Local SEO Basics for Podiatrists: Visibility, Reviews, and Results

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 good friend, big Jim Mac. So, Jimmy boy, how are doing today?

Tyson, I'm doing well. You know, I've got another kid with a broken wrist, but besides that, I I can't complain about much.

The name Jim, you there's so many variations and way that you can use it.

I think we might have talked about it previously. I think I've had about six or seven different iterations, whether it's my given name James or Jimmy, Jimmy Mac, Jimmer, Jimbo. There's there's no shortage of different ways to chop that up.

Okay. What are we talking about today other than my name is actually pretty simple. So what what are we talking about today?

Well, Ty, today we're gonna talk about

Some.

The basics of local SEO and kinda what that means. I think we've talked a lot about different types of just kind of maybe general SEO in the past, and we talked about some of these concepts. But I think just kinda like get back to basis and kind of inform people about the way that search is changing and just the importance of, number one, what is local SEO, and then some kind of practical tips about ways they can implement it, you know, in their clinic themselves or to market their their practice or talking to your marketer. And kinda being on the same wavelength as them to make sure that you understand the kind of direction they're trying to head and why this local SEO is a big deal.

Okay. So the big question is, what is local SEO and why does it matter?

Well, the quick definition is that it's basically online visibility for your clinic when people are searching locally. I think we've talked about it in a previous podcast, but, you know, some some marketing things, you know, maybe you see Pepsi or Taco Bell or McDonald's or Burger King. You know, that's trying to go after kind of a you see commercials or hear announcements on the radio or you see stuff on online, but that's trying to go for, like, a very large market. And the kind of tactics they will use in marketing is not as a local business. So the real game of marketing or the real, you know, objective of your marketing is how can you get in front of those local patients and be an option for them.

Know, when they think about a podiatrist, how can you be at the top of the list when they're thinking about people, even if maybe they're not your patient yet.

Yeah.

You know, how can you get that awareness? And you have to kinda approach that from a local business perspective as opposed to seeing what all these, you know, multinational major corporations are doing with their marketing. You need to kinda have a local first approach to your marketing.

Yeah. I suppose because you could have McDonald's and they might be shooting the ad in an area that has snow, and you never have snow in your area. And it's sort of irrelevant because you just go, okay. That was shot in a snowy area. That's not it's but I know I have a McDonald's.

Whereas if you were, yeah, a podiatrist, you've sort of you've gotta really use what's happening in your area.

No. Absolutely. Whether it be online or just kind of in your your regular marketing, you just wanna make sure you're connecting with those patients and showing that you understand what's going on in the local area. You know, like we talked about previously, you know, things like, you know, sponsorships or ways of local marketing along with, you know, online ads that are targeted for very specific areas, building, you know, things like areas we serve pages, which we might get into here in a little bit. But there's just ways to really kinda be more focused on that local that local market.

You Things like Google Business Profile comes to mind as well. Really being on top of kind these near me searches. So podiatrist near me or if I was based in St. Louis, Missouri, how can I rank number one for St? Louis Podiatrist?

These are things that are gonna actually drive patients to your practice. You know, more general marketing tactics or trying to appeal to everybody is gonna make you kind of invisible to everybody. So it's one of those things where you wanna really kinda find that way to make sure you're getting in front of your local audience, and there's some ways we'll kind of go over that.

So with your Google Business Profile, if you're using local images, for example, putting it in the Google business profile, making comments on it, you know, in and around your area, that would have to be beneficial as well.

Yeah. Definitely mentioning, you know, like, I think we might have talked in the past, if your your local area has like a a marathon, it's like Saint Louis marathon or something in your, you know, putting imagery on your Google posts or maybe writing blog posts about that. When people, you know, wanna know, like, who treats, you know, patients with, you know, after the marathon, if you they've hurt their ankle or hurt their foot or something. You know, it's a way for you to rank for terms like that. So that's really, really important.

