How to Choose a Practice Name That Works [And You Won’t Regret] (Episode 55)
If you’re in the early stages of launching your practice, there’s a good chance you’ve spent more time thinking about your practice name than you’d like to admit.
In this episode, I’m breaking down how to choose a practice name without getting stuck. Because while your name matters, it is not what’s making or breaking your marketing. Clients are not choosing you because your name is poetic or clever. They’re choosing you because they feel connected, confident, and clear about what you offer.
We’ll talk about how to think long-term when naming your practice, how to avoid unnecessary rebrands, what role your domain plays in SEO (and what’s a myth), and how to stop letting this decision stall the rest of your progress. If you’ve been spinning here, this episode will help you make a thoughtful choice—and move forward.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ Why your practice name isn’t your brand—and what actually drives client decisions
2️⃣ How to choose a name that supports longevity (location-based, niche-based, or personal names)
3️⃣ What to consider if you might grow into a group practice
4️⃣ The truth about domains and SEO—and how to choose one that builds trust
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Hey y'all. Welcome back to Marketing Therapy episode 55. Today might be a little bit of a shorter one. I'm not actually sure. I guess we'll see where we land, but I wanna talk about something that I get asked about a lot, and so anytime I notice a theme and the questions that I ask, it represents potentially a really good topic for the podcast naming your practice.
Anna, what do I name my practice? This is a topic that. Full stop causes way more stress than it needs to. So if nothing else, I hope this episode gives you a little bit of sense of relief, but I've seen clinicians spend weeks or months even stuck here. Well, I have to figure out this before I can do anything.
And in some ways you do, right? We need to file for your legal documents and things like that, but it feels incredibly permanent. When you are in the stage of launching your practice, the practice name can feel like the thing that you've gotta get, right? Right. And let me be clear. Your practice name matters, but
it is not what is making or breaking your marketing. Okay. Whatever you choose is probably gonna be fine. I in this episode, want to guide you through how I think about approaching, naming a practice. Some tips I have, depending on where you're at now, where you see yourself going, what matters to you. But ultimately, I want you to end up choosing a name that supports the longevity of your practice, and stop overthinking the darn thing.
Make a decision, commit to it, and move forward. If this decision has been holding you up, I hope this episode can help you choose something solid and then get on with it. Get on to building the practice that you actually want. Okay? Don't let this keep you stuck now. I always tell clinicians when I'm talking to them about this, clients are not choosing you because of your practice name, so the marinating and stewing you're doing on the meaning of the name and what it says and what it represents about you.
Those are all good things. Clients are not going to choose you because of that. Okay? It matters more to you than it does to them. Sorry if that's a little bit of a hard truth, but it's true. Ultimately, your clients are going to decide that you are the therapist for them because they feel connected to you, because they view you as an expert because you have communicated a level of value and experience that your clients are seeking, right?
Because they're confident you can actually help them. Your practice name can't do all that heavy lifting for you. None of that comes from name alone. Okay? No one is getting on a consultation with you and saying, I picked you 'cause the name of your practice was really creative. That's just not what's happening.
Okay? Now your practice name is not the same as your brand, and this is where I see some confusion as well. Well, my practice name is the heart of my practice. Is it really? Is it really? Your practice name is an identifier. Your brand, and we've talked about this in past episodes. Your brand is your voice.
It is your niche. It is the experience you create for folks, particularly on your website, but also the experience they have with you in session and on consultations and in other parts of your marketing. That is your brand. The practice name is just the identifier for it. So if you have really, really strong branding, if you have great copy and a clear niche and a premium level website that communicates the experience your clients are seeking, that's gonna carry a lackluster or average name every day of the week.
A beautiful name cannot compensate for unclear marketing. Okay? So let's be clear about that. Like what a brand is and where the practice name fits in that. 'cause they're not the same. The other thing I wanna remind you, not every practice name needs to have poetry or symbolism or a metaphor If there is one that's powerful to you, awesome.
In Confident Copy, we actually have an entire section where we guide clinicians through how to share the heart behind their practice name if it's something that is worth sharing and resonates with how you work or who your clients are. So it's not that they can't have those things, but not every name needs them.
A clear, professional, neutral name is a feature of your practice, but when you are a premium private pay practice your work yourself, your brand. Does the differentiating and the name just kind of needs to stay outta the way a little bit. Again, no one's calling you saying, I called you because of your name.
