Online Visibility: What Actually Moves the Needle for Private Practices

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 the podiatry marketing podcast. With me, as usual, is my good friend, big Jim Mack, aka Jim McDannald. How you doing today, Jim?

I said I'm doing alright. I'm pondering the important questions of life like to beard or not to beard. It's cold here in Montreal, and you can see them. Maybe if if the people are watching on YouTube, they can see a little bit of a scruff, but I couldn't decide today if I wanted to shave my face or just let it grow out a little bit.

I don't have to worry about that. I do. Like seriously, I couldn't grow a beard if I save to save my life. Sometimes I I it was about five or six years ago, so I'm not gonna shave for a while, and I just let it grow out until there was a photo of me online and somebody made a comment to me and said, okay, Tyson. Whatever the bet was that you lost, tell them the joke's over.

We can't you need to shave. It wasn't very good, so can't do it. So what are we talking about today?

Yeah. So today, we're gonna talk about online visibility and what actually moves the needle for private practices. I think this is a term that, you know, gets thrown out there quite a bit now online presence, online visibility, your website, know what what is online visibility and you know how can this be helpful to people that are trying to get patients to notice them, trust them, and then make appointments.

Okay. Sounds like a good topic. Let's get started.

Sure. So the first point would be online visibility isn't about having a website. It's about being found. You know, here's the thing, know, having a website doesn't mean you're visible. You know, I talked to podiatrists all the time who say, I've got a website.

I'm good. But when you search for the podiatrist in their city, they're nowhere. Visibility means, you know, being found the the exact moment when somebody needs you. When podiatrist Googles heel pain doctor near me at 9PM, do you show up? That's visibility.

So your website is the foundation, but without traffic, it's just a digital, you know, business card sitting there gathering dust. So the question isn't do you have a website? It's can patients actually find you?

Yeah. And I know you'll hear some people when you're at podiatry conferences and people will talk about websites. And people always ask, oh, who should I get to do my website for me? And there's always that podiatry, especially on online groups like Facebook, or put their hand up and go, I did my own website, or my 13 year old son did my website four years ago, and it's awesome. And I haven't touched it or done anything with it since, and it just it sits there because they think because I have a website, then that's all I need.

No. Exactly. It's it's something where it's ridiculous. You know, I a lot of websites from the late nineteen nineties, early two thousands, and you're just thinking like, I don't think that's building a lot of trust with patients these days that wanna contact the clinic via text message or via a chatbot or, you know, potentially fill out a form online. So if if you're if you're not kinda keeping up with things, you're gonna be less and less visible over time.

To me, it's no different to walking in a podiatry clinic, and the podiatrist has got rusty instruments. The patients notice. I think if you have a bit of a rusty website, it's it's gonna have the same impact on people. Then no trust is gonna be built.

No. For sure. And like I said, visibility is really about kind of being found in the moment. So, you know, the three places that people are searching right now, you know, for the most part, you're gonna be found in Google search, you know, Google Maps, you know, when patients are looking for and researching reviews, you know, maybe in the future AI chatbots and those kind of things are gonna gain popularity. But, you know, your website is the foundation, but it's useless without any kind of traffic going that way.

So when you think of visibility as the bridge between your expertise and the patients who need it, that's when you're gonna really kind of unlock the potential of, you know, of your online visibility and being local, you know, being visible to those local patients who are looking for foot and ankle services.

And when you're saying your Google search, Google Maps, that's just making sure you got all that information in there sorted out?

Yeah. Absolutely. Just make sure that when you have your Google Business profile that everything is in line as far as the the address, the name of your clinic, the the right categories. So when people are searching, there's gonna be different areas where you're gonna show up in Google search for the the Google Google business profile area or the organic results or also in the maps. You know, some of that stuff can somewhat be manipulated by advertising search ads or local service ads.

But yeah, you gotta have those things kinda locked in to make sure that you're maximally visible on Google's properties.