But I think when it comes down to it, you know, I've I've worked with some of the clinics that have massive amounts of traffic. You know, whatever blog posts they're writing about generalized topics do really, really well. But when it comes down to it, what everybody is looking for is those those different types of marketing tactics that are actually gonna drive patient appointments and bookings. So while it's great to have, you know, a lot of people coming to your website and maybe a few of those are gonna convert, You'd rather have a smaller number that are very relevant and kind of near where you have clinic locations so that you're kinda getting the most bang for your buck. So trying to find that way of getting relevant local traffic is is kinda what we're looking for.

Yeah. And bottom line, that's what it's all about. You you you better have a hundred people locally contacting you than 10,000 people from another country.

Absolutely. Seeing

something they've written. Because they're they're not going to come into your clinic. You want you want bums and seats.

No. Exactly. You want that those that local SEO traction. You don't want national or regional. Maybe some people would like to go for that, but I'd say the majority of podiatry clinics in The US, Canada, and abroad, you know, that local traffic is what you're looking for.

Yeah. Unless you're selling a product, I suppose.

Yeah. If you're selling a product or you're trying to really make yourself seen, like, on the national scene as the best place in Australia or The US to get a specific type of procedure done. I've seen some clinics that have done that, but you're gonna spend a lot of money because you're not only focusing your marketing spend kind of in that 20 miles or 30 miles around your clinic. You're trying to hit other areas of the nation and trying to get people to come to you from a nearby state or maybe from across the country. And we have a country countries as big as Canada and The US, that could be a pretty pricey endeavor.

Yeah. And Australia, and there's not a lot in between.

No. For sure.

There's a lot of nothing. So what's next?

So next is like, you know, now we kinda know what it is, you know, and maybe you're doing some of this yourself or maybe working with a marketing partner. How can you measure and kind of know that you're getting traction with local SEO or some of the tactics you're doing? Like, we talked about sometimes having a built out Google Business profile page for your clinic, for your individual providers, that's a way of doing it. But how can you really know if it's working or if it's, you know, increasing with these efforts you're putting into it, whether you're doing it yourself, someone on your team, or you're spending money to pay someone to do it. The most simple way initially is that inside of Google Business Profile, there is kind of an analytics tab.

So you can kinda look and see how many clicks are going on your Google Business Profiles, how many calls are being generated from there, how many directions. So there's a few kinda basic metrics that let let you look up from the last six months on this kinda Google Business Profile.

And usually, they'll they'll email it to you as well. I I still I still get one once a month from a old shoe store that we used to own. I still get to see the stats, and even the own stuff that I do on my own website.

Yeah. So this is a good that's a good great way of just kind of initially kinda getting a a general sense of what's happening there. I don't think it's like I said, it's only usually goes back six months. So if you have that those emails, you know, maybe even chat GPT, you could throw create PDFs of the last two years or something. You can kind of make some graphs and some trends by uploading those PDFs somewhere.

But for most people, they're just gonna look at it and kinda get a general sense of where it's going from month to month. You know, if you're a little bit more technical technically savvy or maybe you're working with a, you know, marketing agency, they might implement tools like what's called Local Falcon. So this tool basically has the way of really helping you kinda narrow down some of these Google searches or these kind of near me searches. So you can see by utilizing local Falcon, you know, basically, it's like kind of little dots on a map. So maybe one of the dot the central dot is your clinic, and then maybe you try to get a radius of maybe five miles or 10 miles around your clinic to see where you're ranking of somewhere to to search on their mobile phone or on their home laptop as far as, you know, where do you rank.

Because, obviously, you're gonna rank best in your kind of in the locations closest to where your clinic is at.

Yeah. It makes sense.

But, you know, but knowing kinda like, do you have reach somewhere else or have you built out some local pages somewhere which allows you to reach out somewhere else in a nearby suburb or a local neighborhood? Maybe you have multiple clinics, so you have more physical presence there, but it just it's a way for you to determine, you know, how some of these local marketing efforts are working. And it's kinda what they call a geo grid. I'm not sure if you've seen those before, Tyson, but it's kinda like, you know, maybe it's green and that two miles around your clinic and it comes a little bit more yellow

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Orange to purple. You know? So it kinda gives you a general sense of what's going on. You know, like I said, it's much better than, you know sometimes people will, oh, I'm gonna be in the town next to me, so I'm gonna pull my phone out, and I'll check and see where I'm at, right, on my on my phone. But on Google, maybe do Google search.

