Google won't tell you how much a click costs on "psychologist london" or "online therapy": Keyword Planner hides volume and CPC for part of the mental health vocabulary. What you can see is the rest. BetterHelp buys "therapist north london" at £6.79 a click and "therapists huddersfield" at £3.08; "therapist" on its own has 49,500 searches a month and a CPC of £8.44; "couples therapy" 18,100 searches and £6.40 (DataForSEO, Google Ads UK, September 2026; CPC converted from USD at £1 = $1.3242). With a 5% conversion rate, a first-session enquiry from Google Ads costs between £60 and £100.
Google Ads for therapists works with a local Search campaign, a budget of £15 to £20 a day, ads that state the fee and your registration, a page where the first session can be booked, and two sets of rules that are tighter here than elsewhere: Google's health policies, which rule out remarketing, and the HCPC standards and ASA CAP Code on what an ad can say. Everything else (Display, Performance Max from day one, national campaigns on "online therapy") buys clicks from people who will not book with you.
A note on the data: "google ads for therapists" has around 40 searches a month in the UK. Most people who get here search "marketing for therapists" or go straight to Google. Below are the measured CPCs, the policies, the account structure and the budget worked out from the numbers. The organic side is in SEO for therapists.
How much a click costs for a therapist
Three bands. Generic and specialist keywords sit between £5 and £10, with the national "online" searches well above; the local keywords that platforms buy between £3 and £7; the free and job-related searches, which you want to exclude, around £1 to £3. Some of the most important ones, such as "psychologist + city", have no data.
| Keyword | Searches/month | Average CPC | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| therapist | 49,500 | £8.44 | top of page bid (high) £8.90 |
| therapy online uk | 1,900 | £17.56 | national, platforms |
| couples therapy online | 880 | £14.22 | specialism, national |
| therapist london | 5,400 | £9.98 | generic + city |
| couples therapy | 18,100 | £6.40 | specialism |
| therapist north london | 480 | £6.79 | bought by BetterHelp |
| therapist near me | 33,100 | £5.31 | proximity |
| therapist manchester | 1,900 | £5.01 | generic + city |
| sex therapist london | 880 | £4.23 | specialism + city |
| wakefield therapy | 210 | £3.94 | bought by BetterHelp |
| marriage counselling | 1,900 | £3.99 | specialism |
| nutritionist london | 1,000 | £3.74 | related sector |
| therapists huddersfield | 390 | £3.08 | bought by BetterHelp |
| free therapy | 3,600 | £3.07 | to exclude |
| nhs talking therapies | 18,100 | £2.13 | to exclude |
| psychologist london, psychotherapist london, online therapy, online therapist, anxiety therapist, counselling london | n/a | n/a | hidden by Keyword Planner |
The limit of the data needs saying in full: Google Ads gives no volume or CPC for "online therapy", "psychologist london", "psychotherapist london", "counselling london", "anxiety therapist" or "cbt therapist near me". Campaigns still pick them up: what is missing is the estimate before you start. The £3 to £7 CPCs BetterHelp pays on local keywords, and the £5 to £10 on "therapist + city", are the best approximation we have for the hidden terms.
Recommended reading: Google Ads statistics 2026 to compare CPCs and conversion rates.
The Google rules that apply to mental health
Two documents, both to read before you open the account.
The first is the healthcare and medicines policy. Advertising counselling, psychotherapy and psychology services does not require certification; certification applies to prescription medicines and, in some countries, to drug and alcohol addiction services. If you treat addiction, check that section for your target country before writing the ad.
The second matters more, and it is the one therapists' accounts break without knowing: the health policy for personalised advertising. Health content is a "sensitive interest category", and among its examples Google lists counselling services for mental health problems such as depression, anxiety and addiction. For this content you cannot use advertiser-built audiences: no Customer Match with your client list, no data segments (so no remarketing to people who visited your site), no similar segments, no audience expansion. Google's predefined segments (in-market, affinity, demographics) remain available, and Google automatically excludes sensitive signals from them.
