Boosting Local Visibility: Optimizing Your Podiatry Clinic's SEO with Areas We Serve Pages

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome to this week's episode of Podiatry Marketing. With me, as usual, is my cohost, big Jim Mac. How are you doing today, Jim?

I'm doing fantastic, Tyson. How about yourself?

I'm good. It's life is always good. What's here to complain about? People complain about things all the time. Just think life is too enjoyable to complain about anything.

Weather, traffic, all those kind of little things.

World problems, that's what it is. I I know if I mentioned on one of the podcasts earlier on and or I said this to a coaching client. Is it any problem that you have that can be fixed with money is not a problem?

I like that. That's

good. And when you think about it, you think about any problem that's going on in your life. If money can fix the problem, then it's not really a problem because there's a lot of problems that money can't fix, and they're usually not good. So if you're at home wallowing in your misery about something going on in your life that's terrible, well, if money can fix it, it's not a problem. Money can't fix it, then, yes, you have a problem.

But after you listen to this episode, you'll be much happier. And, yeah, so that's why you tune in to Rick. So what are we talking about today, Jim?

Yeah. So today, you know, in the past, we've talked a lot about kind of a topic called local relevance, you know, kinda how can you make your clinic be visible in your local area. But today, we're getting a little more tactical and talk specifically about what I call areas we serve pages. So on everybody's website, you know, obviously, you're gonna show up really well in a local area where your clinic is located, both in for your website and usually for your Google Business profile. But, you know, maybe it's some nearby suburbs or some nearby neighborhoods.

You're not really sure why you aren't showing up there, but there's there's some ways to build out kind of your website and your online presence to kinda get more of that local visibility, not only in search, but just kinda coming up in different platforms. It is kinda like local SEO or local search in the optimization. So there's you know, I've given away some secrets today. You know, this is stuff that I usually only give away to the the people I work with. To be elite.

No. Exactly. So pay attention today because we'll give you a real rundown about what these areas we serve pages are and why they can benefit, you know, your your click in ways to drive more local patients to your practice.

And this would be even more important when you have a a suburb or, you know, your little town and is surrounded by a lot of other towns that are, yeah, similar size, but you're only mentioning your town and also all these other people might slightly be missing out on that.

Yeah. So it can be like a suburb and other local suburbs or it can be a city because, you know, if you're, let's say, you're ever trying to advertise on New York City Podiatrist, right, and maybe someone's, you know, up in The Bronx and you're in Lower Manhattan, those are two very different places. So it's not only just suburbs. It can be other small towns. It can be other neighborhoods.

It really can apply in a lot of different ways to kind of build out these pages to really to kind of stand out to people not only in the area where you are, but those kind of nearby neighborhoods, towns, or suburbs.

Yeah. I remember before even the Internet became super popular or as it is today, back when they had the Yellow Pages, for example. And when Yellow Pages were first going online, and my clinic was in a suburb called Warrie, which was about 50 meters away from another suburb called Irville. Irville was actually in Cairns. Warrie was not in Cairns even though it was only 50 meters away.

So whenever you searched podiatrist in Cairns, my clinic would not turn up. It just wouldn't show up anywhere. And it probably cost me a lot of money until I figured out how to actually pop up in that search. But back then, the only way I could pop in that search was moving. So I moved my clinic 50 meters, but now there's smarter ways to do it.

Absolutely. So what are we gonna start on?

Yeah. So start we'll kinda start with kind of a basic term that everyone listen to podcast should learn or kind of understand, and I'll try to explain it in-depth today. And that's really kind of understanding the the importance of local keywords. You know, keywords are basically a fancy way of talking about the the kind of words people type into Google to search for things. And you know, there's definitely certain keywords that are more valuable to a clinic than others.

You know, if you have a patient that's searching for let's say heel pain, that may not be with something that the clinic wants to show up for. And you think, of course I treat heel pain why wouldn't I want to show up for that search and the reason is that number one you know maybe someone has a one or two out of ten in pain and they just they're kind of curious to know what could be the causation of it and trying to figure out some things they can do at home maybe to ice it or adjust their activity or change their shoe gear. It's more of what I'd call like an informational search. They're not really seeking you or your your your current services right now. Maybe there is some benefit to have a page on your website that describes those things that might pop up, but you're going to see a lot of larger websites show up there, whether it be, you know, the Mayo Clinic website or WebMD.

