Google Ads for therapists: costs, rules and budget (and why remarketing is off limits)

Google Ads for therapists works with a local Search campaign at £15 to £20 a day, ads that state the fee and your registration, and a page where the first session can be booked: with local clicks at £3 to £7 and a 5% to 8% conversion rate, a first-session enquiry costs £60 to £100. Remarketing is off the table, because Google's health policy bans personalised audiences for mental health services.

Sounds simple, right?

The catch is that Google won't tell you how much a click costs on "psychologist london" or "online therapy".

Keyword Planner hides volume and CPC (cost per click) for part of the mental health vocabulary.

What you can see is the rest, and it already says a lot (DataForSEO, Google Ads UK, September 2026; CPC converted from USD at £1 = $1.3242):

• "therapist" on its own: 49,500 searches a month at £8.44 a click;
• "couples therapy": 18,100 searches at £6.40;
• "therapist north london", bought by BetterHelp: £6.79 a click;
• "therapists huddersfield", BetterHelp again: £3.08.

And the mistakes we find in practice accounts are nearly always the same:

• remarketing switched on, in breach of a policy few people have read;
• a national campaign on "online therapy" with £10 a day;
• an ad with no fee in an auction against "No Referrals, No Waiting Rooms".

Everything else (Display, Performance Max from day one, national campaigns) buys clicks from people who will not book with you.

So why listen to us?

Because we have done the local, small-budget work from scratch. Contesini Consulenze runs two advisory offices in the province of Mantua in Italy and had never used Google Ads: in seven months it received 299 enquiries at €7.20 each, 68% of them workable sales opportunities.

On Valore Solare, once tracking was rebuilt, enquiries grew to 1,506 at an average of €70.78.

Different sectors, same method. Here we apply it to a therapy practice.

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.

What you'll find here:

• what a click really costs, even where Google won't say;
• the two Google policies and the HCPC and ASA rules on what an ad can say;
• how to structure the account and which keywords to exclude on day one;
• what BetterHelp buys (and what it doesn't);
• the budget, with the sums done line by line.

The organic side is in SEO for therapists.

Let's start with costs.

How much a click costs for a therapist (three bands, and the most important one is in the dark)

Generic and specialist keywords cost £5 to £10 a click, with the national "online" searches well above; the local keywords that platforms buy cost £3 to £7; the free and job-related searches you want to exclude sit 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

So you're flying blind on "psychologist london"?

On the estimate, yes. On the campaign, no.

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 those searches up. What's missing is the estimate before you start.

The best approximation we have for the hidden terms?

The £3 to £7 BetterHelp pays on local keywords, and the £5 to £10 on "therapist + city".

Recommended reading: Google Ads statistics 2026 to compare CPCs and conversion rates.

The Google rules that apply to mental health (and the one practices break without knowing)

There are two documents to read before you open the account: the healthcare and medicines policy and the health policy for personalised advertising. The first requires no certification for counselling, psychotherapy or psychology, the second rules out remarketing.

The first is the healthcare and medicines policy. Certification applies to prescription medicines and, in some countries, to drug and alcohol addiction services.

Do you treat addiction?

Then check that section for your target country before writing the ad.

The second matters far more: 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 audiences you build yourself:

• 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.

And keyword campaigns?

They work as they do for anyone. The targeting is the user's search, 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 practitioners 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:

• yes: "Therapist in Leeds, BACP", "First session £60", "In person and online", "Anxiety and panic attacks";
• no: "The best therapist in Leeds", "Beat anxiety in 5 sessions", "30% off this September". They are claims you would have to prove.

And a price in the ad?

It's 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 (just one, and nothing else for two months)

The first campaign is one local Search campaign: a 5 to 10 kilometre radius around the practice (more in rural areas, less in central London), location targeting set to "presence" and not "presence or interest", ads running in the hours when you answer the phone. For the first two months you need nothing else.

What about Performance Max?

Performance Max needs conversions to learn. 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 we worked in this order: page and tracking first, then campaigns, and Performance Max only after Search had collected real conversions.

The result: 299 leads in seven months at €7.20 each, 68% of them real opportunities.

In therapy CPCs are several times higher. 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.

On "online therapy" you're up against BetterHelp, Online-Therapy.com and the other platforms that hold four of the top nine organic results.

A £15 daily budget doesn't 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 (negatives matter more than positives)

A practice account runs on one campaign with three ad groups, phrase match and some exact match on the keywords with the city. The three groups are generic searches with the city, the problem with the city, and your name.