In practice: a keyword Search campaign works as it does for anyone, because the targeting is the user's search and not their profile. What you cannot do is follow someone who read your page on panic attacks around the web with a banner. Google restated the point in its May 2025 update, which took only content aimed at healthcare professionals out of the category.
What the ad can say under the UK rules
If you are a practitioner psychologist, the HCPC standards of conduct, performance and ethics require you to "take reasonable steps to make sure that any promotional activities you are involved in are accurate and are not likely to mislead" (standard 9.3) and to "be honest about your experience, qualifications and skills" (9.2). Whatever your title, the ASA's CAP Code section 12 applies to your ads: "objective claims must be backed by evidence" (rule 12.1), and you must not discourage essential treatment for conditions that need medical supervision (rule 12.2). BACP and UKCP members should also check their body's ethical framework.
Translated into 30-character headlines: "Therapist in Leeds, BACP", "First session £60", "In person and online", "Anxiety and panic attacks" are fine. "The best therapist in Leeds", "Beat anxiety in 5 sessions", "30% off this September" are not: they are claims you would have to prove. A price in the ad is allowed and in this sector it makes a difference: the first question Google shows on "therapist london" is "How much does a therapist cost in London?", and two more are about free therapy. The HCPC and the ASA cover the whole of the UK, so the same wording works in Edinburgh or Belfast.
Which campaign to open first
One local Search campaign, and nothing else
A Search campaign targeting a 5 to 10 kilometre radius around the practice (more in rural areas, less in central London), with location targeting set to "presence" and not "presence or interest", and ad scheduling for the hours when you answer the phone. Nothing else for the first two months.
Performance Max needs conversions to learn, and a solo practice starts from zero: switched on from day one, it optimises for page views and reports that all is well. On Contesini Consulenze, two advisory offices in the province of Mantua in Italy, in another local sector, we added it only after Search had collected real conversions: 299 leads in seven months at €7.20 each, 68% of them real opportunities. In therapy CPCs are several times higher, but the order of the steps is the same.
If you only work online, the campaign stays Search but the targeting becomes regional or national, and the CPC climbs: "therapy online uk" costs £17.56 a click and "couples therapy online" £14.22, and on "online therapy" you are up against BetterHelp, Online-Therapy.com and the other platforms that hold four of the top nine organic results. A £15 daily budget does not last long there. The route that holds up is specialism: "online therapy for anxiety", "online couples counselling", "therapist for teenagers online".
Recommended reading: when Google Ads makes sense.
How to structure the account and the keywords
Three ad groups inside one campaign, with phrase match and some exact match on the keywords with the city.
- Generic with the city: "therapist leeds", "counsellor leeds", "psychotherapist leeds", "therapist near me" (this one without a city: the location targeting takes care of it). It is the group with the most volume and the least defined intent.
- Problem with the city: "anxiety therapist leeds", "panic attacks therapist", "couples therapy leeds", "therapist for teenagers leeds". Low volume, high CPC (£6.40 on "couples therapy" nationally), and in the local sectors we manage the conversion rate is double that of the generic group.
- Your name, if you already have clients and reviews: it costs pennies and protects searches for your name from your profiles on Psychology Today and Counselling Directory, which sit in the top 10 for "therapist london".
Negative keywords matter more than positive ones, because the related searches Google shows for "therapist london" include "free", "price", "NHS" and "Reddit". Exclude straight away: free, NHS, talking therapies, jobs, salary, course, degree, training, how to become, test, meaning, and the platform names. "NHS talking therapies" alone has 18,100 searches a month and a CPC of £2.13: the people searching it want the free NHS service, not you. "How to become a therapist" has 1,900 searches and costs £3.20 a click.
Check the search terms report every week for the first month. In a sector where Keyword Planner is partly blind, that report is the only reliable keyword research you will have.
