Specialty Pages vs. Method Pages: Which You Need & Why [Alumni Check-In Session #3](Episode 62)
If you’ve ever stared at your website wondering how to talk about what you do without confusing your clients… you’re not alone.
Because here’s the tension: your clients are searching for things like OCD or anxiety—but your actual work might center around specific methods like I-CBT, ERP, or ACT. So where does all of that go on your website without turning it into a wall of jargon or “alphabet soup”?
In this episode, I’m walking you through exactly how to think about method pages vs. specialty pages—and why you likely need both. Using a real question from a Confident Copy graduate, we’re unpacking how to structure your site so it connects with clients at their point of need and positions your unique approach clearly and confidently.
If your website has been feeling unclear, cluttered, or like it’s not fully reflecting your expertise, this will help you simplify and move forward with confidence.
Here’s what you’ll learn in this episode:
1️⃣ The difference between specialty pages and method pages—and why both matter more than ever in the age of SEO and AI
2️⃣ How to talk about multiple modalities (without overwhelming or confusing your clients)
3️⃣ A simple way to structure your website so you attract the right clients while clearly owning your unique approach
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Hey, hey, welcome back to Marketing Therapy and another one of our Confident Copy alumni Check-ins. So if this is your first time joining a check-in session, welcome. You're getting to sit in on a session with a Confident Copy graduate who has submitted a question following their graduation about their marketing.
So this is a chance for anyone who has gone through and graduated Confident Copy to send over a question that they are wondering about wrestling with, struggling with when it comes to their marketing. And as they implement the confid copy program. Today's question comes from Becky Wilson.
Becky was an incredible Confident Copy student who graduated late last year, and today is curious about how to represent her additional training in OCD on her website.
So after graduating from Confident Copy, she deepened her specialty in OCD treatment, and she is trained primarily, or at least leads with primarily I-CBT. She wants that to be her primary approach around OCD, but she's also trained in ERP. She's also trained in act, and she's really trying to figure out how to communicate this on her website.
She said, what do I call this page as? I focus mostly on I-CBT and I-CBT ACT and ERP looks like literal alphabet soup, right? All of those acronyms. And I'm concerned that clients will be searching for ERP and don't know about I-CBT, right? Which is great awareness since ERP tends to be sort of the gold standard, the most commonly searched for when it comes to OCD.
So what do I do about naming this page? And then also, should I have a separate OCD specialty page? Now, one thing to know when it comes to our strategic guidance as it relates to your website pages is there are specialty pages and there are method pages, and we take a different strategic approach to each of these, and they both have a place in your marketing and in your website especially, especially, especially right now in the age of AI and how SEO is changing.
So specialty page is defined as a page focused on a specific issue or demographic. So trauma, OCD, anxiety, postpartum anxiety, whatever that might be, or a demographic moms, lgbtq plus professionals, whatever that might be. So those are kind of the traditional specialty pages, but then we have method pages.
These method pages are your chance to share about what methods you engage in in your practice, and to provide psychoeducation and client friendly introduction to those things. So that if someone comes to you saying, Hey, I'm interested in EMDR, or I'm interested in CBT, or whatever method you engage in, they have a chance to see that you specialize in that.
Now, like I mentioned, in this day and age, there is so much power in having both of these on your site.
They are not mutually exclusive. You don't have to just pick one. In fact, most websites benefit from having both. Okay.
So Becky, of course, already knows this. She's been through the Confident Copy Program, so she's wondering how do I spread the word that I now offer A thoughtful, gentle, alternative approach to ERP while recognizing most people are probably looking for ERP. All right, so the main questions here. One, what do we name her method page, and two, should she have an OCD specialty page?
Remember, method and specialty are a little bit different here,
and then we have sort of that additional nuance that clients searching for OCD are often searching for ERP specifically, but that's not her primary framework. All right, so that's sort of the tension here. Becky, this is a fantastic question. First and foremost, let's just start with the simplest answer.
Yes, you need an OCD specialty page. Even if you have this other method, page, OCD therapies, methods, I-CBT, whatever, OCD is a meaningful part of your practice now, and it is something that people are absolutely seeking support for right now. It is what people search for. It is the language that they're most likely to be using.
It is meeting them right at their point of need, whether or not they know what type of method they want, or even what ERP or I-CBT are, right? So it allows you to speak very, very directly to OCD struggles. It increases your SEO and GEO or a EO, your AI findability footprint. And so this is really your page to share and paint the picture of the intrusive thoughts.
You know, the rituals, the shame, the secrecy, the fear of losing control, and how you help that person. Now, on that specialty page, you're gonna touch on your methods and you can talk about the fact that you are trained in ERP, right? We're gonna mention that, but that you often lead with I-CBT and incorporate act as needed.
So this is a place where you can sort of cover the range of the different methods that you use, making mention of ERP, but also positioning yourself as a bit different in that you lead with I-CBT. So the entry point for your OCD specialty page is people looking. For help with their OCD.
You need that? Yes. Like bar none. You can tell I feel very strongly about it. Then I'm recommending a method page about I-CBT. Now, in your question, Becky, you were talking about maybe I call this OCD therapies, maybe I call it the full list of things that I do. Call it what it is. It's I-CBT. That is your primary approach, and I hear you on the tension of people looking for ERP. I think your instinct there is very, very smart because it's so widely known in OCD circles. Many clients might literally be Googling ERP therapy, ERP therapists, whatever that might be. ERP can and should be mentioned on that OCD specialty page.
But I-CBT is also a valuable standalone method that deserves real estate on your site. So that's why I'm suggesting a method page specific to that. The reason for that is we are going to see more and more in increase in people seeking out specific methods. If I have tried ERP before and I'm chatting with Claude or ChatGPT and I say, ERP didn't work for me or it felt too intense, is there anything else that I can do?