• 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's 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".

Why do negatives matter more?

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;
• the platform names.

"NHS talking therapies" alone has 18,100 searches a month at £2.13 a click: 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.

Then, for the first month, the search terms report every week.

In a sector where Keyword Planner is partly blind, that report is the only reliable keyword research you'll have.

Recommended reading: long tail and short tail: where the converting keywords are.

What the platforms buy, and what they don't (spoiler: small towns)

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.

Here they are:

• "therapist north london" (480 searches);
• "therapists huddersfield" (390);
• "wakefield therapy" (210);
• "therapy for depression uk" (210);
• "therapist fareham", "therapist weymouth", "therapist northwich" and "therapy twickenham" (50 each).

Estimated paid traffic: around 80 visits a month.

A bit thin to draw conclusions from, no?

As a sample it's small, and we say so. But it shows 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 doesn't have organically: none of its top 25 organic keywords contains a city. And it sells against the NHS route: speed and no GP referral, not price.

So what changes for a practice?

Two things.

One: on "therapist + your town" the competitor in the auction may be BetterHelp promising no waiting. Your ad has to say what a platform can't: the physical room, the named person with their registration, the first session and its fee.

Two: the platform isn't buying the big SERPs. That field, when you enter it, is less crowded than it looks.

Where to send the click (not the homepage)

The click goes to a page that answers the questions Google shows in the SERPs: how much it costs, whether it's available without the NHS wait, who treats anxiety. Not the homepage, not the "my approach" page.

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;
• Google reviews, if you have them.

Form or calendar?

Calendar with free slots. Someone looking for a therapist at 11pm doesn't want to wait for an email.

And on reviews, look at this: in the London local pack Harley Therapy shows 4.7 from 272 reviews and The London Practice 4.9 from 22. They're 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. One piece of work, two channels.

Recommended reading: landing pages and SEO: how to build one page that serves both.

What to count as a conversion (four events, not one more)

A practice's conversions are four events: a call from the ad or from the number on the page with a minimum duration of 30 to 60 seconds, a WhatsApp message, a submitted form, a booking from the calendar. Each counted once per user.

That's it?

That's it. Because the mistake we find most often in accounts we take over isn't a lack of conversions. It's too many.

On Valore Solare the account counted 15,267 "conversions" in a month against 5,467 clicks. They were scrolls and page views.

On Sunscape: 1,487 conversions at €0.61. Technical events, not enquiries.

With those numbers automated bidding optimises for nothing.

And once it was fixed?

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 isn't in Google Ads: it's 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 a spreadsheet is enough, 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 (below £15 a day you learn nothing)

With a CPC of £5 and a conversion rate between 5% and 8%, an enquiry costs £63 to £100 and you need at least £15 to £20 a day to get numbers you can learn from. The £5 CPC is close to the £4.69 average of the local keywords BetterHelp buys; 5% is 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

But what is an enquiry worth?

Here's the sum that really decides.

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, though, 3 to 5 enquiries a month aren't a statistic. In three months you learn nothing.

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, said plainly: 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 (and what they cost)

The most common mistakes in therapists' accounts are six: the first breaches a Google policy, the other five waste budget.

• 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 on Valore Solare and Sunscape: the algorithm optimises for scrolls and page views and the cost of a real enquiry stays unknown.

Google Ads or SEO for a therapist? (both, in this order)

For a therapist with a practice the organic position can be won: 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. But it takes months, and in the meantime the diary is empty: that's why Google Ads comes first.

Once it's yours, the organic position costs nothing per click.

The sequence we use:

1. Google profile and a homepage with the city from day one;
2. local Search at £15 to £20 a day for the first six months;
3. then a look at Search Console;
4. 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

Where to start (the page first, then the account)

Not "online therapy", but "therapist + your town".

Not remarketing, but keyword Search.

Not 15,267 fake conversions, but four real events.

Not £10 a day, but £15 to £20: below that, 3 to 5 enquiries a month tell you nothing.

Now, two concrete things.

One: before opening the account, write the page. Name, registration, first-session fee, three problems, a calendar.

Two: search "therapist + your town" and see if there's an ad at the top and what it says. If BetterHelp is there with "No GP Referral Required", you already know what you're writing against.

The £15 to £20 a day Search campaign comes after, with the search terms report checked every week for the first month.

If you'd like an opinion on your case, book a strategy consultation.

See you next time!