But the problem with that is that Google is is kind of collecting all of your search history, and they kind of know what you've searched for before. So it's it's kind of a biased search, and you may not get that kind of kind of basic search that someone in that local area or someone that just lives in that area is gonna get more often. So it's important that, you know, if you by utilizing something like either a white spark or a a local Falcon, it's a way of either you or the marketing provider you're working with to kind of keep track of what's going on on kind of in a month to month basis. So you can keep kinda see more trends as far as how that's going. But like I talked about, there's also like Google Analytics and some other ways of determining how things are going locally.

When you build up those areas we serve pages, you can see is there traffic being driven to there through organic traffic or through paid traffic. What is driving traffic to those local pages that you build on your website? So kind of measuring is an important component of this local SEO approach because, you know, if you don't measure, it's tough to to really determine, you know, how things are going with that approach.

Definitely measuring. I'm gonna talk about measuring next week. But what what you can measure and what you what you should measure and what you, yeah, probably don't need to

measure. Absolutely.

So what's the what's the next step or the next thing you

should be

looking at?

Yeah. So it should be looking at, you know, some kind of key factors that influence that local SEO ranking. Right? There's gonna be some key things that, you know, you can do there's some some things you can do about it, and there's other things you can't. You know, there's like, for example, proximity to the searcher.

Like, most everybody that that listens to podcast probably has a physical location. So if you're in a specific ZIP code or a specific town, you're obviously gonna rank much, much better in there with a good website and Google business profile, that kind of presence. You know, sometimes a little bit out of your control if you're in a a super competitive area with lots of nearby podiatrists, maybe in the town right next to you, if you don't have that ZIP code. Right? I I've there's even some towns that, you know, there's a popular zip code and you're in they're in a different zip code and it's really tough to rank in that.

So, you know, proximity to the searcher, whoever's searching for those services is really, really important. Also, relevance. You know, when people are searching for foot surgeon or bunion surgery or, you know, different types of specialties, has to tie into both your Google Business profile and your website content. So you need to be, you know, relevant for the searcher. And if you don't have you know, maybe you're just one town over from Barrington, but you don't have a page nothing on your website talks about Barrington.

Nothing on your Google Business Report says anything about Barrington. Google is not gonna see you as relevant as opposed to someone that has out a page on the website that says that they treat patients from Barrington. You might maybe you won't be number one, but you can still rank in that maybe top three or top five on occasion.

Okay. So you can be right near a suburb that's a quite a popular suburb. But if that suburb is not mentioned, but in another clinic, who may not be as good as you, has that mentioned, they're gonna pop up more. And these are questions I've had people ask me in the past, oh, but I've got more reviews. I've got this, yet this other person's ranked higher.

And that's probably why because Google is looking at him going, you're closer to or the proximity and maybe relevance is is better than what they're doing.

No. Absolutely. It's a kind of a black box like you're talking about in the past with Google. You know, it's not it's not one factor that's gonna, you know, either put you at number one or put you down at number five. It's a kind of a combination of things and that kind of what the formula is and what the the weighting and the ranking of these things are is, at least for right now, it's only kind of known to Google, but that might change in the future.

The next thing in this kind of factors area is kind of, you know, we would call it prominent. So what kind of reviews do you have? How many reviews do you have? What what kind of star are they? You know, are they thanks doc, you know, like two sentences or are they a paragraph?

Yes. We we like the clinic or quick little things in a a four star review or is it someone that's written keywords in there that will help you rank for the things you wanna rank for? So, you know, having reviews, you know, citations from, you know, other blogs, links from other places, sometimes having media coverage linked back to your website and kinda link building.

Yeah. It's fair to say, you're talking about backlinks and things like that

from other places as well. Building and stuff can be helpful ways to make your website more prominent.

Yeah. I've noticed that when you see some of the bigger websites, not even podiatry, but sort of companies outside of podiatry, and you read any of their articles on their blogs, the amount of links that they have going to other places is pretty far where they link out. But then you'll be on other websites, and you'll see how many times there's links back to those companies as well. And it just builds your trust up over a period of time.