Recommended reading: long tail and short tail: where the converting keywords are.
What the platforms buy, and what they don't
On 26 September 2026 the SERPs for "online therapy" and "therapist london" had no ads at the top. In DataForSEO's UK database BetterHelp has 13 paid keywords, almost all local and low-volume: "therapist north london" (480 searches), "therapists huddersfield" (390), "wakefield therapy" (210), "therapist fareham", "therapist weymouth", "therapist northwich" and "therapy twickenham" (50 each), plus "therapy for depression uk" (210). Estimated paid traffic is around 80 visits a month: a small sample, and we say so.
What the sample does show is the method. BetterHelp sends every keyword with a town to a single sign-up page, /get-started/, with headlines such as "Therapy Without Referrals", "No GP Referral Required" and "Average Session Rating: 4.9/5", and sitelinks such as "Find a Specialised Therapist" and "Find A Counselor". The copy reads "No Referrals, No Waiting Rooms". The platform uses Ads to take the local demand it does not have organically (none of its top 25 organic keywords contains a city) and sells against the NHS route: speed and no GP referral, not price.
For a local practice the consequence is twofold. On "therapist + your town" the competitor in the auction may be BetterHelp promising no waiting: your ad has to say something a platform cannot, meaning the physical room, the named person with their registration, the first session and its fee. And the platform is not buying the big SERPs: that field, when you enter it, is less crowded than it looks.
Where to send the click
Not to the homepage, not to the "my approach" page. To a page that answers the questions Google shows in the SERPs: how much it costs, whether it is available without the NHS wait, who treats anxiety. From the top down:
- Name, a real photo, registration (HCPC number, or BACP or UKCP membership), years in practice.
- Fee for the first session and later sessions, length, in person and online.
- The problems you treat, with a paragraph each, not a list of ten words.
- The button to book or call, repeated halfway down and at the bottom. A calendar with free slots converts better than a form, because someone looking for a therapist at 11pm doesn't want to wait for an email.
- Google reviews, if you have them: in the London local pack Harley Therapy shows 4.7 from 272 reviews and The London Practice 4.9 from 22, and they are the first thing a searcher sees.
For the "problem with the city" group you need one page per problem, the same one that ranks organically. The "Anxiety and panic attacks" page with fee and booking works as the ad landing page and as the SEO page: it is the case where the two channels use the same work.
Recommended reading: landing pages and SEO: how to build one page that serves both.
What to count as a conversion
Four events, and only four: a call from the ad or from the number on the page (with a minimum duration of 30 to 60 seconds, to leave out people who hang up), a WhatsApp message, a submitted form, a booking from the calendar. Each counted once per user.
The mistake we find most often in accounts we take over is not a lack of conversions: it is too many. On Valore Solare the account counted 15,267 "conversions" in a month against 5,467 clicks, because they were scrolls and page views; on Sunscape 1,487 conversions at €0.61 that were technical events. With those numbers automated bidding optimises for nothing. Once tracking was rebuilt, Valore Solare went from 9 enquiries at €212 each in the first month to 1,506 enquiries in 11 months at an average of €70.78.
For a therapist the number that closes the loop is not in Google Ads: it is in your diary. Note how many first sessions come from Ads and how many turn into a course of therapy. With ten to twenty enquiries a month it is a spreadsheet, and after three months it tells you whether the channel pays.
Recommended reading: how to set up events in Google Analytics 4.
