[00:00:06] Welcome to the GrowOrtho livestream. I am one of your hosts, Zach Dykes, joined by James Cook, HIP's very own SEO Wizard. Welcome to the show, James. James C. Great to be here. Very excited, Zach. I am excited. I love getting to do these livestreams because it's a time to just sit down and chat and help our partners, help our potential partners as well.

[00:00:33] Learn more about the business side, the things that they can be doing to be more successful in their communities. And it's just sharing the knowledge freely. And that's what I love about it. And getting to chat with people, getting to ask questions and just get to answer those. That is an awesome part of it. Definitely. I think also just one of the things when it comes to growing a practice, when it comes to SEO,

[00:01:00] SEO, which is, you know, my expertise and just living and breathing SEO, I think that it's number one, it's spoken about, but it's also very underestimated. So I'm excited to just kind of delve into a bunch of different things, exciting things. Today we have an exciting stream plan for all of you. We'll be discussing how to improve SEO for orthodontists and dentists.

[00:01:24] This will help rank you higher on Google and attract more patients to your practice, which, you know, that is the thing that we get asked all the time. How can I get more patients into my practice? And today we're giving you actionable tips that you can implement and it's going to be amazing. We'll be covering everything from on page, off page, and even recent updates and including some AI stuff that you could be using as well.

[00:01:50] James, let's jump into the content. Let's get right down to brass tacks. What does local SEO even matter in 2025? Why does it even matter? Why do we, why, why are we even spending this time on this live stream? I will say this. I mean, over there, I've been doing this now, I think going on 15 years, and I can say that it's probably more important than ever now. Right.

[00:02:16] Right. Because of, especially with these devices, right? Everyone's on these devices and anyone that uses Google, which is most of us, if you type in anything, if you're searching for something locally, you're going to see the maps pop up. You're going to see, you're going to see also see sponsored ads popped up. You're going to see websites pop up. Right. So it's positioning yourself to get in front of local search intent traffic. And that's probably one of the key things is local search intent.

[00:02:46] And what I mean by that is when someone's specifically looking for your practice or a service, making sure you're positioned there and getting that traffic over to your site. And like I said, over the years of doing this, things have drastically changed because we have all of these Google search algorithm updates. So we're constantly battling those. There's constantly staying up to date on things. But me and my team, this is one thing that we love. We're passionate about this.

[00:03:13] So we love actually analyzing updates, looking at data, hundreds and hundreds of GMBs that we manage so we can come back with data. And one cool thing is Google does have patents on their search engine algorithms. So also kind of dissecting their patents and understanding exactly how these things work and what they're actually looking for so that we can feed the beast what it wants and get the best results.

[00:03:37] You just put a whole lot of gold out there. I want to dig a little bit deeper and see how much we can tap, though. So explain what is Google's local algorithm? Google's local algorithm is pretty much think of it like a lot of people think that it's like a manual person that's actually going to go and check your website and check specific things. That's not the case. It's just a bot. Think of it as a bot.

[00:04:02] It crawls your website and it makes sure that specific things are optimized and relevant at a specific place. And if you have those things aligned, then it also looks at your brand overall across the web and your authority. And if you have all those things in line, it actually lets you rank higher than your competition. That's pretty much what it is.

[00:04:25] Okay. So tell me about what the three pack is and why is that like something that can be critical for an orthodontic or dentist practice? Just like I mentioned earlier, now that everyone's jumping on their mobile and even on the desktop, everyone is getting acclimated to understand reviews and just trust, right? Like we're looking for trust. And with Google's map pack, that's Google business profiles. That's their listings.

[00:04:55] Many people have seen this. If you just go over and you type in orthodontist near me, you're going to see a three pack pop up. That's the three top orthodontists that are ranking at the top. And what it also shows is their reviews, right? That's the trust factor.

[00:05:09] And I also say, I also like to say that also is like the conversion optimization because if I was even looking for a restaurant, an Italian restaurant near me, if there's three placements, even if the top three people, if two of them have 10, 10 five-star reviews and one of them has a thousand five-star reviews, I'm more likely going to click on the thousand five-star reviews. Because I just trust, right? It's a psychological thing.

