The situation
Smither Psychiatry needed a trustworthy practice website, clearer patient-facing copy, a local SEO structure that could rank for the conditions Morgan treats, and someone to handle ongoing updates as the practice details changed.
Healthcare sites have a small margin for error. Patients decide fast whether to trust a practice. A site that buries credentials, hides services, or feels generic can quietly cost real bookings.
What I built
- The practice website from scratch on a clean, fast, mobile-friendly structure.
- A homepage that leads with trust cues, services, and a clear next step for new patients.
- Condition pages so people searching for specific care can find a real answer instead of a sales pitch.
- Local SEO page titles and meta descriptions tied to how Louisville patients actually search.
- Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console set up from day one.
- Footer cleanup and small trust-signal fixes that quietly add up.
What the numbers did
The site launched in December 2025. By August 2026 Google was showing it for 169 different searches that don't include Morgan's name, up from 12 in January.
Where these come from: Google Search Console for the practice, with monthly totals pulled 23 September 2026, plus the technical audits dated June 30 and July 3, 2026. These are visibility numbers, not patient numbers.
What I actually fixed
The June audit found a handful of specific technical problems.
- The duplicate URL bug Every page was reachable at two addresses, the clean URL and the old .html version. Google was splitting the ranking signal between them. I set canonicals, forced 301 redirects, and rebuilt the sitemap so each page has exactly one address.
- Structured data, from zero The site had no structured data at all. I added it to the homepage and all eight condition pages, so Google can tell what the practice is and what it treats.
- Eight condition pages, re-skinned The homepage had been redesigned but the condition pages were still on my first 2025 design. I rebuilt all eight into the current design system so the site stops looking like two different sites.
- Meta hygiene I trimmed all nine page descriptions and two long page titles, so Google stops cutting them off mid-sentence.
- Image weight The two staff headshots were the heaviest things on the page. Converted to WebP: 336KB down to 77KB, and 404KB down to 107KB. That's over half a megabyte off the pages patients load first.
- Real photos of the real office Morgan sent me photos of the actual office. Four of them went into a new office section, replacing the generic feel that every healthcare template has.
Where it stands now
The site refresh shipped in July 2026. Everything in the fix list above went live in that push.
In April she was on page 3 for "psychiatrist louisville ky." By August she was on the front page of Google.
One thing is still open. The practice profile got merged with another listing in Google Maps, and a merge is something only Google can undo. I filed the case, and it's still open as of September 2026. Until Google undoes the merge, her Maps listing isn't cleanly hers.
Where these come from: Google Search Console for the practice, and the support case I filed with Google. Average position is an average over time, not a fixed rank, and it moves.
What's next
Branded search performs well. When somebody already knows Morgan's name, they find her.
The open work is non-branded discovery, the searches where a patient describes a condition instead of naming a provider. Those queries pull impressions today but not many clicks. Improving those pages and earning the click is the next push.
This is also the kind of site that justifies a monthly relationship. Practice details change. Hours move. New conditions get added. The site gets to keep up with all of that without Morgan having to touch it.
The pattern this fits
This is the local practice website pattern. It works the same way for therapy, chiropractic, dental, med spa, physical therapy, and other appointment-based local healthcare and wellness practices.
If your practice needs a real site instead of a template, ongoing updates without a portal, and a search structure that actually attracts the right patients, this is the kind of project I do well.
