One Team Counselling Site Launch & Search Visibility
The Client
One Team Counselling & Coaching came to me with nothing online. No website, no Google Business Profile, no digital footprint. Just a solid vision: help couples and individuals communicate better, manage conflict, get their lives back on track.
They needed to look credible fast. For a new counselling practice, trust is everything. The web design had to feel warm and professional, not clinical or salesy.
Ideal Outcome: Build authority, create visibility, start booking real clients from Springfield without blowing the budget.
The Challenge
Starting from scratch for a new business meant I wasn’t just designing a website. I was building their brand and everything online from zero. This is what we needed to achieve:
- Build instant trust through cohesive branding and tone
- Design a site that converts visitors into bookings
- Get them found on Google fast, even as a brand-new domain
- Integrate tools that make the business run smoothly without needing tech skills
- Speed, clarity, and visibility that actually turns into appointments. That was the brief.
Project Delivery
Branding & Visual Identity
Supplied final logo files and colour palette: multi-tone blues with soft gradients conveying connection and calm. The bold “TEAM” letters standout to reinforce One Team’s focus on relationship support and collaboration.
Website Design & Build
Built on WordPress (Breakdance ) for flexibility and performance, the 8-page site included:
- Home, Services (x5)
- About The Owner and Contact pages
- Integrated blog with three launch articles: Couples Counselling, Anger Management, and Business Coaching
- TidyCal booking integration synced with Google Calendar
- Email Marketing Integration – I set up MailerLite for email capture and nurture automation, integrated directly with the web site design and booking forms to build the client’s contact list from day one.
The design prioritised warmth and simplicity, clear navigation, calming colours, and minimal friction for visitors ready to book.
Content & Video Integration
Starter copy was written for the client using our Business owner interview and a Custom Content GPT tool, refined to match the businesses brand voice, and the intent of the content. We launched the site with 2 YouTube videos, including one 16:9 feature and one 4:3 introduction sample video. Videos were embedded across the homepage and service pages for stronger engagement and SEO lift.
Search Engine Best Practice & Local Visibility setup
By focusing early on schema and content depth, we positioned the site for local search and rich results.
- Full SEOPress configuration (titles, meta, schema)
- XML sitemap + Google Search Console integration
- Google Analytics 4 tracking
- Local Search Visibility optimisation with 30+ directory submissions
- Google Business Profile setup and optimisation
- Internal blog linking and keyword targeting for local counselling terms
One Team Launch & Search Visibility Support
Within six months of launch, One Team went from completely invisible to consistently booked. Here’s what the numbers looked like, and what they actually meant for the business.
Organic Search Performance
Impressions jumped 160% (3.07K → 7.88K). That’s not vanity metrics, it means the site started showing up for the searches that matter: couples counselling Springfield, anger management counselling, relationship therapy Ipswich.
Average position improved from 40.3 to 26.7. Still not page one for everything, but climbing fast. For a brand-new domain launched in 6 Months ago (July 2024), breaking into the top 30 within six months is a really good effort – especially in the health and wellness space where Google tends to prioritise established Businesses
CTR held steady at 0.6-0.8% even as impressions grew. That tells me the titles and meta descriptions were working, people saw the listing and clicked through.
Google Business Profile: The Real Conversion Driver
+119% YoY growth in GMB interactions. This is where most of the bookings actually came from in the first six months.
High-intent local searchers don’t always click through to the website, they hit “Call” straight from the GMB listing. The optimization work (categories, attributes, posts, Q&A seeding) meant One Team showed up for the right searches and gave people an easy path to contact them.
The site built trust. GMB converted it.
Website Clicks: The 1000% Jump
Website clicks went from 9 to 99, a 1000% increase YoY. Sounds huge, and it is, but let’s be real: going from 9 clicks to 99 isn’t driving massive traffic yet. It’s early-stage growth.
What mattered more was who was clicking. These weren’t casual browsers, they were people searching for specific services (couples therapy, anger management) in Springfield. The booking flow was frictionless: read the page, click “Book Now,” pick a time, done.
Conversion from website visit to a booked session was around 8-12%, which is actually quite strong for counselling services, where customer usually have a longer booking decision window before committing.
Lead Volume: 10-15 Per Month
This was the real win. From zero to 10-15 qualified leads per month within six months, split roughly 70/30 between GMB and website contact forms. But the website is what what supports the strength of the GMB listing
At an average session value of $150-200, that’s $1,500-3,000 in monthly revenue just from organic channels. No ad spend. The $4,800 site paid for itself in about two months.
Why It Worked Faster Than Expected
Most new sites take 6-12 months to gain traction. One Team started ranking and converting within three months. I wasn’t expecting this.
Springfield and the surrounding suburbs (including Spring Mountain where Jef is actually located) had plenty of established counselling services. Aged domains, strong review profiles, backlink history. On paper, this should have been a slow grind.
But competitor’s sites lacked some subtle differences that I always build in.
Strong local presence? Yes. Technical foundation? No. Most of them were running outdated WordPress themes, no schema markup, broken mobile experiences, slow load times. A few had decent Google Business profiles propping them up, but their websites weren’t doing any heavy lifting.
What gave One Team the edge:
- Technical foundation from day one – Fast site, clean schema, mobile-optimized, proper heading structure. Google could crawl and understand the site immediately.
- Content depth at launch – Three blog articles published on day one gave Google something to index while competitors had generic service pages with 200 words.
- Booking friction removed – Competitors made you call or email. One Team had TidyCal integration | book a session in under 60 seconds.
- Video trust signals – Embedded YouTube videos increased dwell time and let visitors see Jess before committing. Most competitors had stock photos or nothing.
- GMB optimization – Categories, attributes, Q&A seeding, posts. Most competitors had claimed their listing but never optimized it.
- Spring Mountain location wasn’t a problem – Google treats Spring Mountain and Springfield as the same local service area. The GMB listing showed up for “counselling Springfield” searches just fine because the service area was properly configured.
The competition had age and reviews on their side. One Team had a site that actually worked. In a market where most businesses have legacy tech debt and no one’s optimizing properly, a well-built site with solid technical SEO can outrank established competitors faster than you’d expect.
By month three, One Team was showing up in the local 3-pack for key SERP results. By month six, they were fully booked. The bottleneck shifted from “getting found” to “managing demand” – which is a much better problem to have.
Budget Breakdown
| Item | Deliverable | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Branding | Logo, colour palette, style setup | $600 |
| Website | 8-page WordPress build (Breakdance), blog setup | $2,800 |
| SEO Setup | SEOPress, schema, Search Console, Google Business, directories | $900 |
| Booking & Email | TidyCal + MailerLite integration | $500 |
| Total | $4,800 |
Project Notes
- Speed to Launch: From concept to live site in under 6 weeks.
- Cost Efficiency: A complete digital ecosystem, branding, website, Search Visibility, and video, for under $5K.
- Future Ready: Modular build supports expansion into group programs or new services.
Next Up for One Team: Service-Based Conversion Design That Doubled Enquiries
If this Counselling project showed how local SEO builds trust and visibility, the next story One Team: Service-Based Conversion Design → takes it further turning that traffic into real enquiries. In the next phase, we reworked the website with conversion design using collected user behaviour analytics to inform and rethink how visitors move from curiosity to commitment. You’ll see how we maintained the overall branding and aesthetics and improved user experience for clear, conversion-first layouts, Rebuilt enquiry flows around real client behaviour and and added trust triggers that work even when the sale happens offline.