[00:05:39] And also reviews also do play a part in SEO, especially in the Google maps algorithm. We do want to see social proof as humans. The reason why warm referrals or word of mouth is so important is because when someone is suggesting something, you trust that person. It's like, oh, you should check out this movie. If you don't trust that person, you're not going to watch that movie.

[00:06:06] But if thousands of people are saying, man, this movie, you know, the dark night is amazing. Well, guess what? You're going to go watch the dark night or whatever movie it might be because people will have raved about that movie. Same thing about your practice. The more people are raving about it, the more trust you're going to build within your community. And that is going to be huge. So let's jump into some ranking factors, like break those down.

[00:06:31] Like what are the things that we need to be thinking about in like in that order? Yeah. So the first thing I would say is just the basic foundational optimization on your actual Google business listing. So your business name actually influences rankings. That's why you'll see a lot of what we call EMDs or exact match domains and businesses. For example, and I'm just going to make up a business. Let's say I owned Orthodontist Pensacola and that was the name of my company.

[00:07:00] And if I'm actually using that in my Google business name, I am going to get built in SEO benefits for having that in my name. So that's just one example. But having the profile completely filled out and making sure that your description is optimized. And what I mean by that also is mentioning the services. If you do Invisalign, if you do braces, if you do some specific things like sleep apnea treatment, right?

[00:07:25] Mention that in your description along with your location, you're locally optimizing it. Now, remember when I'm mentioning algorithms, Google is just a bot that's crawling this stuff and looking, are you optimized? What is this about? Where are you located? So the more we can influence them that, hey, I do these services in this location. That's step one, getting the foundational optimization on your GMB actually built out.

[00:07:52] Then step two is actually making sure that everything that's off the GMB that can influence the GMB is also built out, which is your website, right? They do communicate. Now, I'll say this. When I'm speaking about algorithms, there's two different algorithms. The Google Maps algorithm is separate than your website algorithm. That's why sometimes you can type in orthodontist near me or orthodontist in whatever city you're in.

[00:08:17] And you'll be like, hey, I'm ranking number two in the maps, but my website is on page three. How is this working, right? It's because you have more influence with your map rankings than your actual website. Well, we want both of them to be in sync and rank high, right? So we have to feed both algorithms. But at the same time, your website and your SEO with your website does influence your map rankings. And it comes down to authority of your actual website.

[00:08:47] Age sometimes plays an effect in that. How much power is actually being pushed over to your website? And when I say that, when I'm looking at power, I'm looking at how many backlinks are pointing at your site. How many other sites, and not just any sites, how many other authoritative sites that live on the web mention your brand and mention your website? That's a big factor in SEO. So all of that is what's influencing not only your website, but also your GMB.

[00:09:16] And then also citations, right? Or business listings is what we call them, like Yelp.com, right? Being listed on these citations. So that type of optimization, that's at pretty much the three key things that you want to have is on page, off page, and just brand recognition is what I call it. Like authority that you're building.

[00:09:39] Let's dive a little bit deeper on optimizing Google business profiles because I feel like that is going to be a huge part of this episode is like the brass tacks of that. So how do we go about, you know, I say I'm an orthodontist. I'm a, you know, I've been in practice two years and I threw it together over a weekend. And, you know, things haven't been going great. How do I optimize my Google business profile? Yeah.

[00:10:07] So the first thing that you want to do is make sure that you're completely filled out on your profile. And if you actually go visit your profile, it will tell you the percentage that's filled out. Like if you're 60%, if you're 40%, right? You want to be filled out as much as you can. Any attributes that you can add to there, you add to there. Make sure your descriptions are filled out. Every service that you offer, put those services in there and add descriptions to the actual service. Also, Google business posting. Take advantage of the posting.

[00:10:35] Now, I will say this. Out of all the data that I have, I do think that Google business posting can influence your rankings. However, I do not believe that it is the – I do not believe that it is something that is necessary to rank. And I'll repeat that. I do not believe that Google business posting is something that is necessary to rank.

