What AI Search Wants From Your Podiatry Clinic's Website

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 aka Jim McDannald. How you doing?

As you've as we've talked about earlier before we started pushing the record button, I'm a little bit tired but I'm excited to jump in this topic. So it's probably, you know, it's gonna invigorate me, but I'm in the midst of marathon training and waking up at 5AM for some runs. So, you know, I think I'll be okay, but I'm definitely a little bit on the tired side today.

Tell me you're waking up and how far are you running?

So 5AM, the alarm goes off probably out the door by about 05:15 and right now it's anywhere between it's still early days, so you know, somewhere between forty minutes and an hour and twenty right now. So so easy easy stuff.

Yeah. I like getting up early. I do the same thing. I get up at 05:00 regardless of whether I'm going to the gym or doing anything else. I just I just get up early.

Can't help it. No matter what time I go to bed, I still wake up at five.

It's a good way to start the day. I feel like I get things done before the before I start have to try to catch up with the day. So yeah, it's it's a good habit.

I remember when I had my podiatry clinic and I always said, the day I sell my podiatry clinic and I can sleep in for as long as I want, I'm just gonna lie in bed for as long as I want. And I'll get up at 05:00 there every day without a problem. Yeah, it's funny how that works. So what are we talking about today, big Jim?

Yeah. So today the topic is a bit related to last week's topic, but what AI search wants from your practice website. So this is really focused on some practical tips that people can apply to their website, either themselves or the person they're working with to make sure that they're getting the most of this kind of growing channel of online referrals. So that's that's what we're gonna focus on tonight.

Oh, I'm glad this is an add on from last week's because when we went through all last week's stuff, at least this is gonna get into especially if someone's a little bit more detailed orientated, this is gonna get into the nitty gritty bit more.

No, I thought you provided a great kind of overview about the type of content, the way to approach it, the goals and those things. But this is more, yeah, like I said, a little bit more of the nitty gritty details as far as people that own their own website either can kinda do some of these things themselves or if they're working with a website person or marketing agency, they can be a little bit more clear about the type of directives they're giving and ask them good questions to make sure they're showing up on these platforms. Because for example, would say people should today open up ChatGPT, type best podiatrist for plantar fasciitis in the name of their town. You know, whatever name comes back, that answer got built out of somebody's website. You know, somebody's reviews, a few pages nobody in this conversation controls.

Right? So there's also a decent chance your website is maybe being skipped over entirely by these AI chatbots and nobody told you. So, you know, this is not trying to be, you know, these AI chatbots are not hype. And it's not really recent to panic but most people still find you in the way they've always have. But when someone asks a question instead of typing a name, an AI answer shows up more than, you know, kind of nine times out of 10 even in Google these days, right?

So it can be related to cost, recovery time, whether someone has an insurance covered. Those are the questions that podiatrists are running into these days.

Well, when you said that, I think everybody should do exactly what you just said then, is go into chat and type in best podiatrist in their area, especially if there's multiple podiatrists. I just did it for where I live, and I was not surprised by who was first. I am surprised about who was second because I thought they were dead. I'm sure they are. But anyway, they came second.

They must have had good website. It still must be there. And third and fourth. So it's it's quite interesting. And I know there's at least 10 or 12 clinics in Cairns now.

I reckon if you live in Cairns and you're listening to this, Google will see who came one, two, three, and four and figure out what you're doing wrong.

Yeah. Definitely, you know, it's gonna be a change a little between Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude, but definitely whichever one you have access to at least at least do that today. Because, you know, we'll we'll talk about tonight like I mentioned is five things about your website you can actually change and a simple way to check and see if it's working for you.

Yeah, okay. We're gonna let's dive into it.

Yeah, so the first topic is you know, the first kind of tip here is regarding your website and maybe it's turning AI away at the door. Your website might be blocking AI right now and nobody told you. Most websites run through kind of security service, something called Cloudflare and some other services that sit between your website and the internet. And it's usually there to protect you from irrelevant clicks, from bots, some kind of spam bots and other stuff that's kind of crawling across the site. Sometime last year a few number of those services started turning away AI tools automatically.

And you know, that's kind of like your answering service hanging up on a referring physician because it did not recognize the number, right? It's So not something you chose to do, it just happened. And the only way that you can find out is by asking. So one email to whoever manages your website will answer that question. If you use something like Cloudflare or some other of internet security as far as who can gain access to your website.