Well, mate. When you talk about Google Maps too, when we had the last trip to The US, there's a couple of times we had to go to a particular business. And so I would just go straight to Google Maps, and I knew what their address was. So I would put that address in. Google Maps would show me that area, and I'd, you know, zoom in to try and find where they were specifically in relation to other businesses.

You see all these other business names coming up, but their name wasn't there. And I was like, okay. So is the business still there, or isn't it there? I found them on the website, it gave me the address, but I couldn't actually find them on Google Maps. And it actually made me second guess whether we should make the effort of going there or just go somewhere else.

Yeah. There can be a lot of kind of trust lost if it's if it's not clear. They don't have that visibility and you can't see them online. It's like, is it a scam? You know, people they're kind of you know, their their ears kinda perk up and people get a little suspicious or curious if if you don't have that built out.

Oh, I'm I'm a very suspicious person. I I am. If anything just doesn't feel right, even just just smallest thing, and I and a little bit of doubt creeps into my mind about a particular business, I would rather just avoid that business and go somewhere else where I have no doubt.

It's sometimes important to, you know, trust your gut, trust your instinct on you know, kinda how how do you read the room? So those things are definitely important in life. Okay. So what's next? So next is how patients actually find a podiatrist in 2025.

So seventy seven percent of patients use a search engine as their first step when looking for care, not a referral, not asking a friend, Google, and here's what's most podiatrists kinda miss out on. The majority of those clicks go to the map results, that's the local pack, you gotta be in the top three of those maps because no one's kinda clicking past or wants to go to another page to look. So it's really really important to be in that top three. If you're not in those top three spots, you're invisible for most searchers. Then before you you know, kind of then even before they call you, they're checking your reviews.

It's nonnegotiable now. People need to have a review workflow in order to be seen. So, you know, people are on their phones checking these things out. If your side if your site's, you know, a slow loading site or it looks outdated, they're just gonna bounce, move back, and then go to the next practice on the list.

Yeah. But talking about reviews, I will probably look

at review maybe 80% of the time before I use a business. Not all the time. My wife though, depending what it is that we're going to do, will almost 100% of the time, especially if it's accommodation or another service, she is will base her decision on what those reviews say.

Yeah. It's a strong indicator of trust. Right? That's why that's why they have their reviews. That's why Google made them in the first place because they're very sticky.

People, once they they want to know about the experiences, they wanna know about the mostly to avoid bad experiences Yeah. And maybe to to have some good ones because most of the times when it comes to restaurants and, you know, unless you're like we talked about, unless you have a review flow, most of your reviews are gonna be probably fifty fifty a random nice one, and then and then a really negative one. So it in order to kinda balance out those negative reviews, you really need to have a system in place to ask your happy patients for those reviews in a in a like a low friction way. So, you know, patients, you know, check for these reviews before they even call. It's non negotiable like your wife.

She's if there's no reviews there, you're probably not gonna go to that place.

Oh, I'll guarantee. If we had moved if we moved into a new town, and my wife needed a dentist or a physiotherapist, 100% would read reviews. And if there was a business that had zero reviews, there's zero chance that she would even walk in there. No matter how good it looked from the road, she would not go in there. So to me, if you don't have any reviews at the moment, you really need to work on it.

And if you've got a really low score, you need to work on getting more positive, you know, five star reviews to build it back up again.

Absolutely. And and super also super important to be, you know mobile first with your website. A lot of even some of the podiatrists I work with are kind of shocked when they realize that you know 70 to 75% of their traffic is coming from mobile phones. You know, a small amount from desktops, negligible amount from tablets, but you know we're talking sometimes 70 to 80% of visits are now coming on phones. So you know, you can't have illegible tiny little texts.

A bad user experience on mobile means they're gonna go somewhere else. Also, speed matters. You know, and if your site is slow on desktop or mobile, it looks outdated, they're just gonna leave your site and go somewhere else.

