Growth and AI visibility for speech pathology practices
Symptoms, not job titles.
Speech pathology marketing for practices whose clients arrive as a worried parent typing a symptom at eleven at night: symptom pages written so Google and ChatGPT name your practice in the answer, a waitlist and intake flow that reply with a date instead of a promise, and progress reports drafted from the clinician's own notes. Go Forth Digital does this for speech pathology practices across Australia, inside Speech Pathology Australia's advertising policy rather than Ahpra's.
Go Forth Digital is run by a founder with ten years in B2B sales and growth, who has co-owned a gym and carried its P&L, and spent five years building websites and systems for health and wellness businesses.
What keeps a speech pathology practice owner up
A twelve-week wait for paediatric assessments, a Tuesday afternoon clinician with two cancellations nobody filled, and a parent who searched "3 year old not talking" last night and booked with whoever replied first.
Nobody searches for a speech pathologist. Parents search the thing they noticed: a late talker, a lisp, a stutter that started at preschool, a child who chokes on solids. Teachers and GPs use your title; families do not, and half of them type speech therapist. The practice that gets the enquiry is the one whose page answers the symptom question in plain words, because that is what Google ranks and what ChatGPT and Google's AI quote back to the parent. A services page that lists "paediatric speech and language" does neither.
The waitlist is the second thing, and it is rarely what it looks like. A wait of twelve weeks for one clinician while another has gaps is an intake problem: one spreadsheet, re-sorted by nobody, and cancellations that go unfilled because the next family never got the call. The third is the report load. NDIS progress reports, goal reviews and school letters are clinician hours, unpaid unless the plan has non-face-to-face funding in it, and the NDIS speech pathology price limit has sat at $193.99 an hour since July 2024 (NDIA Pricing Schedule 2026-27, v1.2, 22 July 2026). Margin is now utilisation and admin cost. We work on both.
What that looks like for a speech pathology practice
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Get found
When a parent searches a symptom and an age, or asks ChatGPT whether a two-year-old with twenty words needs an assessment, your practice is in the answer. Symptom pages at a parent's reading level, practitioner pages a GP or coordinator can act on, and a Google Business Profile that says who you see, from what age and how long the wait is.
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Get booked
An enquiry form that captures the child's age, the concern, the funding (NDIS and how it is managed, a Medicare care plan, private) and the days the family can do, routed to the clinician with room. A waitlist that states its length and a cancellation list that offers the slot to the right family the same day.
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Get your hours back
Session notes, NDIS progress reports, goal reviews, school and GP letters all take clinician hours today. A draft from the clinician's own de-identified notes, read, corrected and signed by the clinician, hands those hours back as sessions.
Not sure where to start? Tell us what’s going on in your practice. Catherine replies within one working day with what to fix first. Tell us what you need
What we do first for a speech pathology practice
The diary before the website. If one clinician is full and another has Tuesday afternoons, the first enquiry we send you goes to the wrong place.
So we start with utilisation by clinician and the waitlist as it stands: how long, sorted by what, and who rings whom when a slot opens. Then intake. The form asks what the front desk would otherwise ring to ask: the child's age, the concern in the parent's words, how the NDIS plan is managed or whether there is a care plan from the GP, and which days the family can do. It sends the enquiry to the clinician with room and replies with a date. A stated wait on the website, by age group, cuts the phone calls that ask for one.
Then the pages. One for each presentation you see most, in the parent's words: late talkers, speech sounds, stuttering, language and literacy, feeding and swallowing, AAC, adult voice and swallowing if you see adults. Each answers the question a parent asks an AI in its first hundred words, gives the age ranges, says what the first session involves and what it costs, and links to the form. A practitioner page for each clinician states the age groups and presentations they see and their SPA membership, because that is what a GP and a support coordinator check. Then the hours: which reports each clinician writes, what comes from the assessment, and what they type from scratch every time. We set up the draft, and the clinician stays the author.
Funding streams we work inside
A speech pathology practice runs four funding streams through one diary, and each needs its own page, its own intake question and its own report.
- NDIS
- Speech pathology sits in Capacity Building under Improved Daily Living, at $193.99 an hour in 2026-27 with separate line items for non-face-to-face work, travel, reports and telehealth (NDIA Pricing Schedule 2026-27). Intake records how the plan is managed and what is left in it, and the progress report is written to the goals so the next plan funds the next year. Coordinators and early childhood partners refer to the practice whose page states capacity and wait.
- Medicare chronic condition management
- A GP can refer up to five allied health services a calendar year under a care plan, and item 10970 pays a benefit of $63.40 against a schedule fee of $74.55 (MBS Online, item 10970). Five sessions is an assessment and a start, so the page tells parents what the gap is and what happens after the fifth session. The referrer-facing page tells the GP the same thing in one paragraph.
- Private and health fund extras
- The families who pay privately are the ones who searched a symptom and booked with whoever replied first, and the ones a school or a paediatrician sent. The symptom pages and the reply time do the work here. Fees stated plainly, extras named by fund where you have the numbers, and no vouchers or discounts, which SPA's policy rules out.
- Thriving Kids from October 2026
- From 1 October 2026 a new program outside the NDIS covers children eight and under with developmental delay or autism and low to moderate support needs, delivered through early childhood settings, schools and homes, with NDIS access for children unchanged until 1 January 2028 (NDIA, 5 February 2026). The referral will come from a GP, an educator or a state program rather than a plan, so the paediatric page needs to speak to them, and the practice needs to decide whether it will deliver in a kindy.