[00:11:01] However, because it is a built-in Google feature, we never know what they're going to do with their algorithm. And since it's there, of course, they would like you to use it. And it's an additional place to add optimized content. You could write about the treatments that you do. You could add location optimization inside of those posts, add nice images. So I would also take advantage of that and just make sure everything's filled out. And another thing, just a quick tip, is look at what your competitors are doing.

[00:11:30] So if you're in business and you're going over to Google and you're not having any success, well, obviously I know that you're seeing your top three competitors ranking. What are they doing? And what you can do – and we love to use software and tools, of course, and now AI. AI is a big thing where AI will tell us what your competitors are doing great. And we can then go and just feed that into your campaign.

[00:11:55] So some of the things that you're going to want to look at though is what services and treatments are your competitors mentioning on their Google business? What categories are they putting under? Is it just orthodontists or are they putting other categories? That's important too. And you just want to repeat what they're doing, right? I always say success leaves footprints.

[00:12:18] So if Google is rewarding a specific site or a specific Google business, you could just look at what they're doing. And probably the biggest thing of all is getting reviews, especially with Google Maps. That's the biggest tip of all, get reviews. Get your optimization down and get reviews because something called review velocity and besides review velocity, review age play a big part in building trust for Google.

[00:12:47] Well, let's jump a little bit further into that. Like discuss the role of reviews and reputation management for dental and orthodontic practices. Like why does that even matter, like what people are saying online? So for over, I would say the last year, specifically with Google's algorithm, what we've noticed is something called review velocity.

[00:13:10] And what I mean by that is the practices that are getting reviews continuously, nonstop, like their velocity, their reviews, like 10 a week, 10 a week, 10 a week. They get favored by the search engine, right? And on top of that, if they have aged reviews, that also helps because it builds trust. And think about it. Google is very good with their algorithms.

[00:13:33] What they want to do, their number one thing, is to try to prevent unorganic SEO from happening. And what I mean by that, they don't want people like me manipulating the search engine. So they want to make it very hard. So years ago, we would be able to slap up fake reviews. You would be able to manipulate proximity, right? Like you would be able to rank from 30, 40, 50 miles away years ago.

[00:14:03] Well, they said, hey, we want to serve our searchers the best. So when someone types an orthodontist near me, proximity plays. They know that you're using the word near me. Proximity plays a piece of that. So what they've recently been doing is they've been really making their algorithm more sophisticated and looking at specific things, which brings us back to the reviews. And this is why I mentioned this.

[00:14:25] They've really been heavily, and anyone that's on this stream that has had a practice or listens to this, that has a practice or even a local business, right? You might have noticed recently, like the last two weeks, Google had a big update where they filtered out reviews. There were people going crazy. I was hearing it. Hey, I lost 50 reviews. I lost 10 reviews. I lost almost 100 reviews. I lost 20 reviews.

[00:14:47] It's because what they're doing is they're setting up a filter that's part of their algorithm to take out what they feel is spam because they don't want anyone manipulating it. So they're making it tougher. So reviews are very important, not just for right now for the algorithm, but it comes back down to reputation and conversion. Again, the same scenario that I said.

[00:15:11] If I'm looking for a local business, I'm heavily now going to be looking at reviews that help convert me. So if you can have good review velocity, right? You keep getting reviews coming in. Not only is it helping you rank higher and get more visibility, but it's helping you convert compared to your competitors.

[00:16:00] So that's why it's very important. How do you go about doing that within a practice? So I would say there's two things. It's reaching out to past patients, right? That's one. Always reaching out, whether it's an SMS campaign, email campaign, reaching out and following up, right? I look at it similar to when a fresh potential lead comes in. You don't want to just maybe try to call them once they don't answer. You never call again. That's not going to work. We know that, right? It's a numbers game.