No. Exactly. That's what Google sees sees it as. The more links you have from different types of websites, know, it just builds more trust with them, and then they're willing to show you more in the results. And, you know, all another way to build trust is having website authority.

You know, if you've had the same domain for twenty years, that that's seen as, like, you're a stable clinic and you're you haven't been kind of bouncing around or hasn't, you know, been sold by three or four different people, you know. So if maybe it's only eight years, maybe it's five years, but as long as you have a good website, and it's been maintained, you know, that that's a a way that Google will kind of, you know, show show it to people and in a factor that will help you rank better locally. But there's also the technical health of your website. You know, if you have a website that takes, you know, ten seconds to load, even if it's an amazing website, Google's gonna ding you for that because it shouldn't load that slowly. And, you know, that's a that's a great way for people to wanna back out of your website and go to somebody else that has a, you know, a mobile friendly quick loading website.

So making sure that the technical details and the technical health of the website kind of are up to date and current is more and more important these days.

Yeah. Just about the backlink thing that you're talking about before too. So if if you have a podiatry and you're working with another company, you might be local football team, local basketball team. If they've got a website, you should be talking to the people that are organizing and running that and and talk about actually having backlinks to each other.

Yeah. You can you can run into, like, you know, having agreements with folks and just being kind of open and honest about that. But, like, sometimes you just gotta be careful about buying links from kind of these these kinda, like, black hat.

Yeah. It wasn't more I wasn't talking about buying them. It was more that like, when we used to work with the Cairns Taipans, which was the local the local team in the National League, and and the guy who's the CEO, we just had a thing that anytime we were writing a basketball article, we would tag the Cairns Taipans. Sure. And the Cairns Taipans, whenever they were talking about anything, we'd try and get them to do backlinks back to our clinic.

We just found that was, like, very helpful.

No. It's it's super helpful. The the the higher, you know, trust in a kind of domain authority that website has that links to you, it's gonna be a huge signal that Google to Google that you're trustworthy. And like I said, yeah, I would like, that's that's totally fine to do that with kinda reputable link trading of links and backlinks in that fashion. But a lot of clinics and a lot of people will be sometimes even you know, if you're working with specific marketing agencies, they'll it's oh, we're gonna do some link building for you.

You should really ask them how they are doing that link building. It's one of those kinda strategies we'll get into here, but you definitely don't want them buying links from some random places that have a high authority because they someone let a domain expire, someone went and bought this higher domain authority website, and now they're, like, sending you links from something's not relevant, but it's a high domain authority, so you're kinda getting some Google juice from it. But those are usually found out, and it's a little bit probably too geeky for this conversation, but definitely stay away from buying links.

I love that Google juice. You can picture that on a shirt. I run on Google juice. So anyway

Sipping on Google juice.

So are are there ways your clinic can, yeah, like, improve the local search visibility?

Yes. Once you know the factors, right, then you can kinda go, well, how do I kind of adjust these factors or what things can I work on or something I'm working with in my marketing work on to really try to increase my local search visibility? And first and foremost is making sure that you're up to optimizing, updating your Google Business profile. Like I said, making sure you have a great one for your clinic, one for each of the providers in your practice, and having low having recent photos, making sure that all the services you provide, that all the kinda name, address, contact information is up to date, your hours are up to date. You know, you're basically posting either every week or every two weeks on Yeah.

Your Google kinda the Google posts to let them show that you are active and it's something that you're doing. So that's first and foremost. Also, you know, having a patient review workflow is super important, and then responding to both positive and negative reviews shows Google that you are active and that people are interacting with your clinic and your Google Business profile. It helps build trust and helps you rank more locally. And then it's building these, like, you know, backlinks and local citations, whether it be other health directories, maybe it's other local media, maybe it's with health care sites, maybe it's with some of your partners, maybe it's running shoe stores or sports teams like you talked about, Tyson.

Getting you these kind of high authority, well trusted websites to link link to you is a way to really kinda help bolster that local search visibility.

So basically, what I think people need to understand too, if you've got your website, you've even got the Google Business profile. If you just put it there and you just leave it, it doesn't give you any Google juice. Google wants to see that you're you're an active participant in growing your business and educating the people that may actually need your services.

No. Absolutely. It can't they can't be dormant. Right? It's not a set it and forget it, you know, kind of situation.