Oh, there was a website, something I was looking at only yesterday, And there were four different websites that had the information I was looking for. The first one I went to, I don't know how old this website was, but the text was so small. I had to try and zoom in to to try and read it, and straight away I'm going, why am I doing this? It doesn't matter what they say. I already know this is not the place I wanna go to.

So I went to one of the other providers.

That's very common. You know, you have a bad experience on the on the website or on the mobile experience, and you think it's probably gonna be a bad experience in real life. So that that that kind of trust can either carry over, the trust can kind of be squashed by having that bad online experience.

And I think it's funny here. Most people, even probably a lot of the people listening to this podcast, would agree that they look at reviews. So if you know you look at reviews, then you know your patients are looking at reviews. That's a no brainer. Just start looking after it.

The next next area that to touch touch on is basically what I call the visibility stack. So this is the five pieces you need kind of working together in order to get that local online visibility. The mistake most practices make in obsessing over one thing, maybe it's reviews, maybe it's the website, you know, while ignoring everything else. Online visibility isn't one thing. It's five pieces that need to work together.

Your Google business profile, your website, your SEO, your reviews, your content, and and sometimes it's some directory listings. So the good news is you don't need any of their any of these things to be perfect. You just need all five things work working on a basic level, you know, a complete Google business profile, a decent website, steady reviews, some helpful content, and consistent listing. So that combination beats a practice with an amazing website, but nothing else.

Okay. People are time poor. They just need to touch on each of those. Just make sure they've got the basics in place. Then when they have more time, then they can focus on one of those things.

Go, okay. Let's make that better. This month, we're gonna focus on the reviews. Next month, we're gonna focus on the SEO and improving our website. The next month, look at maybe, yeah, different directories and make sure that's all up to date.

Yeah. It's kinda like going wide instead of going deep right away. You wanna make sure you have those kind of five core things solidified before you, you know, spend, you know, $10,000 on a website or, you know, or you spend a bunch of money on, like, on content being created for the website. You know, if you you're creating a bunch of content, but you don't have good delivery channels like a Google Business Profile or your website to put it out on, you know, it doesn't make a lot of sense. So, yeah, it's it's better to kinda have a a broad approach initially, and then kinda build on each of those five areas.

Yeah. Well, it's a simple approach you take there. Everyone should be able to do that.

No. Absolutely. Like I talked about, the Google Business Pro is definitely the most important free asset, and the website's gonna cost a bit. But you wanna have location pages, really good service pages, you know, proper kind of titles and headers for each of those pages and these to load fast. And then reviews, you know, what matters most is quantity, quality, and recency are all super super important.

With content, like I talked about, it's it's gonna be blog posts, FAQs, you know, condition pages that answer patients' questions in their language is super important. I think sometimes us as podiatrist and health care providers, you know, we know the the medical terminology for things. We need to be talking, you know, at a seventh or eighth grade level about what you provide so people can understand those things.

Yeah. There was but just talking about the websites and the Google business profile as well, there was a travel company here in Cairns. They've got an amazing website, but they do not have a Google business profile. And the reason I know that is because they were a terrible company to deal with, and I wanted to leave a review. And then when I spoke to a few other people, they said, oh, yeah.

I've dealt with them too. They are terrible to deal with. And I went, that's and that's why they don't have a Google Business profile. But if I was an outsider coming in, and I saw that travel company and no Google Business profile, I would start to question why.

No. That's that's definitely highly rated. So, yeah, I guess I guess you're not giving advice to the bad podiatrists out there not to have Google Business profile, but it definitely is a is a way to build trust. And, you know, another area that you can sometimes build trust as well as these other directory listings, like I mentioned. You gotta make sure that your information about your clinic is consistent throughout with the same name, address, phone number.

What we're seeing is sometimes things like ChatGPT and Clot are not only pulling from Google search results, they're also pulling from these different directory sites, whether it be Healthgrades, Sockdoc, or Yelp. So you wanna have an outpost on those sites. Potentially in the future, you might wanna get some reviews there as well. But for right now, I'd still say Google is the place to get your reviews. But in the future, they might wanna pull data from other sources instead of Google.

