Search advice for therapists usually arrives in one of two useless forms. Either a spreadsheet with a thousand phrases in it, which nobody has ever read to the end, or a vague instruction to "use keywords", which means nothing at all.
So let me do something more practical. Below are the five groups of searches that bring bookings to a massage practice. They behave differently from one another, they suit different pages, and understanding the difference between them matters far more than the length of any list.
One thing you will not find here is search volume numbers. Any figure I published would be an estimate, and an estimate that looks like data is worse than no figure, so at the end I will show you how to check the real numbers for your own town in about fifteen minutes.
In short: five groups. What you practise plus where you are. The problem the client wants solved. The occasion. The audience. Your own name. Most practices work only on the first group, which is the hardest, and ignore the second, which is the most valuable.
Group one: the modality, plus your place
This is the obvious group and every practice starts here.
Deep tissue massage, sports massage, remedial massage, Swedish massage, hot stone massage, pregnancy massage, lymphatic drainage, myofascial release, Thai massage, reflexology, each combined with your town, your neighbourhood, or near me.
Two rules make this group work.
Each modality needs its own page. A page listing eight treatments will not be found for any of them. A page about sports massage, explaining what it is, who it helps, what a session involves, how it feels afterwards, can be found for exactly that phrase. This one structural change does more for a therapy practice than anything else.
Name the actual place, in sentences. Not the town in the footer. The town, the neighbourhood, the nearby landmarks, written naturally into the page. Nobody searches for massage in the abstract.
This group is competitive because everybody targets it, and the map results usually dominate it, so your Google Business Profile does much of the work here. Complete it properly first, using the thirty minute profile fix.
Group two: the problem, not the treatment
This is the group most practices never touch, and it is where the best clients come from.
The person does not know which modality they need. They know their shoulder hurts. They type what they feel.
Lower back pain relief. Neck and shoulder tension from desk work. Sciatica. Tension headaches. Frozen shoulder. Plantar fasciitis. Recovery after a marathon. Stiffness after an injury. Stress and difficulty sleeping. Repetitive strain from a keyboard.
These searches are enormously valuable for three reasons. The person has a real, present problem. There is far less competition from other therapists, because they are all writing about modalities. And the client who arrives this way tends to return, because you solved something specific rather than provided a treat.
Write a page for each problem you genuinely help with. Describe the symptom in the words a sufferer would use, explain what typically causes it, explain honestly what massage can and cannot do for it, describe what a first session would involve, and say how many sessions people usually need.
Be careful and honest with health language. Do not promise to cure anything. Describe what you do, what clients commonly report, and when somebody should see a doctor instead. Honesty here is both correct and, as it happens, exactly what earns trust with readers and with search engines.
Group three: the occasion
People book massage for reasons that have nothing to do with pain.
Gift vouchers, which are searched heavily before Christmas, Mother's Day and birthdays. Couples massage. Pre-wedding treatments. Corporate chair massage for offices and events. Post-natal massage. Treatments before or after a sporting event.
Each of these is a different page and a different frame of mind. The gift voucher searcher wants to buy in three minutes on a phone and needs the process to be obvious. The corporate enquirer wants to know whether you travel, what you need on site, and whether you can invoice a company.
The occasion group is also predictable, which means you can prepare for it. Write the gift voucher page in September, not in the third week of December.
Group four: the audience
Some clients identify by who they are rather than by what hurts.
Massage for runners. For cyclists. For golfers. For desk workers. For pregnant women. For older adults. For people recovering from surgery, if that is within your training.
These pages allow you to speak directly to a group and, honestly, to become known within it. A therapist who genuinely writes for runners, in the language runners use, ends up recommended in every local running club, which is worth more than any ranking.
Group five: your own name
Small, but do not neglect it.
Your practice name, your own name, and the name plus your town. People who were recommended by a friend will search for you by name, and if what they find is confusing, out of date, or missing, you lose a client who was already sold.
Make sure your name search brings up your website, your Google profile with correct hours, and a way to book, immediately.
The terms to avoid deliberately
I want to raise this plainly, because it matters more in this trade than in most.
Certain search phrases in this category attract people looking for something entirely different from therapeutic treatment. Building pages around those phrases brings unsuitable enquiries, wastes your time, and can affect how your business is understood and categorised online.
Stay in clinical and wellness language. Name your qualifications and your professional registration. Describe your premises as a treatment space or clinic. Show your training on the site. This is not only about filtering enquiries, it also tells search engines and AI assistants precisely what kind of business you are, which helps you appear for the right things.
How to check the real numbers yourself
Now, the honest part. Everything above is a structure. Which specific phrases matter in your town is something you can only find out by looking.
Google Search Console. Free, connected to your website, and it shows the actual searches that are already showing your site. Start here, because it is real data about you. Our guide is Google Search Console for small business.
Google autocomplete. Open a private browsing window, start typing "massage for" and "massage in [your town]" and watch what Google offers to finish. Those suggestions come from real searches. Do the same with "why does my" and your common problem areas.
Google Keyword Planner. Free with a Google Ads account, and it gives volume ranges. Ranges from the source itself are worth far more than confident numbers from an article.
Your own booking notes. Ask every new client how they found you and what made them book. Ten answers will teach you more about your market than any tool.
What to do with all of this
Do not try to cover everything. Pick five pages and write them properly over five weeks.
One for your most profitable modality. Two for the problems you most enjoy treating. One for the occasion that suits your practice. One for the audience you would like more of.
Write them in plain, warm language, as you would explain it to somebody sitting in your waiting area. Include what a session actually feels like, because that is what nervous first-time clients want to know and almost nobody writes it down.
To see which searches your practice already appears for and what is missing, our free visibility check reports back in ordinary language. It takes a few minutes and gives you a starting point that is real rather than assumed.