So if you feel stuck in this or it feels like there are other people around you that have picked the name that you wanted, and so you're feeling like you have to go back to the drawing board, maybe it doesn't need to carry so much weight and meaning. Okay. All right. I'm gonna get into some tips for how to choose a name, but before I do that, I just wanna call one thing out here too, because I have the luxury of talking to and supporting hundreds of clinicians every single year, right in one-on-one calls, in our confident copy, live calls, whatever that might be.
And sometimes I can spot a clinician overthinking their name as a way to avoid the other stuff. There's a little bit of avoidance here sometimes 'cause it feels safer to keep deciding and thinking about this than to commit and actually start taking action. Thinking about your name feels like it's productive 'cause it's something on your to-do list.
But what you really should be doing is launching your website, writing your copy, getting visible. So I just wanna call that out a little nudge if maybe you've been spinning here, when really you need to just commit and move forward. At some point, the refining and the overthinking becomes stalling. And in this market we can't afford to be doing that, right?
We need to be taking action. So just calling that out there, offering that. If perhaps you need to be called out a little bit here today, and now let's get into some tips for actually how to choose a name. Now, your practice name lives in a lot of places, right? It's associated with your domain, and we're gonna talk about how to choose a domain.
Ideally. It's also in your emails, it's on your directories, it's in your legal docs, it's on your hr, it's on your websites in a lot of places, right? When you change your practice name, we call that a rebrand or a rename, right? You have to end up changing all those other places, and so rebrands are possible, but they're incredibly disruptive, and sometimes you need to, sometimes a rebrand is just necessary.
What I want to do is walk you through how to hopefully avoid that and to minimize the unnecessary rebrands that I see having to happen. Okay.
So in order to choose a name, we have to be thinking about the future, not just the practice you're creating right now, but is this practice name going to be relevant? A year from now, five years, 10 years. Of course, we can't know for sure. We can't see the future, but location-based names is an example.
Sometimes a location-based name is awesome. We have, I think there's Nashville Trauma Recovery Center or something here in town. There's lots of really great location-based names out there, and maybe that's a good fit for you. If you're confident you're gonna stay in the location you're in, awesome. Then maybe that's a good fit.
However, are you gonna move states? Are you gonna expand into multi-state or pact, right? We have the counseling compact. Like we need to be keeping that in mind too. So again, location-based names I actually really like. They're incredibly descriptive. They focus you somewhere, but it's worth thinking on if you're considering something that brings in location, whether or not you're actually gonna only be targeting that location in the future.
Her. Same with population or issue specific names. I walked through this with a confident copy live student last year who had a practice name specific to trauma and then was realizing her clients weren't necessarily coming to her for trauma. She wanted to expand outside of that, and so was really wrestling with what to do and ultimately did end up deciding on a rename and a rebrand.
So if you're gonna choose something that references population. That references a certain issue. Then ask yourself, is this something I can see myself doing long term? Will I feel boxed in by this in five years? We talk often about the fact that your therapy work is going to evolve, that that's incredibly normal and allowed, and so I suggest, as you consider keywords in your practice name, consider whether you're getting a little bit too narrow.
Maybe you feel incredibly anchored there and you know that's what you're gonna be doing. Awesome. Lean into that. 'cause again, it's very descriptive. It is going to immediately let someone know if they're in the right place or not. But maybe we need to think a little bit broader to support the longevity again of the name.
Okay. The most common way that most solo practices name their practice. Is their name. And you know what? I love that when someone comes looking for therapy, they are looking for connection to a person, not a practice a person. A great way to facilitate that connection is for the name of that practice to be a person.
So this works best. If you are a solo practice with no plans to move beyond that, if there is even a glimmer of interest in a group practice for you, if you think ahead five or 10 years and you're like, man, it could be really cool to bring on a team to expand, do not choose your full name. It is incredibly difficult to brand an entire team under a solo practitioner's name, and it can cause a lot of the tension that many group practice owners feel where people come in wanting them and not their team.
So again, if that's on your vision board, if that is on the horizon in any regard, I would recommend against choosing your full name. Now, you could choose your last name. You could choose a riff on your name that isn't necessarily Anna Walker Therapy or whatever that might be, but don't choose that full name if a group practice is on the horizon for you.