You know what ChatGPT is probably gonna tell me. It's gonna tell me about I-CBT. Right? And this is a really interesting change that we're seeing because of how search and AI are modifying the way that we look for information. So we're gonna be actually exposed to methodology more often. And also as we become more and more psycho savvy as a community and as a society, people are just getting more and more aware of methods.
EMDR took off because, you know, Miley Cyrus did EMDR and it really skyrocketed. I see IFS brain spotting. And some of those other methods doing the same thing and I-CBT is likely be right behind it. Okay? So let's not make decisions about your marketing based on what you want to capture, right? ERP traffic.
If what you offer is I-CBT, you've heard me saying confident copy before, say what you do. We're not gonna let Google boss us around. We're not gonna let AI boss us around. We've gotta say what you do, the way you do it, how you do it, and be straightforward, right? So I would treat your I-CBT page as a method page where you were sharing of the power of this method, what it looks like, what they can expect, and also as a powerful alternative to ERP.
Not a like better, worse than, but an alternative, gentler, as you said. You can absolutely make mention on this page that you also incorporate ERP and ACT and certainly link over to your OCD page from this one, and you can certainly link from the OCD page over to this one. Kind of create those internal linking structures.
But you do I-CBT, that is your primary method, stand behind it. Okay? Don't make decisions, like I said, based on what you think Google would say right now, when. Getting an I-CBT page out there on your website right now is likely to be a longer term strategic benefit to your site than trying to shoehorn into the fact that most people know about ERP right now. Okay, so. I guess if I had to summarize what I'm suggesting to you right now, it's you. Do I-CBT? Be proud of it. Call it what it is. At the same time.
Add on that OCD specialty page, that topical specialty page where you get to meet any OCD seeking client, whether they're interested in ERP, I-CBT, or have no idea. That's where you can bring that person in, really empathize with them, share how you can help and present all of these methods, ACT I-C-B-T-E-R-P as potential ways to support them.
So you really get to accomplish two things with these two pages and cover a really wide range of different types of clients. While strengthening the fact that you do something really cool and there is power in that. Okay, so stand behind that. Definitely we wanna avoid the alphabet soup, right?
So as you know, anytime we're talking about a specific method, we've gotta back that up with what the heck it actually means to a client. So always making sure that we're boiling down these clinical concepts into easy to understand terms, right? Plain language, and leading with the fact that regardless of the method that they use, you are using evidence-based approaches.
To address the intrusive thoughts and reduce the compulsions and reconnect with your values, act in a way that feels aligned, all of the things that your client ultimately wants, regardless of the method that got them there. Right.
So again, Becky, for you, I think we have two new pages coming to your website. We have an OCD topical specialty page, and we have an I-CBT method page, both of which, especially when paired together are meeting a wide range of OCD clients at their point of need. And also making sure that we're positioning you in a unique way, right, a differentiator.
That doesn't just offer ERP, but instead has these other methods in your back pocket that can really, really support your clients. So that's my specific guidance to you. Becky, if you're not Becky, and you're listening right now, I hope you can hear what I've offered to Becky here as far as how to think through what belongs on your website.
A few things that I want you to keep in mind, in the age of AI and the changes in SEO, making sure that both your specialties and your methods are well represented on your website is very, very important. We want to avoid smushing these types of things into single pages and instead teasing them out into unique pages. That's always been my suggestion that each of the individual specialties or niche focus areas in your practice are represented with unique pages on your website. We've long known that if you're trying to cram a laundry list of anxiety, trauma, grief, and relationship issues into a single page, you're unlikely to rank for any of them.
But in this day and age where those signals of expertise are being looked at more and more, the more focused, the more specific the individual pages of your website, the more likely you are to be surfaced in results. I also wanna be clear that what we're suggesting here is not only related to SEO and ai, it's also about distinguishing your unique specialties for the right client.
If I landed on Becky's website and there wasn't an OCD page for me, and I had never heard of I-CBT, then I might look at her other specialty pages. I might look at her methods and feel like, yeah, I don't. I don't quite belong here. Even if maybe she had an anxiety page where she mentioned OCD, there wasn't a page of her website that was specific to it.
And so your different specialty pages are your opportunity to meet your clients at their very specific point of need. That is not to say, of course, that we can have a unique specialty page for every single presenting issue your clients might have, but it does mean that you need to be very, very thoughtful about what it is that your client would be seeking.
And when you have a unique page dedicated to something, you are signaling to them legitimate and specific expertise in that area. And if you've been hanging around marketing therapy for any amount of time, you know the power of specificity right now. So your specialty pages, hence the name, are your opportunity to offer that specificity and are your opportunity to say, Hey, I specialize in this thing and here's how deeply I understand it.
That's the power right now. So, like I said, not just SEO and ai, although that is very relevant right now, but also in how your clients perceive your expertise and your ability to help them. All right. This has been a fun one, Becky. I hope this was helpful for you. Those of you listening, I hope this was helpful for you as well.
We have an entire section of Confident Copy dedicated to helping you figure out what your different specialties should be, how that maps to SEO, how that maps to your clients, because these decisions are critical and you might find as your practice grows and evolves that your specialty pages and method pages do too.
That's a good thing. So continue revisiting this. My Confident Copy alumni. That are listening right now. Continue revisiting this. This can and should grow thoughtfully. We're not just adding pages for the sake of pages to continue to meet your clients at their specific points of need and to something incredible to offer.
Thanks for being here for this check-in session. I'll see you for the next one.
Resources & Links Mentioned:
The Walker Strategy Co website: https://walkerstrategyco.com
Confident Copy: https://walkerstrategyco.com/cc
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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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