Therapist Website Management: Who Should Run Your Practice Website?

Quick test. Who can log in to your domain registrar right now?

Not “who set it up.” Who can log in, today, without emailing anyone. Then ask the same question about your website platform, your Google Business Profile, and Google Search Console.

If the answers are “I think the designer has that” or a long pause, the real question is not how to improve your site. It is who is in charge of it. Therapist website management is a job, and every practice already has someone doing it. Sometimes that someone is nobody.

Here are the four people who can hold that job, the questions that separate a good fit from a bad one, and the order to take your accounts back.

The Four Options for Running a Practice Website

Every small mental health practice ends up with one of these, on purpose or by default. None of them is wrong for everyone. Each has a place where it quietly fails.

1. Someone on staff

Usually the office manager who already handles credentialing and prior authorizations, or the clinician who is “good with computers.”

Works when: the changes are small, the person has protected time for it, and the platform is simple.

Breaks when: caseloads and insurance work pile up, which is always. Website tasks are the first thing pushed to next week. Staff also rarely have the technical side: indexing problems, schema, page speed, Search Console. And when that person leaves, the knowledge leaves with them.

2. An agency

Works when: you need a big project done, like a full rebuild, a brand refresh, or a multi-location launch, and you have the budget for a team.

Breaks when: the work after launch is small and frequent. A two-line change becomes a ticket, a queue, and a review cycle. Reporting gets long while the edits you actually asked for wait. A generalist agency may also not know the norms of a therapy site, from how to word a services page to why marketing pixels do not belong on an intake form. Some agencies handle small practices beautifully. The model just was not designed around quick, steady changes.

3. A freelancer on call

Works when: something specific is broken and you need it fixed this week.

Breaks when: the work is ongoing. A freelancer is paid per fix, so the site gets attention when something breaks and very little in between. There is usually no content plan, no Google Business Profile upkeep, and nobody watching rankings, because nobody asked for that.

4. One practitioner retained to run it

Works when: you want the website, technical SEO, Google Business Profile, content, and social handled as one job by one person you can text.

Breaks when: that person has no system and no backup, or holds your accounts in their own name. The fix is the same as for every option: the practice owns everything, and the practitioner works inside it with their own access.

Option four is what Phoenix Method does for mental health practices. Our mental health SEO page lays out the full scope of that work.

Six Questions to Ask Before You Hire Anyone

Whoever you choose, ask these before you sign. The answers tell you more than any portfolio.

1. “Whose name will my accounts be in?” The only right answer is yours. They get their own login with the access they need.
2. “How fast does a small change go live, and how do I ask for one?” You want a clear channel and a realistic turnaround, not “submit a ticket and we will scope it.”
3. “What happens every month even if I ask for nothing?” Good management includes proactive work: technical checks, Search Console review, Google Business Profile upkeep, and new content.
4. “What will you tell me each month?” A short, plain-language note on what changed and what moved beats a 30-page export.
5. “If we part ways, what do I get?” The answer should be: everything. Logins, files, and notes, handed over without a fight.
6. “Have you worked with mental health practices?” Someone who has will flag things a generalist misses: tracking scripts on intake pages, review replies that confirm someone is a client, clinician pages that outlive the clinician. They should flag these for your decision, not make clinical or regulatory calls for you.

Be wary of anyone who promises a specific ranking by a specific date. Google decides rankings.

Take Back the Keys: The Handoff Checklist

This is the autopsy we open most often: the site was built by someone who is no longer around, and nobody inside the practice can get in. Before anyone can run your website well, the practice has to own it. Recover access in this order, most critical first:

1. Domain registrar. Find which registrar holds your domain and whose account it sits in. If it belongs to a former vendor, move it to an account the practice controls. Losing the domain is the one mistake that is very hard to undo.
2. DNS. Confirm where DNS is managed. It is sometimes at the registrar and sometimes elsewhere. DNS controls where your site and your email point.
3. Hosting and the website platform. WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, or custom: get an owner or administrator login in the practice’s name. Make sure backups exist and you know where they live.
4. Google Business Profile. The practice should be the primary owner. Remove old vendors or lower them to manager.
5. Google Search Console and Analytics. Add the practice as owner on both. They hold your search history, and you cannot get it back if the property is lost.
6. Forms, booking, and client portal links. Submit a test through every contact and consultation form, including each clinician’s form on a group practice site, and confirm it reaches the right inbox. Check that booking, intake, and client portal links from your EHR or practice management system still point to your current account.
7. Everything else. Directory profiles like Psychology Today (make sure they link to your current site pages), social accounts, and any paid tools or plugins billed to someone else’s card.

Store every login in a password manager the practice controls. Each person who works on the site gets their own access, never the owner’s password. When someone leaves, you remove one user. No crisis, no ransom email.

What to Hand the Next Person

Once you own the accounts, write a one-page site brief. It makes any transition, to staff, a freelancer, an agency, or a practitioner, take hours instead of weeks:

• Account list. Every login from the checklist, where it lives, and who has access.
• Who approves what. Which changes the office manager can request and which need the owner.
• Source of truth. Where the current clinician roster, services, and fees are kept, so the website is updated from one place.
• Update triggers. A new hire, a departure, a new insurance panel, a new telehealth state. Name who tells the person running the site when each one happens.
• Known problems. Anything you already know is broken or out of date.
• Goals. The services or locations you most want to grow.

With that brief, the person running your site spends month one fixing and building, not hunting for passwords. The technical side starts with a crawl and a fix list, the kind of work our technical SEO service covers. The local side starts with a cleaned-up profile, covered under GBP optimization.

Where to Start This Week

You do not need to hire anyone to start. Block one hour. Work down the checklist and try every login yourself. Write down what fails. That list is your real starting point, and it is the first thing any good partner should ask to see.

If you run a psychiatric practice, our guide to SEO for psychiatrists covers which pages to build once someone is in charge. It is the kind of patient work that outranks agencies charging three times as much.