If you know that you're gonna stick with just you moving forward, then I love that for you. And like I said, it facilitates that person, person connection that people are ultimately looking for. If you are someone who does plan to go to a group, then like I said, you can do a riff on your. Actual name or that's when you can start considering some of those kind of metaphorical names.
If you're someone who's not comfortable using your personal name as your practice name, which is totally feasible as well, again, then it's time to think about practice names that have a little bit of that meaning behind them. This does not have to be groundbreaking. This does not have to be a unicorn.
Chances are someone else in this country. Maybe even in your state has that name too. That's okay. You're probably not gonna come up with something that is completely unique. But the goal is that it would align with how you work, what you do, how you treat, what you want your clients to accomplish.
And so thinking on those things, landing on something that again, has a little bit of that meaning, and maybe we even share that meaning in your marketing, like I was mentioning we do in Confident Copy would be a great fit for you.
One more thing on practice naming before we get into the idea of domains, which it ties in really closely with, is the length of your practice name. The length of your practice name is also gonna tie in likely to the length of your domain name. But we wanna stay away from anything that is super, super long.
Not only is it difficult to pack it into a logo or to put it on your website, but it just becomes a bit cumbersome. So I recommend keeping your practice name to four words ideally or shorter. You don't need to include therapy and consulting and coaching and supervision. You don't need to see therapy and counseling. Maybe choose a single descriptive word, psychotherapy, therapy, counseling, whatever that might be. Maybe you don't need that at all, depending on the name that you've chosen. But do keep length in mind for the benefit of brevity and for easier branding opportunities moving forward.
Alright, now let's talk about domain names. So. An important thing to know is that your SEO authority, so how authoritative Google Views you is tied to your domain. So if I, right now, our website is walker strategy code.com, if I decided we are rebranding to Simplified Therapy Marketing, and I decided willy-nilly to just change my domain name away from Walker Strategy Code to Simplified Therapy Marketing, then the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of visits that we get from Google every single month.
Would essentially go away because all of a sudden Google would be like, who are you? Simplified therapy marketing.com. I've never met you before. Now there are some tools available to us if you need to change your domain name that Google provides, where you can essentially say, Hey, Google, I changed my address.
Please carry over some of my SEO. But it can still be detrimental to make that shift. So that's an important thing to keep in mind because that's tied really closely to your practice name. In an ideal world, your practice name. And your domain, right? Walker strategy code.com, whatever you land on, should be aligned.
They might not be exactly matching, especially as more and more people snatch up domains every single day, but they need to be aligned with one another. And changing one usually means we have to change the other. And so your SEO authorities tied to that domain. We have to be really mindful, which is just another example of why we wanna keep longevity in mind when naming your practice.
However, there did used to be a big push to put keywords in your domain that if you put in Nashville therapy or trauma counseling or whatever in your practice name, that that was an automatic SEO boot. Exact match domains no longer meaningfully impact rankings. Google has moved beyond that.
So trauma therapy, texas.com is not a shortcut to ranking for trauma therapy in Texas. Okay? So don't stress about that. Don't feel like you have to pack keywords into your practice name or your domain name for this purpose. Okay? So again, your domain matters for SEO, but the. Keywords in your domain are not going to be skyrocketing you to the top of search engine results.
Okay. Now, what do domains impact? Domains impact, trust and click behavior. We've all seen domains that are worded really strangely or something that we automatically give a side eye to. Right?
Domains actually do have a way of influencing someone's trust in you and ultimately whether or not they click in or navigate to your website. So a clean professional domain is going to get clicked more. It's going to feel credible. It that does actually influence your SEO over time.
So does your domain impact SEO indirectly for that reason?
In an ideal world, we want a domain that matches or closely aligns with your practice name. That's critical, right? We're working with a clinician right now who has long practiced under her name, but also has a tagline that she's known for, and she wanted to keep her practice name as her name, but have the domain be her tagline.
I recommended it against that 'cause we want those to be in alignment. The more alignment, the more we can reinforce the same thing, the more trust we ultimately cultivate. So we wanna make sure that your domain matches or closely aligns with your practice name. Now, like I said, finding a domain that exactly matches your individual practice name, unless you have a very unique personal name and that's the name of your practice, it might be challenging.