[00:16:30] The same thing, past patients, you have to build that relationship and reach out, reach out. It's a numbers game with that. That's one way. But also, I would actually encourage practices to create an internal program with their team and with incentives to get their team to build relationships with people that were in the chair that had a treatment done to build that relationship and get the team to also ask, right? And the best time to ask, let's say I'm working in a practice.

[00:17:00] I could even do something where it says, hey, we have – if I know that I'm – and it also is going to encourage me to actually give a way better service because if I know that there is an incentive for me, let's say at the end of the month, the practice gives everyone a $30 Starbucks gift card. I'm just throwing an idea out there, right? And all we have to do is as a company-wide, we just have to get 20 new reviews for that month. Let's just call it that, right? It could be more. It could be less.

[00:17:28] It could be less.

[00:17:59] It could be less. So I would say, hey, by the way, what would mean a lot to me is we have like this company incentive program going on. Whoever gets like the most reviews, it does X, Y, and Z for me. And I really try my best. And what I'm trying to do is – I'm trying to personally hit five reviews this month. And it would mean the world if you could just even mention my name. If not, you don't have to mention my name, but at least leave our practice review if you had a great experience. Something like that.

[00:18:28] Like do something internally that's going to get your team to push that effort out. Because I see it that when a practice that is implementing any type of system, any type of incentives, and they get their team on board and they're asking for reviews, it does wonders as far as review velocity. And those practices crush it when it comes to SEO and conversions.

[00:18:54] And again, that's not the only thing you should be doing because you still need all the other SEO factors like optimization, building links, citations, all that stuff. But if you're doing this all as a whole and you have the reviews on top of that, it's just night and day. The dentist that I use, Taylor Dental, and this is a simple thing that you can do within practice speaking.

[00:19:16] Our software is like after an appointment, send a text, hey, if you enjoyed your appointment, please go review us on Google. And if your team member is doing what James is saying, once they get in the parking lot, they get hit with that text. They're like, oh, yeah, I told Jessica that I was going to review them. Like she did a great job. She made me feel welcome, wanted. I'm going to give them a review. And that right there is going to speak so much more volume because you're hitting them in two different lanes.

[00:19:46] And that's going to be big. Yep. I look at it, too, Alec, as a human, we like building relationships and we do things for people, right? So I think taking the opportunity to encourage your team to build that relationship with the patient, especially if they're face-to-face, it goes a longer way than if like a week later you just message someone saying, will you give us a review?

[00:20:14] There's no personal touch there, right? It's like if I sat at a restaurant and I loved my service and my waiter, and then at the end I was like, wow, you were great. If they said, hey, you know what would really mean a lot to me? Could you please leave the restaurant a review? I know it sounds silly, but it means a lot to me. I would most likely do it for them rather than a week later the restaurant reaches out to me through a text and says, Levar, how was your experience? It's just people get busy and they – right?

[00:20:42] But I think there's a better conversion when it's human to human, right? That interaction and you're doing something for someone. I think that is such an easy little tweak because you're having a conversation at the end of your appointment anyway. And instead of filling it with small talk or awkwardness, you have that script essentially. It's like, hey, how did you enjoy the appointment? Did we cover everything?

[00:21:09] Is there anything else that we need to address while you're here? And they're like, no, I had a great time. It's like, well, thank you for letting me know. And then you go into the little script and everything. And I think that's huge because you will start getting more positive reviews because you're making sure people are covered because a lot of times people aren't going to be uncomfortable and say, well, yeah, I had this or I didn't like this or whatever.

[00:21:37] Like they'll wait until they go on to the Google review to put negative reviews. So if you nip that in the bud in person and you change their mindset, that's going to be big. But let's talk about responding to reviews, positive and negative. How should people do that to improve their SEO? Yeah, I think you should respond to both, right? And I think this comes down like no business is perfect and nobody's perfect.

[00:22:04] So even on the negative ones, I think that's an opportunity to actually try to flip the script and see if there's number one, is there a way to make it right? Right. And it's not saying that consumers are always right. But at the same time, guess what? They can leverage Google to leave you a negative review. And if you care about your business and you care about your reputation, you have to really have the right mindset.