A lot of websites that have a lot of kind of power and a lot of links to them, it's going to be very difficult for your clinic to show up for terms like that. So you know whether it be paid advertising or just organic search, you don't necessarily want patients that are searching for these informational terms. You want more that are kind of include some type of local keyword in them and then also what you do. So when people are looking for, let's say, if you're located in a suburb of Portland, Oregon called Beaverton, you'd want someone that's searching Beaverton Podiatrist, right, or Beaverton foot and ankle doctor. So these are the kinds of words that are a lot more highly relevant to you in your clinic because you can tell that someone is looking up for you in that local area.

And if you happen to be in Beaverton or nearby that, that can be a pretty important keyword or local keyword to have. So that's that that's number one.

Okay. Well, that makes perfect sense. So you're saying if somebody is just going heel pain, they're not probably really looking for an answer right now. They're just vaguely searching for information. But when they're ready, they've got to that point where they're like, I need to get this this heel pain fixed.

They're gonna go, is there a podiatrist who fixes heel pain in Beaverton? And therefore Yeah. Exactly. If you don't have Beaverton in some of your SEO, you're gonna be ranked lower than the people that do.

No. Exactly. So the the key is to have a, you know, kind of some of these local keywords showing up on your website, you know, on different pages, you know, helping you kind of improve your search rankings because it is, you know, like you said, Beaverton, you know, you need to have the word Beaverton and then some of the services you probably whether it be heel pain treatment or podiatrist or foot doctor or, you know, heel pain orthotics. You know, if you can show up and but it also having that local term like Beaverton in there has a real impact on where you're gonna show up kind of in the the area below the maps. You know, that's kind of the you know, usually get about three or four links around the maps, and that's gonna be based off those map links are really really important, but that's gonna be more GPS or if your clinic is in that local area, they'll show up in the maps more easily.

But the the area right below it is still a really important part of Google search which is the organic results. And they'll show up in that organic result for, let's say you're not even located in Beaverton, but you would like to have patients from there because you're in a nearby suburb. It gives you a chance to rank in that top one, two, or three if you have a a really helpful page that kind of addresses the need of that patient.

It just that makes a lot of sense because it's no different to anything that we're searching for. When you're when you're doing a serious search, you will normally mention the location that you're in so that it it really targets where you are right now, and and you don't wanna have to travel a huge distance either.

No. It it only does it target that, but, like, it it adds familiarity by having that location in it. It's just not a generic heel pain treatment or heel pain podiatrist kind of a page. It's like people know that other local town. They they know there's good you know, it's as good as their suburb, you know, if it's nearby.

And it just kind of it makes it feel more relevant to them as some as opposed to like more like a generic podiatrist or generic heel pain. Sometimes the mistake I will see sometimes when people either run ads or they're trying to do everything is they they put all the names of all the locations on their homepage. You know, there's like 10 or 15 towns that they treat on the single homepage, and then Google and the way it's crawled by Google kinda crawlers to to know what is relevant on the page of every town within 50 miles on that page, you know it's it's gonna be confused about who where you are and who you're actually treating. So you know when you it's not only relevant for the patients seeking it but it's also relevant for the search engines to make sure they're ranking that page and getting that visibility for the clinic.

So are you saying if you have too many locations on your home page, that gets confusing?

Yeah. It does get confusing because if you're if you have, you know, like I said, 15 or 20 different towns there and Google's crawling the page, you know, it really needs to be broken down, and we'll get into this in a little bit, but you really have to create these kind of very specific effective areas we serve pages about each location, to make sure that you're not confusing Google and that you have that opportunity to rank for that local keyword plus whatever type of treatment you wanna provide.

Okay. So if someone was so it's heel pain, are you saying you have multiple articles about heel pain and mention certain locations for each time you're actually doing it.