Me being in Canada, for example, sometimes I get blocked from viewing US pages or web websites because for whatever reason they decided they didn't want someone from outside of The US to to see their website. So these are not that uncommon. You just wanna make sure that you're not blocking things like Claude and and ChatGPT and and Google Gemini's kind of AI crawlers. Because if you are, you could be potentially missing out on some things.

Okay. So you're saying contacting your website developer asking that question straight away, they'll be able to help sort through that.

Yeah. They should if you mentioned like, do you use Cloudflare on my website or do you use some services that are, you know, security that kind of stops bots from, you know, tracking things. Just making sure that they're not accidentally blocking these different AI things because most most agencies are savvy enough that maybe it's someone like it's like it's like a friend of a friend's doing your website or a friend's doing it. And you know, we've run into that in the past. We've talked about the kind of different levels of knowledge and expertise when it comes to people building websites.

So you just wanna make sure whoever's running your website is kind of leaving it open to make sure that these it's visible by these different AI platforms.

And you hear that a lot too when people go, oh, I'm not gonna pay that to get a website done. My daughter, her friend at school, he does websites in his spare time on weekends. He's gonna do my whole website for me. And they may totally be unaware that this is what's actually happening.

Not only that, it's sometimes the builder but sometimes it's the the hosting to be honest. Like a lot of people Yeah. You know, wanna get the cheapest like GoDaddy like $3 a month hosting. And when you pay that little for website hosting, you're sometimes a lot of the features that are available, you know, $20 a month hosting, which seems like seven x expensive. But in reality, like, you're getting things like backups, you know, just better overall hosting, you know, things that are probably gonna let you know if you were blocking things like AI.

But if you have on a very cheap inexpensive hosting plan, you know, sometimes that can be, know, multiple reasons why that's not necessarily always the best idea.

Okay. What's next?

Next is to build pages around questions and not conditions. You know, like we talked about last week a little bit about building pages based on problems. But like, you know, your bunion page is not losing to a competitor, it's losing to a question. You know, when someone types podiatrist near me, they still get the map. But when they ask how long recovery takes or what orthotics cost, whether insurance covers Shockwave, they get an AI answer instead on things like ChatGPT, right?

And the page titled Abundant Surgery has nothing to do with the answer for this. It's a label, not an answer. Your front desk feels these real questions and you do too, you know, ten, twelve times a day. So those pages can be missing and the type of content you need to build there is a little bit different when it comes to AI search into chatbots.

Yeah. And that's a really good thing you said then too. If people aren't sure what should I be writing about, what questions should I be answering, I've said it before, throw a blank sheet of paper to your front desk and just say every single question, every time the phone rings and somebody asks a question at the front, write it down on that sheet of paper, almost word for word for what they said. And you will probably find within about one or two weeks, you will figure out the most common questions that are constantly coming through your clinic. Then just make sure your website is answering every single one of those questions on various pages so it can be found.

Absolutely. And I think this is one of the, you know, in The US we have a lot of kind of fee for service and direct pay clinics that has kind of become more in vogue here. And I think that's one huge opportunity that those clinics have that people that are waiting for insurance reimbursement or those kind of things they can't do is that you can tell the patient straight away what the cost of an ingrown toenail would be, what the cost of an orthotic would be. I mean some clinics can do that as well if they choose to, but more and more patients are looking for that information. And when it's visible on the website it can be a huge differentiator and are curious about that.

And you know before they call people are usually searching for things on these chatbots or on Google. And if you can already have the answer, you know, they're gonna be calling for an appointment and not like another three to five minutes of trying to understand how much something costs. So, you know, think about those seven to 10 questions that are relevant to a bunion, to, you know, heel pain, to, you know, Achilles tendonitis, and make sure that those questions are in a FAQ section on that page that people can click and toggle, it opens up. It doesn't need to take up a ton of real estate, it can be just a question in that kind of click toggle. But building out pages like that is going to set you apart from other clinics that don't have those answers and that won't show up on ChatGPT or Claude because you know, they haven't taken the time to build those into the website.

So if somebody was asking how much is an initial consultation, if they got an article on heel pain and they have an article on bunion surgery, you're saying they should have that frequently asked question on both those pages because people are always asking that question anyway.

Yeah, absolutely. I think you can change the wording of the question. You could say how much is it for initial consultation for plantar fasciitis or heel pain or what's initial consultation for a bunion evaluation. So you can change up the question a little bit to make sure that you're hitting that, but it can be a very similar answer. Like I said, I think using the keywords of what you're actually, what the reason why someone's coming in with the cost is gonna help tie those two things together.