How much budget you need, with the numbers
Take a CPC of £5, close to the £4.69 average of the local keywords BetterHelp buys, and a 5% conversion rate, cautious for a page with a fee and a calendar.
| Budget per day | Spend per month | Clicks per month (CPC £5) | Enquiries (5%) | Enquiries (8%) | Cost per enquiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £10 | £300 | 60 | 3 | 5 | £63-100 |
| £15 | £450 | 90 | 4-5 | 7 | £63-100 |
| £20 | £600 | 120 | 6 | 10 | £63-100 |
| £30 | £900 | 180 | 9 | 14 | £63-100 |
The sum that decides is the other one. If half of the enquiries become a course of therapy and an average course is ten sessions, a client costs £125 to £200 in advertising and brings ten times your session fee (at £70 a session, to take an example, £700). At £10 a day the numbers are too small to learn anything in three months: 3 to 5 enquiries a month are not a statistic. The threshold from which you learn is £15 to £20 a day. At £30 the limit becomes your diary, not the budget.
One limit of this calculation: the 5% and 8% come from local accounts we manage in other health and professional sectors, not from a therapy practice. If your page has no fee or no way to book straight away, expect half.
The mistakes we find in accounts
- Remarketing switched on. Data segments of site visitors, in breach of the health policy. Google disapproves them, and in the meantime the money is spent.
- National campaign on "online therapy" with £10 a day. One or two clicks a day at £17 against platforms with budgets of another order of magnitude.
- Broad match without negatives. The account buys "NHS talking therapies", "free therapy", "therapist jobs". In the first search terms report of an account like that, a large share of the spend goes to people looking for a free service or a job.
- An ad without a fee or a first-session offer in an auction against "No Referrals, No Waiting Rooms". If you don't answer the question people ask most, you lose the click or, worse, pay for it and lose it on the page.
- Call extension with no schedule. Calls arrive in the evening when the practice is closed, and count as conversions without being any.
- Inflated conversions, as in the two cases above: the algorithm optimises for scrolls and page views and the cost of a real enquiry stays unknown.
Google Ads or SEO for a therapist?
On "therapist london" the local pack shows three independent practices with 22 to 272 reviews, and four of the ten organic results are practices or named practitioners: the organic position for a therapist with a practice can be won, and once it is yours it costs nothing per click. But it takes months, and in the meantime the diary is empty.
The sequence we use: Google profile and a homepage with the city from day one, local Search at £15 to £20 a day for the first six months, then a look at Search Console. When the queries with the city start bringing organic clicks, the campaign shifts to problem keywords, where the CPC is higher but the intent is sharper. The organic method is in SEO for therapists, the reasoning on the two channels in SEO and Google Ads together, and for the rest of the health sector in Google Ads for medical practices.
Frequently asked questions
Can a therapist advertise on Google Ads in the UK?
Yes. Google's healthcare policy does not require certification for counselling, psychotherapy or psychology services, and neither the HCPC standards nor the CAP Code stop you advertising your qualifications, services and fees. The limits are on content (nothing misleading, no claims you cannot prove) and on targeting (no personalised audiences).
Can I use remarketing on visitors to my website?
No. Mental health counselling services fall into the sensitive "Health" category of the personalised advertising policies: Customer Match, data segments, similar segments and audience expansion are not allowed. You keep Google's predefined segments and, above all, keyword Search.
How much does a client from Google Ads cost a therapist?
With CPCs of £3 to £7 on local keywords and a conversion rate of 5% to 8%, a first-session enquiry costs £60 to £100. If half the enquiries turn into a course of therapy, a client costs £125 to £200. On "therapist london" (about £10 a click) or couples keywords online (£14) costs double or more, but so does the value of a couple's course.
Does Google Ads make sense if I only work online?
Yes, but not on the keyword "online therapy", where four of the top nine organic results are platforms and the auction is theirs. It works on a specialism (anxiety, couples, teenagers, clients who want therapy in a language other than English) and on an area where your language or your hours are an advantage.
Where to start
Before opening the account, write the page: name, registration, first-session fee, three problems, a calendar. Then search "therapist + your town" and see if there is an ad at the top and what it says: if BetterHelp is there with "No GP Referral Required", you already know what you are writing against. The £15 to £20 a day Search campaign comes after, and for the first month you check the search terms report every week. If you would like an opinion on your case, get in touch.