So generally, instead of doing articles, you wanna have kind of a static page Yeah. Kind of a the section would be, you know, up near your navigation, whether it be about us, you know, the treatments and those things that you provide, there's a section basically called areas we serve and it's generally recommend people select about the kind of 10 either suburbs, nearby towns, or neighborhoods that are relevant to them in their clinic and build out kind of these areas we serve pages. And you know what I would generally say is the areas we serve pages would have like a headline saying like you know podiatrist treating patients in Beaverton as kind of the first headline and then you're writing about you know doctor Tom Smith you know has been treating patients from Beaverton for the last twenty years. He's a you know a registered and licensed foot and ankle surgeon in nearby you know in a nearby town. You you can just kind of run a little bit about his, you know, your background, but then really jumping into like, you know, what you treat, you know, how far are you away, you know, maybe having an embedded Google Map as a section as well on that page that shows them that, oh, you're only five minutes from Beaverton.

You know, maybe pick out kind of this the town center and how far are you away from the town center of Beaverton. So people have a general sense of like, oh, it's only his clinic's only seven minutes from where I'm from or from my town. So obviously, towns can be big. You know, it's not it may not be exact, but it does give them a ballpark of how far you are, what side of town you're on if they were to drive and come see you. And then you have that link to directions and link to the map that makes it really easy for them.

And obviously, you know, there's gonna be a couple kind of call to actions or, you know, make an appointment or request an appointment buttons on that page, but it should be about, you know, just kinda mostly about building trust and showing that you are, you know, a relevant local expert that that can take care of their needs. So building that page out with sections that, like I talked about, you know, kind of a describe describing who you are, where you're located, making sure you're using, you know, Beaverton Podiatrist or Beaverton Foot Doctor in not an annoying way. You don't want to be like putting that in every sentence. If it's said every sentence it's kind of a red flag even for Google to say like, this is what we call keyword stuffing. So it has to make some sense.

But if you do, you know, make relevant headlines and some sub headlines and some text in there, make sure you're kind of including some different variations of it. You know, maybe it's foot and ankle doctor, it's podiatrist, it's podiatric physician. There's some ways to kind of change it up a little bit so it's not just beating someone's head over, you know, and and kind of annoying folks with kinda saying in every sentence.

Yeah. But it makes sense because I know, yeah, twelve, fourteen years ago, word stuffing was just, hey. You're looking for a podiatrist in or when we treat patients and they mentioned 15 different suburb, and they kept just repeating it constantly through an article, and it was very annoying to read. So you imagine it'd be annoying for the patient, but they were doing it so that they ranked better. But I like the idea what you're saying.

So it's each individual area you wanna tell you, you're having a page for that area. Talking about that, I love the idea of the map and the distance from that particular suburb to where you are, then a list of conditions that you treat, which then could have hyperlinks to other areas in your page, then get more information. So it's it's like opening up all these doors to all these different areas. Because like I said, if if I went to a certain town and I said, my wife, do you wanna go for dinner tonight? And she said, I love Italian, but we would probably go Italian restaurant in, say, Beaverton.

Mhmm.

Now if there was an Italian restaurant just outside of there, but they mentioned areas that they served, that could be good enough for us.

No. Absolutely. I think there's a there's a fine balance between writing for search engines and writing for humans. Right? And you want to definitely on the side of mentioning those things are important search engines, but you still have to think that someone's gonna have to read this and and and build some trust with you.

So, you know, sometimes obviously having a photo of yourself or of you and your staff and having some of these kind of badges of, you know, maybe there's some certifications or some board some board certifications or organizations you're part of you can put on the page. Along with the text that, you know, Google bots are gonna read, you wanna make sure you're showing some symbols of trust to humans that maybe just be scanning the page. Maybe there's some testimonials on this page as well. Maybe you can pick out three or maybe there's some some ways to embed those positive reviews on the page as well if you're in a local area that allows that stuff to be on your website. So yeah it's about building these pages and incorporating.

Sometimes you know maybe it's your home maybe your clinic's not located in your hometown, maybe you were born and raised in it you know in the town next to Beaverton and you can you know for that page you can like, in if you're born and raised in Tualatin, which is near Beaverton, you can say that on that page. Or maybe you've worked worked at some different events. You volunteered at some things in that other local suburb. You know, it's okay to add those kind of relevant local details to each of these pages. They don't look like carbon copies.

They're gonna be a little bit similar of a of a template of a format, but if there's ways you can find to to make them a little bit more authentic or a little bit different from the other ones, that's definitely a bonus.