So that's really really important. And like I said, you don't need to be perfect. You just need to have these five things working at a basic level when you're getting started.

Okay. There's a tip for the day. Just go to those five things and make sure they're done. So what's next?

Yeah. I'd say like, kind of make the determination and and online visibility about what are quick wins versus long term strategies, and you know how to get started you know building some momentum there. If we're starting from scratch, don't try to do everything all at once. You know, what I've learned, there are things you can fix in thirty to sixty days that make a real difference. You know, like I said, optimize your Google business profile, fill out every field, add photos, make sure you have the right categories, start posting on your Google business profile.

You know, start asking for reviews systematically, fix your name, address, and phone consistency across directories. You know, these are quick wins that you can do yourself. The longer term stuff like building out service pages that are gonna rank well, content marketing, technical SEO, that's where you might wanna have some help. But progress, you know, progress really beats perfection at this at this point for people just getting started. So start with what you can actually sustain and be consistent with it.

Okay. So on your Google business profile, because I was on mine yesterday, I'm messing around. Because once a week, I like to add some new new information. But they'll have two sections there. One, it'll say an update where you can add and it could be a link to a blog post.

And then there's another section which just says photos. So you're suggesting on a regular basis, if you've written a blog, making sure you have a link in the Google Business profile. But in the photo section, what type of photos do you think should be going in there?

Yeah. I think that's a great opportunity for you to kinda show your professionalism. So obvious I I think it's really important for every three to five years that podiatry clinics have kind of a professional photo shoot. You know, show you basically, you it's you treating your ideal patient. It can be a model patient, but what do you wanna see more of in your practice?

So having photos uploaded there can be helpful. You know, if you're making I'm trying to remember if they allow I think they might allow videos now. So if you're, you know, if you're into, you know, recording with with permission from your patients some of the either procedures you're doing or that kind of stuff, that can be a kind of a big signal that you're uploading both photos and videos from there. Obviously, it's something that you really want to make sure that it's it's you're showing your expertise whether it's photos of the things you're doing or your staff or your office. But just having a wide variety of those types of photos can be very beneficial.

Yeah. Because when I was looking at it yesterday, one of the options there, it says, do I wanna update the, like, profile picture on Google Business profile? So if I had a better photo of my clinic, and I want to put that up there. Because I work from home, I didn't wanna put a photo of my house there. So it's just got my wonderful smiling face.

But that's why it was asking me, did I wanna actually change that photo? And I think it's important for people to look at too is sometimes the photos that are there, that is the profile photo of your business, be some random thing that Google actually put there, and then what could be a rubbish bin at the front of your clinic, or there's a truck parked in front of it covering your sign. So I think it's something worth looking at with the photos that you actually are uploading.

Absolutely. And it's one of those things too. It's kinda what stage you're at. Right? So, you know, do you kind of do it yourself versus hire someone?

If you're if you got a busy clinic and you don't have time for it, you know, those kind of quick wins, the medium term wins, and the long term stuff can be handled by somebody else with kinda your input and your oversight, which is important. But, you know, if you're just if you just bought a practice, things are slow or you're an associate and they're just kinda building up your caseload and you have some some ways to help out the clinic, these can be some very effective ways to help build that attention, the visibility, and the demand for your foot and ankle services. So like I said, progress beats perfection. Start with what you can sustain and and do it consistently.

Yeah. And if you've got someone in your team that has a superpower of working with Google Business Profiles, then tap into that. Ask yourself who loves getting online doing this type of thing. And you might have someone that puts their hand up and says, yeah, I would love to be adding photos on a regular basis or taking links from your blog articles and put them on there or shooting some videos around the clinic and actually uploading it. So if you've got someone in your team who loves doing it, let them do it.

It's gonna make them happy. Just a little pointer though, if you give them access to your Google Business profile, change your password on a regular basis.

