This guide will teach you how to build links to your mental health website.  Link building for mental health search engine optimization is critical and you'll learn how to use email and interviews to grow your online authority quickly.

Link building is huge!  Remember from SEO for Mental Health Therapists Part 1 where we discussed the Obama Handshake?  Well!  Let’s go get some handshakes!

There are a number of simple, hard, and difficult strategies to build relevant and authoritative links to your website.  We’ll go from easiest to most advanced:

• In-Person Network Links
• Resource Links
• Interviews
• Guest Blog Post Links

And one quick but important note: make sure everyone you’re speaking with actually has a website! 🙂

Link Building Using Your In-Person Network

It’s as simple as it sounds.  Go out and ask your network, colleagues, associates, group members, and any other mental health industry professional out there and ask them for a link!  Take advantage of these easy wins and do this right now!  (Then comment below about how it worked!)

Resource Links

You’re going to do some quick research, create a spreadsheet, and contact 10 people about one of your AMAZING articles you wrote in Part 2 [LINK].

Head over to Google.com and type in keywords associated to one of your specializations that you’ve written an amazing article about — then pair it with your city name.

Example: “trauma and anxiety treatment san jose”

Create a spreadsheet with your favorite application (or pen and paper) and write down the following column headings:

1. URL
2. Website Owner’s Name
3. Website Owner’s Email or Phone Number
4. Website Owner’s Relevant Page

Fill in this information for each result in Google.  If you cannot find enough information, go to page 2 or 3 until you have 10 sites with full information.

Then contact each website and ask them to link to your article that’s specifically relevant to a page on their website.

(For specific email templates to use, go to the bottom of this post and sign up for our newsletter and you’ll get access to them instantly).

Interviews

Do some research online and via contact with your network to find out about prominent therapists close by.  Make sure to ask associates casually about anyone they know who would be interesting to be interviewed.

Create a list of 5 therapists who you can interview.  Write them an email (templates below) asking to conduct an interview to post on your website.

Shoot for 3 yeses.  If you don’t get there, find 5 new folks and try a new email.

Conduct the interview over email to make sure the wording is correct and to save you both time editing back and forth.  Feel free to chat on the phone before or after the interview as well.

When it’s on your website and formatted nicely, simply shoot a final email telling your interviewees about the post and that they should feel free to link to it if they liked it!

Effective!  A bit time intensive but really works well!

Guest Blog Posts

Do some more Google research and ask your network in order to find 5 reputable bloggers who are covering similar content to what you specialize in.  Reach out via email or phone and ask if you can contribute to their audience in some way.  Suggest collaborating over ideas for a guest article on their website.  Bring a few headlines to the table but ask for feedback and other ideas.

Offer to write the piece and have a draft over within a week at the latest.  Then get to it!  Spend time making sure your guest blog post is actionable, clear, and speaks to your expertise specifically.

Simply include a short author bio with an embedded link within the text.  When you send over the email including the bio, mention it asking for an attribution link back to your website.  This is a common practice and it makes sense: you’re both offering each other a great service!

The links you generate from guest blog posts can often lead to long-term growth if the blog that generates the link also grows with you!  It’s also a great credibility indicator!  But it does take time.