Right? So like but yeah, I think that's yeah. They're they're just kind of remixing it a little bit on each of those different treatment diagnosis pages is very valuable.

Yeah, well actually it makes sense to be answering those questions on there.

Yeah, for sure.

What's next?

Yeah, so next is, a lot of these questions don't need to be long winded, right? So like, the great things about these FAQs is that you need to answer the questions in the first two sentences. Think of it like a patient handout, not a brochure. The questions at the top, answer in the next two sentences, everything else underneath. If your answer does not show up until the fourth paragraph, it never gets used, right?

So because, you know, nothing is no one's gonna dig for that information even the the the chat bot, so be very specific. You know, vague pages get skipped, Real numbers get picked up. Recovery in weeks and actual price pricing. How many of these things do you do a year? Anyone can write, you know, we provide compassion compassionate care like we talked about last week or.

You know, we're the we're the local trusted expert and it's like, of course, you're saying that about yourself. But nobody puts a number on these pages and that's a great way to differentiate yourself from others. You know, someone you claim to be the budding expert, but you've done like, you know, 11 and it's already, you know, September, October. Are you are you really the bunion expert? And if you are, you've done 200 so far in the year.

It's gonna make you stand out because then they know to ask that other clinic, how many have you done? I saw that Doctor. Smith does 200 of these a year. It's a way to really differentiate yourself and stand out not only for the patient themselves but for these AI, different AI search platforms.

Yeah. And there's nothing worse too when you go to it doesn't matter what the page is. When you go to it, you see the title and you go, yeah, think this is what I'm after. And you you get through the first paragraph and you go, yeah, okay. It hasn't hasn't got to what I'm what I'm looking for so far.

You go to the next paragraph and you go, I'm I'm now starting to get really bored. And I it's true. I normally if if it is not answered in that first couple of sentences, what or at least gives me partial information that encourages me to read further. I'm out of there. I just click on go to another website because I get bored really fast.

Yeah. Like for another example is like an orthotics page. Like patients don't care about like roots angle or like tailor declination angle or the amount of like gastroc soleus tightness. Like, they don't care about that. Like, so that really shouldn't be in the you know, on the orthotics page.

You know, what they do care about is price, timeline, like, you know, how can they get casted that day, how long the orthotics are going take to get back, you know, any mention of over the counter options or why you do or don't do that. It can help kind of like field those questions beforehand. But, yeah, those are the types of questions that people want to know about. Right? People as much as we, you know, podiatrists can talk about why the big biomechanics of the foot, like that's that page is not the place.

And like you said, you want to make sure that you're answering the question in as clear and concise manner as possible. You know, like two sentences. If you can make it easy for them and give them the answer right away, they're gonna feel like, oh, they saved me time. They didn't make me wade through this like massive website or this massive webpage to learn about the basics of things. Right?

You just wanna get to the meat so they can make a decision and move on with their lives.

Yeah. Well, you just pretty much you're just giving them the facts and you're giving it upfront. You're not messing around. You're not wasting their time. And I sometimes think too when a business just openly gives you the information right there and then, I think it creates more trust because you're going, well, they're not trying to hide anything on this page.

They give me the information upfront and I can just make a smart decision on that. Absolutely. Okay. Next up.

Yeah. So next is make sure everything online tells the same story. I find this a lot. You know people do a great job explaining who they are, who they treat on their website. But then when it comes to the description on the Google business profile like it's, I'm I'm a podiatrist in name of town.

And it's like a sentence and it's like, well, you gotta build a better description of who you are and what you do and who you're relevant to on the Google Business Profile along with the products or the services you have there as well. Also, it's important to note, you know, every you know, Google has Gemini, ChatGPT maybe like likes things like Bing and other review sources. You need to make sure as much as Google is super strong right now, that you're finding time to maybe get some additional reviews on other platforms. You know, some people haven't even claimed kind of their, you know, Bing which is Microsoft's search engine is usually somewhere between 10 to 20% of traffic to most websites. And a lot of people haven't claimed their Bing listing.

And why that's important is not necessarily that like Bing is that important, but ChatGPT doesn't want to give, you know, to kind of to like go on to Google. Right? They wanna use these other parties, these other kind of signals of trust. So it's an it can be an important thing to do something like claim your Bing listing. AI will confidently tell a patient you take insurance, you dropped two years ago if you're using bad information or bad listing, right?