That's a good call.

Anyway, what's next?

Yeah. So we'll wrap up things with, you know, what results can you realistically expect and when. Yeah. Let me give you realistic expectations because I see too many podiatrists kind of give up right before the payoff. You know, thirty to sixty days in, you'll see more Google business profile views, some early rankings movement, you know, more review activity.

Three to six months, that's when you're gonna start noticing kinda real increases, more website traffic, you know, more phone calls, more direction requests. And then 12:12 months and beyond, is you can kinda see some compound effects kick in. Here's the differentiator most of the competitors you know, most of your competitors are gonna quit. They try SEO for three months and have slow progress and stop. Consistency wins.

The practices that show up month after month are the ones that are dominating local search a year from now. You can kinda hijack the system and use things like local service ads or Google search ads if you have the budget for it, but that's not necessarily the first place to start.

What I think is a really important point you made there is just the consistency over a long period of time. Because I know too often we can start doing something, oh, I get all excited just like exercise this, you know, early part of the year. And and people go, oh, I'm gonna get fit this year. So they get into it, all guns blazing. And then three, four, five weeks into the year, they go they forget what the goals were that they set.

The same thing can happen with this. They hear this episode. They go, this is what we need to do. They dive into it. Because they don't see this dramatic change in the first four to six weeks or eight weeks, they go, oh, what's the point?

I might as well not do this. But you need to just set a plan and just keep doing it. And like you said, twelve months is when you're gonna really start noticing the the benefits of it.

Yeah. It's it's a slow slow moving thing, but you gather that momentum and it can be pretty sustainable long term. And like we talked about another podcast, gotta make sure you're tracking the right metrics. So, you know, in your Google Business Profile, there's an area called insights where it basically talks about, you know, how many how much traffic it's sending to your website, how many calls it generated. Also, it can count how many, you know, form fills potentially and and sometimes even, you know, it'll it'll you can see how many people click to get directions.

Right? So it can give you some information and the more people are clicking on that, the more Google Google business profile is gonna be shown by Google to to people in your local area. So consistency is that differentiator. Most of your competitors are gonna give up or think it doesn't work. So expect some fluctuation though as well.

You know, Google's algorithm shifts. They're always kind of changing things a little bit. So maybe had an amazing month in June and things are down you know 50% in July. It's not that you or the person you're working with did something wrong. Google just has these big shifts sometimes that are unexplainable.

It's good to to work with someone that is is kind of well known in the industry or has connections. So they can kinda trade notes with other people that are marketing practices because that's something I've run into multiple times is that all of a sudden there's a drop off on traffic. I didn't know if it's something that was it something that I did or was it something that Google did? And having some peace of mind from the other people that that I'm connected with in the the kind of medical marketing world makes it gives me peace of mind to make sure I can deliver great results for people I'm working with. So that's gonna really, you know, the gist of today.

I think, you know, there's a lot of, you know, online visibility is becoming more and more important for for clinics. You know, it's easier as more people are coming online, there's more eyeballs to see, but also there's more competition. So in order to stay ahead of the competition, hopefully, this podcast can give you some ideas you can take home, either implement yourself or the person you're working with.

No. This has all been fantastic advice. And just one thing that's from a repeat that you said. If you do happen to have a quiet month, this is why you need to have podiatry friends. If you're having a quiet month, send an email to your podiatry friends and say, how are going this month?

Is it a little bit quieter than normal? And and I find that with coaching clients sometimes, they will say, oh, this month's been a little bit quieter. And I go, you'll be happy to know that everybody has said the same thing. And they go, oh, good. It's not just me.

And that makes you feel better that it can just be there's ebbs and flows. Things it's just the way that business goes. But long term, it will always go up. Absolutely. Okay.

Big Jim, it's been good talking to again this week. I look forward to our week. Yeah.

Been a lot of fun, Tyson.

Okay. I look forward to talking to next week.

Alright. Bye now.

Okay. See you.

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.