So you might have to get a little bit, you know, creative. But in an ideal world, that's what would happen. Ideally, under 15 characters, there's nothing worse than a domain name that is literally a dissertation.com, right? So in an ideal world, we'd stick under 15 characters, fewer than three words if possible.
So Nashville trauma therapy and consulting.com too long and ending in.com if you can get it, it is absolutely okay if your domain is.net way back in the day, to choose.org meant you were a nonprofit and to choose. This meant you were this. If you have something that is user friendly and doesn't imply that you work for the government, it's probably okay that you choose that extension of your domain.
Okay. Now what if you go to GoDaddy or Squarespace domains and you're looking for a domain and it's taken, what can you do? You could add or remove a word like therapy or counseling, something descriptive about the work that you do, right? You could add a state abbreviation. If it's likely to stay true, so tn, tx, something like that.
Again, if that's where you plan to continue practicing, you can play around with hyphens. Not ideal because we're used to just typing in domains without hyphens, but it is an option, so worth playing around with. Just when you're deciding on this, avoid really clever or ultimately confusing workarounds.
Keep it clear, keep it explicit. If you have your heart set on a certain practice name and can't find a domain name that fits, I'm going to encourage you to revisit the practice name, not to choose a domain that doesn't match. That's how strongly I recommend that these two align. Okay, so this whole myth around domains and SEO.
Your domain matters for SEO, not directly, and that whatever you choose for your domain name is going to cause you to rank. But in the trust, in the click behavior, the bulk of your SEO that lives inside of the website, that's the stuff we teach you in Confident. Copy the specialty pages, your location pages.
Really clear client-centered copy in this. Day and age mattering more than ever ranking on both SEO and also in AI tools. So your domain is supporting SEO, but it's not driving it. Okay. So any myths you see out there about that? We can make sure we've debunked here. But your domain does matter.
And again, we have to be in alignment with your practice name. I mentioned in Confident copy that we will guide folks through how to share the meaning behind your practice name. So if you've thought long and hard about something, if it means something to you, awesome. That's so good. And it is okay to share it.
It's not required. It should not lead your marketing. When I land, especially on a group practice website and they have some really creative name, and then the first thing on your homepage is describing the meaning behind their name. That is not what people are looking for, right? Like we talked about at the beginning of the episode, people are not choosing you because of your practice name.
We suggest placing it on your about page. It being a fairly short block, you know, in confident copy. You show you how to approach sharing this, but we're talking three to four sentences max about the heart behind it and ultimately how it ties into how you serve your clients and how it benefits them.
So we're not over-emphasizing it. We're not making it the star of the show, but we are sharing it in context as it relates to why you are a good fit for this client and what they can experience in working with you. Right. It's like a value add, but not an actual selling point for the work that you do.
Alright. So that's what I have to say about practice names. If you are early on in your practice and you have been wrestling with this, may, this episode give you some practical guidance and also some kind of important reminders around how to approach this and how to think about it. No one's gonna call you because you picked the perfect practice name.
If you have been spinning and staying stuck here, pick something. Pick it mindfully. Pick it with longevity in mind, and then keep moving. Okay? A good enough decision. Made today is gonna be a perfect one, never made. All right. If this is what's been keeping you stuck, make a decision and move forward, make sure it can grow with you and then go ahead and shift your energy into things that are actually gonna bring those clients in.
Okay? I hope this one was helpful for you. If you are ready to actually put this into action. To write about the meaning of your practice, but more than that, to use your marketing to actually be drawing in those right fit folks. Confident Copy would be a great place for you. We love thinking about practice names, but we love more.
When you create a website that actually shows people, this is what they've been looking for, this is how you can help. This is what makes you different, and that's exactly what we teach you in Confident Copy. You can get all the details, walk a strategy code.com/confident-copy, but go forth, pick a name, make sure it's gonna last you and move on.
I'll see you next week.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
Join Confident Copy: https://walkerstrategyco.com/cc
The Walker Strategy Co website: https://walkerstrategyco.com
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About Marketing Therapy
Marketing Therapy is the podcast where therapists learn how to market their private practices without burnout, self-doubt, or sleazy tactics. Hosted by Anna Walker—marketing coach, strategist, and founder of Walker Strategy Co—each episode brings you clear, grounded advice to help you attract the right-fit, full-fee clients and grow a practice you feel proud of.
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