So, you know, your website, your Google business profile, even this Bing profile and other, maybe it's your Facebook, your Instagram, When all these are on the same page, you're gonna get good information to the patient and then it builds trust with the AI system to see that your information is consistent across these different platforms.

Is AI identifying logos, color combinations, anything like with people's websites at the moment through with social media and all that? If there's if logos were different, does that confuse AI? Or if somebody doesn't really know the color code they're using, they're just guessing the color each time and it's slightly different. Is that confusing AI?

I don't think color codes and that kind of stuff right now. I think it's more the way you say things. Right? If you're for maybe the first two or three years of your practice you were super surgically heavy and all wanna do is forefoot and rearfoot surgery and then by five or ten years later all you want is orthotics and your website shifted but some of your online profiles didn't. There can be kind of a mismatch.

I think it's still a lot of verbal things these days. You know, ChatGPT and AI and even Google Search itself are, you know, taking a look at images now these days. Like you mentioned, maybe the logo is probably less important, but you know, it can see like an orthotic or a casting or a bunion, which is by doing kind of machine learning on an image. And it needs to be relevant to, you know, the type of things you're talking about on your Google Business profile and on your website. So consistency I think is important.

I don't think it's so granular when it comes to brand colors and to logos yet, but you know it's probably only a matter of time before it does have that. But to me it's more about the you know, the the the images and the text and the copy on your website and other online properties that needs to be in sync and similar across all of them.

You know, Andy brought that up. And it's probably still just a human thing at the moment where if I see a company where there's got an old logo and they've got a new logo, but the old logo keeps popping up in different places, I subconsciously, I feel like I a little confused by it. Whereas the other day, I was it was a podiatry thing. I was looking for a podiatrist business, and I knew what their logo looked like. And then I happened to be on social media, and I was searching for something, bang, I saw the logo identical to what it was that I was looking for on the website.

And straight away, there was trust built for that business.

Yeah. I recently I recently changed my logo and I now I'm thinking about have I put it that it I'm trying to think of if I put it everywhere that I need to. So I definitely after I get off this podcast, I'll have to go take a look and see.

Yeah. It was funny because I I was searching for the business. I knew they would have had a social profile, but their name was similar to a lot of other businesses. But then as I scanned through it, without even looking through the list, saw the logos coming up. Bang, that logo stood out.

I knew what their logo looked like. Made it very easy to find. Absolutely. Little side note. Okay.

What's next, Jim?

So next is I would say is, you know, check yourself once a month on maybe it's Google Gemini, maybe it's ChatGPT or Claude. You know two people can ask AI the same question in the same room and get totally different answers. That's one thing. Even if you ask questions yourself different times of the day you might get different answers from these different chatbots. So this is what makes this a little harder than you know looking at Google rankings or looking at things.

There's not a lot of great software currently to rank and to show these things. Checking from your desk doesn't always tell you something. So do this instead. Let me write down 10 questions your patient actually ask and then run them into Claude or ChatGPT once a month. You know write down whether you show up, which websites got mentioned instead.

That list of websites is kind of your to do list. You know, is it, you know, fifteen this kind of fifteen minutes a month, you know, beats guessing, which is what most practice are doing right now. So you can learn some maybe some things from some other websites that are showing up well for these questions And maybe make some changes to your copy, your FAQ, to the questions that you're asking and the answers you're providing on your website. So that's something that I think can can definitely be a benefit to either you do it yourself or you're working with someone that has access to maybe some good ranking software but also could help you do some of these types of searches.

Yeah. I think it's a good idea too to keep going back at different times than asking because it was Claude I asked a question on something and it gave me the answer, oh I knew it was wrong. I even pointed it out to my wife and said, I know that is 100% wrong. So I challenged him and said, I think you are completely wrong. And it actually said, thank you for pointing that out.

It is wrong. Sometimes, hallucinators just make stuff up. So it was surprising. But but you're just saying that too about you know, I did that search before about podiatrists in the area. Yeah.

I then went back in there and just posted the question about who is the best at treating ingrown toenails. Because before it was just like the podiatrist near me, and when I've done that, it gave me a list and the first person who was first is still number one. Number two is still the dead podiatrist. I think. I should clarify that.

I should actually clarify that they are not. Anyway, it happens. Oh, sorry. Were you gonna say anything else on that Jim?