I think a lot of people wish that, you know, websites and Google and all these kind of ways of getting local visibility could just be build it and then, like, let it ride for, you know, ten or fifteen years then come back to it. But it's not. It's like tending a garden. You have to be constantly doing things on it and adjusting to make sure that not only you're in line with kind of their current regulations that Google puts out, but, you know, they're gonna they're gonna penalize those that don't interact with them, and they're gonna those that do will benefit. So it's really, really important.

And last but not least in this little area here is that, you know, I talked about it briefly, and we have a full podcast on it, but it's building these areas we serve pages. You know, maybe you're not located in Barrington or in St. Louis, but if you're nearby and you have a page where you show that you treat pay you're a podiatrist that treats patients from that location, it's gonna help you rank locally. I call these, you know, like I said, areas we serve pages.

Yeah.

They're really simple to make. You know, it's there's a kind of a template that I have. You can you know, if you email us, I can show you kinda how to make these, but it's a great way to drive relevant local traffic to your website, and it can really bolster that traffic that's coming in there with with patients that would actually book as opposed to some of the content you make will just be some person in from Taiwan that's never gonna come visit your clinic. So you just wanna make sure that the time and effort you're putting in things or the the money you're putting into things that it's, you know, potentially gonna turn into to more business for your practice.

Yeah. And then I said, like and I think it depends who where you are. Like, in Cairns, for example, it's a 50,000 people. It's pretty easy to get around. It's it's Cairns.

Yeah. You just put Cairns there. Everything is Cairns. But if you're in a, like, a capital city like Brisbane, there's two or Sydney, there's 4,000,000 people down there.

Yeah.

And they always say, plus the average person changes address or locations every seven years. So you get somebody who moves into a town of or a city where there's 4,000,000 people, and they're looking for a podiatrist in their area, and they don't really know the other areas around there. You could be just around the corner, but you're in a different suburb, and they're totally gonna they might even drive past you and go somewhere else purely because you didn't pop up in a search.

No. Absolutely. It's just one of those things you have to, like, be proactive about. It's it's not just gonna happen and yeah. Just have to kinda do that.

Okay. So if you got any action steps that everybody should be doing now this month.

Yeah. So so to kinda wrap things up, I think, you know, these are simple things that anyone that's in practice can do now. And just kinda at least learn a little bit about s local SEO. So like I said, you can either do it yourself or you can kinda work with your podi podiatry and marketing, you know, person to try to implement these things.

Oh, what

do you do? Is Or work with me. Exactly. So so first and foremost is audit your your clinic's Google Business profile. Maybe look at your own.

Maybe you have a colleague at your clinic. But just take a look at what you currently have there. You know, does the do the photos look are the photos current? Do they kind of show the kind of professional image you wanna have for your clinic? Because like we talked about previously, not everybody these days is going to your website.

So you wanna make sure that your Google Business profile is is super professional that really kind of talks to your ideal patient. So first and foremost, are you doing that? And if not, you know, change those things. Just be a little bit more active on Google Business profile. Super helpful.

Then, you know, look at your Google's business from analytics. I think it's important to, like, see, you know, what has the trend been over the last six months as far as number of phone calls from your profile? You know, are there people more clicking through? Are people looking for directions? What does that trend line look?

Is it flat? Is it going down? Is it going up? You know, if you're a little bit more geeky, you can look into different software packages like LocalFalcon or WhiteSpark that have that kinda local SEO ways of, you know, looking in your local area. But, you know, I would probably hold off on that unless you're just really, really into marketing.

Yeah. Also, I I kinda identified, you know, five different either, you know, websites or local citation providers, you know, that maybe it's a clinic you work with, someone that you can maybe exchange links with on your website or let you know, maybe you're already doing it. You could let them know that you featured them on a local a recent blog post or on one of your social channels to kinda help them. You know, it's sometimes one thing to kind of toot your own horn and kinda, like, talk about yourself all the time. But when you give other people in your local community, whether it be a partner or an organization, a little bit of love and a link, they're probably more than willing to return that to you.