[00:22:32] You have to drop your ego and you have to be able to be like, you know what? We're going to make this right. And if there's an opportunity to make it right, I would actually leave a response to actually see if you can turn that around. Right. The worst thing to do is is to write something back within that review that probably shouldn't be written back. I would I would take some time and think about like what's going to be the right response here. How can I turn this around? And I think that's the right mindset is how can I turn this around?

[00:23:02] Because I've actually seen businesses that I worked with actually turn those negative reviews around by just saying the right thing. And maybe that person, like you mentioned, we're very quick when we're upset to leave like a negative review. It's very hard to get someone to leave a positive review, even when they have an incredible experience. It's just human psychology. So I would take the opportunity to take a few minutes and think, how can I turn this around?

[00:23:28] And at least if you didn't turn it around and you did respond, well, at least the algorithm is in your favor. Because responding to reviews, Google likes when you respond to reviews. So definitely respond to all your reviews. Positive ones are great. And the more personal you can make it is great. One tip is if somebody does mention a specific type of treatment that you did, that's a plus. So I just like to highlight that.

[00:23:58] For an example, if I left an ortho practice and I had Invisalign done, if I said, you know, Dr. X, Y, and Z did my Invisalign treatment. He's excellent. I highly encourage you to go see him. That's really good for SEO as well. Like having that treatment mentioned. So thinking about that as well and definitely responding to that review, I think is significant. Yeah.

[00:24:24] And just to put this in here, because I think responding is great. It's an awesome thing that we can do. Make sure that you follow HIPAA guidelines because the one thing that I've seen a lot of doctors request us do is when we get a negative review is to respond to them and say, well, blah, blah, blah.

[00:24:47] And like, essentially, if you acknowledge that they've come or anything, you have to toe the line with HIPAA compliance because that's supposed to be private information. So be very, very cautious on that. But when you do get a negative review, you showing that you want to fix it and that you want to turn it around, because there's times where I've gone on and I'm looking through and I'm reading people's reviews. And it's like, hey, you know, we're sorry that you had a bad experience. Please give us a call. Let's figure this out.

[00:25:16] That tells me that they are mature and that they want to make it right for the customer. And when I've seen it on the opposite end where people are combative, I'm like, oh, that gives you the ick. And you're like, I don't know about them. Exactly. Exactly. That's built for conversion optimization, too. So if your five-star reviews outweigh the few negative you had, you're good to go.

[00:25:45] And especially on the negative ones, like you said, if I see a business that has 500, let's say the four-point something that 500 reviews, if out of the 500, there are 10 of them that are not that great. But if I go read them and it's nothing severe and the practice took their time out and responded in a way like, hey, I want to make this right. That actually is going to make me feel better. Like, okay, at least I know they want to do the right thing. And things happen. Like we know things happen. Nothing's perfect.

[00:26:15] So you're totally right. At least, at the very least, it will also help you convert. It's just making sure that you cover all your bases on any of this because it's all about hospitality when it really comes down to it. It's being that unreasonable hospitality where people would normally stop. You go that extra mile. And Google is going to lap it up for sure. So let's talk a little bit about on-page SEO.

[00:26:44] How can it help orthodontic and dental websites, James? Yeah. So on-page SEO of the actual website, that is like SEO 101. And it's pretty incredible how many sites I analyze on a daily basis that actually get this wrong. On a website, there's a few key places. And I'll just throw them out there. There's a page title. There are headings, like header one, very important.

[00:27:13] There's a meta description, which people will argue, hey, it's not that important. But it still is important to optimize, at least for conversion. And I do like to optimize it locally as well. But there are a few key places on a website that you want to have optimized. And then along with content, and then along with what we call internally linking.

[00:27:33] And what that means, and Wikipedia does a great job at this, is whenever you go to a Wikipedia page, you'll notice inside of the Wikipedia page, there's a bunch of internal links to other relevant pages. You also want to build your site like that because Google likes that. It pushes power and relevancy over to other pages.