Well, I think especially in yeah. I'm not sure about America, yeah, American geography, but I know in Australia, especially in some country areas, where there's a lot of small little towns that only have two or 3,000 people scattered all over the place. And somebody might be from a small country town in in Victoria, and if they only say that they're in that town, they could totally miss out on all these other people. Whereas they did, like I said, a variation of a page, an area page for each of those ones, making them slightly different so it doesn't just it's not a carbon copy of each one. I can just see how they can benefit from that so much.

No. Absolutely. And sometimes it is that, you know, on the page content that is helpful, but there's also some stuff that's kind of like what everybody sees. Right? When you pull up a website, you can see those words.

You can see those things. But there's also kind of a a technical SEO aspect of a web page that are built that you'll have to make sure that, you know, whoever you're working with, your marketing provider, they're building the page in the right way. Because like I talked about, you know, Google Google and other search engines kind of scan every page that's on the webs on your website. And you wanna make sure that whoever's building the website knows how to use kind of what were called meta tags and headers and these kind of schema markup options. They're gonna really optimize to make sure these search engines find the page and then rank it well.

So it can also be beneficial to, you know, work with someone that knows what they're doing in these areas because if you're just, know, kind of slapping up a web page, you might be missing on some of these more technical aspects that aren't necessarily visible to kind of the lay to a lay person or someone that doesn't have kind of a deeper experience about how to build websites.

So your 15 year old son isn't necessarily always gonna be the best person to do your website for

you? Yeah. If you throw up a Wix or a Squarespace website and just like, you know, write all the content there, it's probably not what we call SEO optimized. There's definitely probably some improvements that could be made there.

I just love it when I I go into a particular podiatry page and someone mentions about, I'm thinking about getting a website, what should I do? And another podiatry go, oh, I just did mine on Wix and I did it ten years ago and I haven't touched it since and it's awesome. And you feel like typing in there, please don't listen to them. Please please do not listen to them. And, hopefully, people listening to this episode have seen those sort of posts before and again, okay.

That's why I'm listening to this podcast so I can actually get the correct information. Hopefully. Hopefully. Talk to Jim. So what's next?

I would say there's you know, building these local pages also can be beneficial beyond just kind of the showing up higher in search engine in SEO and the the search engine rankings. One aspect I would say is that these pages not only work well for, you know, trying to rank there, but also if you do have any kind of if you're utilizing Google search ads, these are great pages to send people to and basically building out campaigns that are more locally based. And a lot of people listening to this podcast probably have heard us talk previously about how you can kind of geo target or have ads running in a very specific geographies whether it be zip codes or postal codes. And when someone lands, if a patient types in Beaverton Podiatrist and then they land on a page. They click on your ad or your link, and they add on a they don't just land on the generic homepage of a clinic, but something that talks about being a Beaverton Podiatrist or a podiatrist serving Beaverton.

It's a much more personalized, relevant landing page for someone to show up on your website on, and it just feels more like what they were asking for as opposed to just showing up on your homepage. So that's gonna build things like trust. You know, people are gonna you know, it's the fact that you're kind of showcasing familiarity with a local area. It's gonna build trust and credibility with local patients, so that's really really important. You know, you're gonna reach like I talked about, by having these pages on your website, you're gonna reach more of the patients you want to treat that are nearby towns, neighborhoods, or suburbs.

Know if you don't have those pages on your website you're just not going to show up. Even if you make a list of 20 or 30 of the nearby towns on one single page it's not gonna be as effective as this areas we serve page methodology. So definitely consider that. And like I talked about, you know, when you when you have these local pages, you wanna have case studies and success stories if possible. If you're in The US or Canada where it allows that, it's gonna help build that trust in the patients that you have.

And like I talked about, a lot of people are gonna link they click on either the ads or the links are looking for podiatrist in that with that local keyword, whether it be Beaverton or New York City or Chicago or Fargo, North North Dakota. You just wanna make sure that you have a page that's relevant to them and where they're at so they feel the confidence to click through and make an appointment in your practice.

Yeah. One of the things you touched on before though, you mentioned it a couple of times that sort of relates to this as well. When you said earlier on about having authentic photos, but then you also mentioned events, like, in in local areas, yeah, and and local cultures. So it sort of makes sense on each of these pages too that having an authentic photo that when soon as somebody sees it knows that that's from that area, and if you happen to be in it as well, would sort of build up that whole trust level.