So that's an important component. If you're not getting patient reviews right now, you know, I'm happy to kinda help you work through a workflow to to kinda make that happen with you and your staff. It's gold. You know, if you you know, just think about yourself. If you're looking for a a dentist or, you know, some type of provider, and there's someone that has six reviews and they're 3.6 stars, or there's someone that has 720 and they're 4.7, like, who who are you gonna go see for the for that?

So just think about your own experiences. But, you know, if someone's receiving excellent care, don't be shy. They're gonna be more than willing willing to kinda help you if you ask them, but you do have to ask permission and do that. And then, you know, create a local hyper local blog post or service page, you know, whether it be a a town or suburb near you. You know, work with someone that builds your website to build that errors we serve page so you can get more traffic from the from that location.

But these are just simple things. You know, local SEO is super, super important. Like we talked about that's, you know, getting in front of those local patients and being visible both whether it be online or with your offline marketing is huge. So, you know, don't you know, like I said, don't try to get caught up in, like, what other people appear to be doing or what other major multinational companies are doing, not in the podiatry or not in the medical marketing sphere. You could learn a lot from from dentists.

Look at what chiropractors are doing in your local area. Maybe look at other podiatry clinics, but you don't need to be emulating, you know, Pepsi or Coca Cola or those folks. I mean, you can learn from them, but your tactics and the way you get in front of your local patients is definitely different.

Yeah. And getting on just the last thing I wanna say about the reviews as well. I know I said, if you give reviews, you get reviews because it becomes top of mind. And I was I did a barbecue cooking class recently. And by with that, I shot this little eight second video as he was squeezing lime on the prawn and chorizo skewer.

It was an eight second video. I just threw it on YouTube just with a little bit of music from yellow, you know, the oh, yeah, as he squeezed it on there. In the first twenty four hours, I had almost 7,000 views on YouTube. And what was funny is the owners of the barbecue store at the beginning of the day when they're doing the cooking class said, we really thrive on reviews and social media. So if you wanna take photos, if you wanna post them, they were just encouraging us to do it.

And they said, is there anyone here in witness protection? Because we're gonna take some photos, and we'll have a big laugh about it. And the more we drank, the funnier it got. But by me posting those pictures, probably about five guys from the Muay Thai gym I go to wanna go to the next one. They said, we should go as a group.

And on the end, because I'm doing that, it keeps it top of mind with me that I do that for other people. Therefore, I talk about it a lot more, which is means when I'm talking to somebody like we're talking now, if people are enjoying our podcast, feel free to leave a review.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So that's what I wanna say. You just gotta I think you need to give to receive as well.

A %.

And I love promoting other businesses that I feel are doing the right thing, doing something unique, and I think our patience would be exactly the same.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Think it is is one of those things where the the more you give, the more you get in a way.

So Well, you mentioned some quirky little things that we do in a clinic sometimes that patients don't we would have been doing something, and you would have had a patient say, oh, that's really interesting how you did that. And if you said to a patient, did you find that interesting? Yeah. Do wanna film me doing the next one? And they feel free to post that online.

That's some quirky little thing you saw me do at such and such x y z podiatry.

Exactly.

Yeah. If people are watching listening to the episodes, they'll understand the reference to x y z podiatry.

I was we gotta fit that into every episode somehow.

I know. Anything you wanna add before we

wrap up? No. I think that I kinda went over it. So, like, if anybody has any questions about, you know, needs coaching or, you know, some guidance along the way, you know, Tyson is definitely there to to help you out with that. And if you need implementation of some of these different strategies that we talked about today, you know, or you just want some ideas, definitely don't hesitate to reach out to us.

Yeah. I've realized something that I mentioned to a client only today, and we're talking about business coaching. And I said to him, I'm not really a business coach. I'm more of a business teacher. Because if you if there's a specific area in your clinic that you're not quite sure how to do it, whether it's setting up a system or doing something with patients, I said, I can teach you that really, really easy.

And some people, that's all they need. They don't need a coach. They just need to be taught a couple of basics.

So Yeah. Exactly. It's it's great to have someone on your side that can help guide you through those situations.

More on that soon. Okay. I look forward to talking to you talking to you next week, Jim. See you.

Bye now. Okay. Bye. Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDaniel. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing.

That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.