How to Write Meta Titles and Descriptions for Therapy Pages

When a search result for “CBT for panic attacks in Manchester” shows up, the blue link is the meta title and the grey paragraph below it is the meta description. These two pieces of text decide whether the searcher clicks your result or someone else’s. Most therapy websites have generic or auto-generated meta tags, which means the searcher rarely picks them.

The fix takes a few minutes per page and produces measurable click-through improvements.

The meta title. Maximum 60 characters. Specific city plus condition plus practice name. “CBT for Panic Attacks in Manchester | Sarah Khan Therapy.” That’s 51 characters. The condition is the search match. The city makes it relevant to the local searcher. The practice name is the brand anchor. Avoid generic titles like “Welcome to Sarah Khan Therapy” or “Anxiety Treatment | Mental Health Services.”

The meta description. Maximum 160 characters. Specific information about what the page offers. “Structured 12-20 session CBT for panic and panic disorder in adults. Manchester city centre and online. Book a 15-minute consultation.” 130 characters. Concrete. Names the protocol, the format, the location, the call-to-action.

What you don’t want in the description: vague welcoming language (“In a confidential and supportive space…”), generic claims (“evidence-based therapy”), questions that aren’t answered (“Are you struggling with anxiety?”). Each of these costs you click-throughs.

For each service page on your website, write a custom meta title and description. The page-by-page customisation is what makes this work. Auto-generated tags or sitewide defaults don’t differentiate your pages from each other in search results.

The titles and descriptions can be updated as you refine your specialty list or your protocol. If you stop taking trauma cases, the trauma page’s meta description should reflect what you do take instead. The maintenance is light, the alignment matters.

In my-cbt, the booking widget that’s embedded on each service page produces the conversion when the searcher clicks through. The meta tag improvements increase the click rate. The booking widget converts the clicks. Both work together to increase the inquiry flow from the same search traffic.

Test the changes by searching for your target keywords yourself, then in an incognito window, and reading what comes up. If your result looks more compelling than the others on the page, the meta tags are doing their job. If it looks generic or weaker than competing results, refine.

This is one of the higher-leverage SEO changes for a therapy practice. The traffic is already coming through search. The meta tags decide what fraction of it arrives on your site.