No. Absolutely. Like, if they've you know, let's say you have like like Beaverton has a marathon or a 10 k or something and you volunteered at the medical tent and they see that, like, it's a picture of you at that medical tent at that event in Beaverton. It's gonna it just it it's like you've said, like photos will sometimes whether it be symbols of trust or photos of you doing certain things, you know, until chat GPT or AI comes along and lets you, you know, fabricate photos like that, which I definitely would not recommend. You know, having those authentic photos of you being a part of the community, showing that it's obviously, you're located in one town, but you really serve the entire area can be a really powerful way to to build trust and, you know, display your expertise to to to prospective patients.

So definitely would recommend that as well.

Yeah. I have seen somebody do a page on Twitter. They were talking about a particular area that was outside of their suburb, but they had a photo there of themselves with a patient. And the patient wasn't so much using using a testimony because she can't in Australia, but they had a photo with the patient saying, oh, I'm at the local, and they mentioned the name of the markets that they were at. But they're saying, hey.

I bumped into one of my patients. And I don't know if you said, one of my patients at the local markets at such and such, but they're talking about that particular area. And when I saw that, I went, that's a freaking brilliant page. Because straight away, I know that's not your suburb, but you've actually you're you're now blending it into your website.

Yeah. There there's all these different ways of, you know, really trying to figure out how to get more local visibility, whether that be in the real world or online, and I think those are that's a great way to go about it.

Oh, that's got my mind just ticking over. Even with my even though, like, with the coaching and stuff that I do, and I I can do it anywhere in the world, but there's more areas. There's probably yeah. I just my mind's ticking over here. Absolutely.

So, like, remember Ricochet Rabbit? Remember the card in Ricochet Rabbit? Could be before your time.

Probably before my time or it's maybe it's not an American thing.

Well, Ricochet Rabbit was an American thing because he was a I'm pretty sure he was a sheriff. And he

had a gun look him up once you get off here.

Yeah. He just bounced from side to side when something exciting happened. Anyway, anyone who's my age will know who Ricochet Rabbit is. Let's just move on because they will just make no sense.

Yeah. So I would say, you know, like, to kind of review what we talked about today, you know, really trying I would first really recommend people try to understand and kind of get the importance of these local keywords. Like we've talked about, it's not you wanna show up for things with that local keyword. It'd be Beaverton Podiatrist, Beaverton Foot Doctor, Beaverton heel pain. You know, showing up for generic search terms like heel pain or bunion surgery is gonna lead to not only expensive Google Ads, but not really relevant clicks.

So the more of these kind of relevant clicks you can get based off of organic or paid local keyword searches is really, really important. And, you know, you know, kind of rewind and you can create these effective areas we serve pages, which is gonna really boast local visibility, not only where you're practicing at, but also maybe the five, ten, or 15 local suburbs, towns, or neighborhoods near practice. So, you know, optimize and kind of have a well structured pages that are specific to each of those areas. Don't just put all the information on one page and pray they show up because you had you know the word you know 10 or 15 towns on that one page. You're gonna have really well crafted individual areas we serve pages.

And last but not least you know there's real a lot of benefits by doing this. Like I said you're going to be more visible locally, you're going enhance patient trust, and you're going to reach patients not only in your town or your neighborhood, but you know other folks nearby are going to see you, hear about your success stories, see the great case studies you provide, and wanna be your patient. So I really recommend that if anybody has any questions, this if this didn't make sense or you want to go in more detail, definitely reach out or, you know, send us an email. It'd be great to to be in contact. You can go to podiatry.marketing and send some questions our way.

Well, I gotta say, I think this has been the best explanation ever of talking about areas on your website that I've ever heard. I've heard people mentioned before, and I know the importance of it, but this has been the clearest example on how to use it the right way. So double thumbs up, Jim. Was really good. Yeah.

Not not that I have any doubt, but like I said, I've heard other people talk about, oh, you gotta, you know, have different locations so people can find you, but you've just explained it in such a step by step process and easy way to actually put it together. And if they don't wanna do it themselves, then you just reach out to you and you can sort of work through all that with them. They just need to provide some good photos.

Absolutely.

Okay. Anything else to add before we wrap up?

No. I think we're good.

Okay. That was brilliant. I look forward to talking to next week.

Take care, Tyson.

Okay. Bye. Bye now.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim Mcdonald. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.