Yeah. Would just say that like, you know, along with all of these AI feels like it's moving becoming the future of search and it's definitely having a huge impact on search. But it's important to note that like this is still not the majority. The majority is still Google. Right?

So like, know, a year ago AI traffic was kind of a rounding error. Now it's jumped up to maybe somewhere between two to 5%. I would say the big thing about it is though, these are kinds of queries that are, you know, people are asking questions that are very specific. And it can bring back very specific answers. So, you know, it might lean a little bit more to like these kind of low like lower in the funnel or people that are ready to make an appointment.

They may ask, you know, Chad GPD something like, like I said, like how much does it cost to see Doctor. Smith? Or what is you know, how long would it take me to get an orthotic back from a podiatrist and maybe you show up there. So these sometimes is, while it's not 90, you know, 50% of the search volume is not going to these, to Claude or to Gemini or to ChatGPT, it is an area to keep an eye on because I think things will kind of shift this way. But it's good to kind of be building your website in ways that, you know, I think by building your website for these kind of AI platforms, you're also making them more usable to patients that land on your website even through Google now.

So it's not like we're just doing it to satisfy and to chase this AI traffic which will hopefully be a nice byproduct in the future. But by doing it now, you know, and making these more usable websites and web pages, yes, the nice side effect is you will be more visible on AI, but it's also just really much more helpful to answer patients' questions and to make them know, like, trust you even more than they already do.

Yeah. And that's exactly what we discussed last week. We said about write for humans. Write your pages for humans that write it. Or for human patients, don't write it for human podiatrists.

You're not writing articles for other podiatrists to read and go, Oh, wow, you really know your podiatry stuff. You're writing it for patients, and then the flow on effect AI is going to use it. What came first? Claude or Chad? I can't remember.

Chad GPT came first.

Okay. And then Claude came first. So in another twelve, eighteen months, two years, there could be something completely different again.

No. I mean, there's there's there's models coming out all the time. There's all these kind of open source Chinese models that are coming out these days that are at at the same level as, you know, it's it's interesting because you have these different companies. You have kind of an incumbent like Google who has Gemini. So like it's kind of a nice add on to their search monopoly in a way.

Then you have these like billion dollar funded companies who are racing against each other to try to like be be the the best you know, the Chad GPT or Claude. It's kind of this neck and neck battle where you know people are paying somewhere between you know, somewhere between free and then $200 for most plans. And then you have these kind of cheaper Chinese models which are almost at a level of Cloud and ChatGPT that are a third the cost and some of them are even free. So it's yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see how this all the all this shakes out and who's gonna be the ultimate winner in the kind of AI platform wars. But definitely something that hopefully this gave some people some background and some information that's helpful for them to take some action.

And like I'd say the first action like I said is number one send an email to whoever managed your website to make sure that those AI tools are not being blocked. And second, you know, like I said, have you know, learn what those top 10 questions are each week. And then maybe once a month you just run some of those queries into ChatGPT or Claude to see where you're ranking at. And like I said, if you're not ranking well then maybe it's an opportunity to learn from some of those pages that are and build out your website and some of these pages in a more patient friendly manner because at the end of the day that's what's gonna kinda win the patient over but also maybe make you more visible on these AI platforms.

Yeah. And that's a that's a great thing you said then too about if you don't rank where you think you should be and there's somebody else's at the top, have a look through their website. Why why are they ranking higher? And you'll probably find read through a couple of their main pages and straight away it will become really obvious. Or it'll just be yours is so bad that even if theirs is bad, it's still better than yours.

Yeah. You never know until you do a little bit of digging. Right? So maybe you're not gonna like what you see but it's better to have that information than not have it.

But you can take the information you've already got in your website, you can put it in a call or chat and tell them what it is that you're trying to do and it will help you rewrite it. Absolutely. Fix up those pages and then go back and look at it again another month. So action steps. That was the action steps that you just covered then?

No other no other action steps?

I'd say the other action step is if you found this podcast helpful, share it with a colleague, share it with a partner in your clinic, share it with a competitor down the road. I think it's helpful to let everybody have access to this kind of information so we can really lift up the profession. But no, it's always a pleasure talking to you on these types of topics, Tyson, and looking forward to the next one.

Okay. On that note, Jim, I think we should finish up and let you get some sleep. As you mentioned, you're a little bit little bit tired.

I appreciate that Tyson, and I look forward to talking to you on the next one.

Okay. See you later. See you next week.

Bye now.

Okay. Bye.

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.