How a Canberra counselling practice climbed three positions on Google in six weeks

An established Canberra practice offering counselling, therapy and mediation for individuals, couples and families. Name withheld at the practice’s request.

Measured over the first six weeks of the engagement.

The starting point

This is an established practice with real depth: more than two decades of experience, a multidisciplinary team, and a founder whose credentials speak for themselves. The website didn’t reflect any of it. The copy was generic, the kind that could have belonged to any counselling practice in any city. It wasn’t optimized for the local searches Canberra couples and families actually type, and it didn’t speak to the pain that brings someone to a counsellor’s website at eleven o’clock at night. Strong practice, invisible positioning.

What I did

Over six weeks, I rebuilt the practice’s digital presence from the ground up: a full site redesign, a complete rewrite of the copy so every page speaks directly to the person searching and the problem they’re carrying, local SEO targeting the terms Canberra clients actually use, a rebuilt and optimized Google Business Profile, and a program of SEO-driven blog content designed to compound over time.

The results, six weeks in

Three positions gained in local Google search for “couples counselling Canberra”, the practice’s highest-intent term. A 26% increase in website traffic. Five additional bookings a week, a 10% lift. Not projected, not annualized: measured within the first six weeks of work, with the blog content still early in its compounding curve.

In the client’s words

“Racquel understood something most marketers don’t: the people finding us are often in the hardest moment of their lives. She rewrote our website so it speaks to them, not at them, and the results came faster than I expected. More of the right people are finding us, and more of them are booking.”

Darleen Barton, practice founder, Canberra ACT

The takeaway

Generic copy is expensive. It doesn’t look expensive, because the cost shows up as silence: rankings that don’t move, visitors who don’t book, ideal clients who can’t tell why this practice is the right choice. When the copy, the local SEO and the Google Business Profile were rebuilt to speak to one specific searcher with one specific problem, the market answered in six weeks.