currently we
are listing only those counselors located in the eleven counties in
and around Puget Sound--from Port Townsend and Bellingham on the
north to Olympia in the south. However, persons from other
counties in Washington can
contact the webmaster to arrange to be listed.
Professional initials are limited to official acronyms and initials representing your degree and registration,
certification or licensing by state government or state or national certifying organizations.
Please do not include acronyms issued by training facilities for
completing their courses. If this particular training is
important, discuss it in the general areas of practice section.
2.
Office telephone number: Your business telephone listing.
What is your
office address (complete with ZIP code)?
3.
Location: Is your office in a well-known professional building name, near
a well-known community landmark, or near a major intersection that
would help a potential client to visualize your location? If the
city is Seattle, please indicate the neighborhood the office is
located in--for example: Queen Anne, Ballard, West Seattle, Capitol Hill, etc.
Sample: On Main Street above Sleep-Right and across the street from
Safeway.
4.
Niche Specialty©: An optional listing--not required. Here we are looking for the one
client problem that you most like to work with or have the most experience or training in dealing with.
[ Read more about the Niche Specialty© ]
5.
General Areas of Practice: When a potential client is searching
for you online, the client's primary concern is "does this counselor work with
people like me and problems like mine?" Your ad content needs to answer
that question.
a.
Tell the client who you work with: "Children and adolescents," "Children, adolescents & families?"
" individual adults and couples?" or "the Individual adult man or
woman."
b.
Tell the client what kinds of problems you commonly work with.
If you do marriage counseling, use the phrase "marriage counseling"
in your advertisement--or "couples counseling and marriage
counseling" if you prefer. If you do depression counseling
please say "depression counseling" in your ad content. If your
potential client can read your ad and not see that you work with
his/her problem, they will look elsewhere. It is a simple
concept that many counselors choose to ignore at their own peril.
Simply linking to your website is poor practice--why should the
potential client do extra work just because you are too lazy to list
the problems you work with?
Help search engines
find your listing by using words that clients are likely to use in their search
for a counselor. Avoid professional terminology when possible.
While you may professional prefer to deal with the clients strengths, potential clients
usually search the internet using words that focus on the problem
rather than on the proposed outcome or the techniques used to achieve them. The
client who is going through a divorce is a thousand times more likely to use
search phrases such as, "counseling for relationship problem," "counselor divorce"
(or "divorce counseling") than
"counseling for a happy relationship" or "counselor to make marriage work" or
"Rational Emotive Therapy."
(I often recommend that you read through the intake pages of old client charts and see whether you
have recorded the actual words that your clients have used to describe the
presenting problems that brought them into treatment. Use those phrases
to describe the range of problems with which you commonly work. Avoid psychobabble.)
c.
Try to list no more than your top three treatment modalities. Always use
both the name of the modality and the popular acronym (if applicable). For
example: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Remember that
normally the client is focused on his/her problem and NOT on how the
specific technique that you will help them resolve the problem.
d. Finally, list any insurance panels that you are a
preferred provider for.
6.
Email: your email address is NOT included in the listing unless you specifically request it.
In the log-in process, your email information is requested twice.
(1.) The first request for your email address is listed in
the "My Contact Information" section and is intended for
CounselingSeattle.com staff use only. Please include it at
that point. (2.) In the counselor listing section you
are asked to indicate whether you wish for clients to be able to
contact you by email. If you say "no" there will be no email
link in your listing. If you do not want
them to contact you by email, leave the space blank. Please
note that, if you choose to use it, our email form does not disclose
your email address to the public.
7.
Link to your website: (optional)
If you have a website or web page that is not
part of another counselor locator service, CounselingSeattle.com will link to you on a
link exchange basis (see below). You put a link to CounselingSeattle.com in
place on your site and let us know the URL address where the link is
located. We verify the link and then we will link back to your
home page.
Anyone reading your listing on CounselingSeattle.com can click the
link to be directed to your website for more information about you and
your practice.
Instructions for Linking to CounselingSeattle.com
from Your Site
Choose one of several CounselingSeattle.com URL pages (below) that can serve
as excellent resources for your website visitors. You should be able to
cut-and-paste any of these links into one of the pages in your
site.
A. Online Directory of Support Groups: A guide to national and
international support groups (most with contacts for local chapters)
providing help and support for a great variety of problems and
conditions.
B. Dictionary of Initials, Acronyms and
Abbreviations Used by Counselors
C. Consumer Questions about Mental Health and Addiction Counseling
D. Health, Mental Health & Chemical
Dependency Links
or
E. Affiliated with
CounselingSeattle.com
When you have put the link in place from your website to
CounselingSeattle.com, please let me know. Then I will link back
to your website.
If you have questions or need help with building a link on your site, including the HTML code to use, please
let me know.
8.
Rates / Cost: Private Practice Advertisement
9. How to
log-in and place your private practice
advertisement.
A. The "Counselors / Advertisers
Log-In Here" link is located in the upper right hand corner of
the home page. This opens of page that provides additional
information. Then click on the "Click here to Continue to
Log-in." You are taken to a secure site to enter you practice
information into our database and payment information on the final
page.
Floyd Else,
Webmaster