Who it suits, and who it does not
It suits paediatric practices with two to fifteen clinicians where the waitlist and the empty Tuesday exist at the same time.
It suits practices whose enquiries come through one phone number and one inbox, with no record of which symptom or which suburb they came from. It suits practices adding a new graduate whose diary needs filling in the first quarter. It suits multidisciplinary clinics where speech runs alongside OT and psychology and the pages blur the three. And it suits adult and aged care practices, where the referrer is a GP, a hospital or a home care provider, and the page has to speak to them rather than to a parent.
It does not suit a sole clinician with a full diary and no plan to hire; the fix there is a stated wait and a cancellation list, which we will tell you how to set up yourself. It does not suit a practice that wants testimonials on the website; SPA's policy rules them out and we follow it. It does not suit a practice that wants "specialist" in the title. And it does not suit anyone who wants impressions in the monthly report; we report enquiries, first appointments and clinician hours returned. For what the wider market charges, read what allied health marketing costs in Australia.
Frequently asked questions
Parents do not search for a speech pathologist. How do they find us?
They search the symptom, and increasingly they ask an AI. A parent types "my 3 year old is not talking" or "when should I worry about stuttering" into Google or ChatGPT at eleven at night, and the answer names the practices whose pages explain that symptom plainly. So the page that wins the enquiry is not the one titled Our Services. It is the one titled Late talkers: when to worry and what an assessment involves, written at a parent's reading level, with the age ranges, what the first session looks like, the fee and the wait. We write one of those for each presentation you see most, we structure them so AI answers can quote them, and we put the Google Business Profile in order so the same parent finds you on Maps the next morning. Then the enquiry form asks the child's age, the concern and the funding, and intake replies with a date.
Should the website say speech therapy or speech pathology?
Both, in the right places. Speech pathologist is the Australian professional title and the one Speech Pathology Australia, the NDIA and Medicare use, so it belongs in your page titles, your practitioner pages and anything a coordinator or GP reads. Parents search speech therapy and speech therapist far more often, because that is what school and television taught them. So the symptom pages carry the parent's words in the headings and the questions, and one plain sentence explains that in Australia a speech therapist is called a speech pathologist. That sentence does two jobs: it stops a parent bouncing because the title looks unfamiliar, and it is exactly the kind of definition AI answers pick up when someone asks the difference.
Will Thriving Kids take our NDIS referrals?
Not in October, and not all of them later. Thriving Kids begins on 1 October 2026 for children eight and under with developmental delay or autism and low to moderate support needs, funded at $4 billion over five years and delivered through early childhood settings, schools and homes rather than clinic rooms. NDIS access rules for children do not change until 1 January 2028, and children with permanent and significant disability stay eligible (NDIA, 5 February 2026). What changes is who holds the referral. Some of it moves from the plan to a state-commissioned program and a GP, so a paediatric practice needs a page a GP or an early childhood educator can act on, and a clinician willing to work in a kindy. We will tell you when the state you work in publishes how its program commissions speech pathology, and we do not guess ahead of it.
Speech Pathology Australia bans testimonials. Can we still use Google reviews?
You can have them; you cannot use them. SPA's Code of Ethics advertising policy tells members not to use testimonials or client reviews in their own advertising, and not to call themselves a specialist, because the profession has no specialist accreditation (Speech Pathology Australia, policy 3.03, March 2024). Reviews a parent leaves on your Google Business Profile of their own accord are theirs, and they help you rank on Maps. Copying them onto your website, quoting them in a post or asking for them with a voucher is where the policy draws the line, and we do not do it. What replaces the testimonial is specificity: who you see, what a first session involves, fees, rebates and the wait, written plainly. That is what parents read and what AI answers quote, and it needs no permission from anyone.
Our waitlist is twelve weeks. Why would we market at all?
Because a twelve-week waitlist is usually an intake problem wearing a demand costume. Look at the diary by clinician first. In most practices we see, one or two clinicians are booked out while another has Tuesday afternoons open, the waitlist is one spreadsheet nobody re-sorts, and cancellations go unfilled because nobody rings the next family in time. The first work is not more enquiries. It is a waitlist that captures age, concern and funding, a cancellation list that offers the slot to the right family automatically, and a stated wait on the website so parents stop ringing to ask. Then, once the diary is full where it should be, the symptom pages bring the enquiries you want, for the presentations and ages you want, to the clinicians who have room.
What does it cost for a speech pathology practice?
Pricing is quote-based and set in ranges, all ex GST: one-off projects from $1,500 to $10,000, ongoing work on one service from $800 to $6,500 a month, and full-service retainers from $3,000 to $8,000 a month, on a three-month initial term then rolling. Work it from your own numbers: an NDIS speech pathology hour is $193.99, so a $1,500 a month retainer is about eight claimable hours. If the cancellation list fills two slots a week that would have gone empty and a draft saves each clinician an hour on progress reports, the retainer is covered inside the month. If the numbers do not say that, we say so in the first conversation and you keep them. Tell us what you need and we will quote it in writing. Our article on what allied health marketing costs in Australia sets out what moves a quote up or down.
Tell us what you need
You know your business. We know how to get it found and booked. Tell us what you need help with, we’ll find what’s in the way and clear it, so you can go forth.
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