[00:27:52] For example, if I'm on the technology page, and on the technology page I mention braces, it's a perfect opportunity to link over to the braces page that is also optimized for braces. And vice versa, if on the braces page I mention Invisalign, another opportunity to link over to Invisalign. Many sites don't have proper internal linking. Many sites are missing optimized page titles.

[00:28:15] And what I mean by that is if you have a page that you want to rank for Invisalign treatment in, let's just, Pensacola, let's call it, right? Yeah. Invisalign treatment in Pensacola, that page, the page title needs to be optimized for Invisalign treatment in Pensacola. You should have a really optimized H1 with something around Invisalign in Pensacola.

[00:28:34] And then a nice long form article with internal links, optimized image of like Invisalign, maybe the doctor with an Invisalign patient, right? That's optimized. Alt text is optimized. And everything's fully optimized throughout that piece of content. And another cool thing about AI right now is we're able to understand what Google wants on those specific pages.

[00:29:00] So not only are we getting the basics right, but they also let us know, hey, when we're analyzing this term Invisalign Pensacola, we want to make sure we mention this on the page because Google seems to like this optimization. So we want to make sure we're working in the right keywords. And again, this is more advanced stuff, but even the basic stuff can go a long way, especially if you're in a smaller city and not a very competitive city. You're in a smaller city.

[00:29:26] The basic stuff can do wonders because there are a lot of sites not getting this right. When you think about it, like if you are building your website and someone's scrolling through it and they're reading along and then something catches their eye, Invisalign, Lightforce Brackets, whatever it is. Like, oh yeah, I remember seeing a TikTok or whatever about it. I want to know more about that.

[00:29:48] And if your website is optimized correctly and there's a link there to somewhere else on your website that describes that treatment, you are serving that potential patient way better than them having to go to a search bar or scroll through several pages on your website or your blog on your website to find that specific thing. Again, it's all about serving the patient. Exactly.

[00:30:16] And I think also understanding what I also see when it comes to on-page, understanding local search intent. And you'll hear me say that a few times. We've worked on hundreds of campaigns, especially in the ortho space and dental space, where you start to see data from Google Search Console, from Google Analytics.

[00:30:40] You understand search tools and analysis of how does the average person search, right? Medical terminology is good and all, and it's okay to mention that on the site. But an average person does not use specific terminology to search. And I'll give you an example.

[00:31:01] Like a mom, if she's looking for an ortho, a trusted ortho for her child, she might just go type in, best orthodontist in the city. If you don't have optimization for that term that I just mentioned and also the variations of that term, you're not going to rank that well. Your competitors will, right?

[00:31:22] But this is the understanding of this is, hey, I have to build that optimization and understand my potential patients. How are they searching? And is my site, my on-page optimized fully for all of those keywords?

[00:31:38] So that's why we built a framework, especially in a space where we understand local search intent, how moms, how adults, how teens, how specific searches are actually being searched for on Google. And we want to feed that on the site. Very, very important. And also what I also see is a lot of websites, they try to cramp everything into one page, like under services. That's not good optimization.

[00:32:07] You want to separate everything out because, again, Google is a bot and they're looking for very specific things on the page. So it's best to separate everything out. I didn't even know that myself. It makes sense. It's like easier scanning and all of that. But it's having that where it's just its own page. That way some things aren't competing against each other as well. It's like, oh, well, I'm trying to rank for all of this.

[00:32:34] And it's like, well, you're going to confuse everybody if you're having to scroll, scroll. And Google is going to just be like, yeah, this is a good and move on to the next thing. So let's talk a little bit about location pages. Like, why and how do we go about creating them? Yeah. So two things. One, location pages give us that advantage of actually optimizing fully for one location. So many practices have multiple locations.

[00:33:03] And even if you have a single location, you still want to do this. But especially if you have multiple locations, you want designated pages that are fully optimized for specific terms. And just an example, like we have Dr. Sackowitz, who is in Orlando. He's in Lake Nona. Dr. Phillips. I think Winter Garden. We want separated pages because those we want to build proximity and specific optimization around that locality.

[00:33:31] So if someone in Dr. Phillips is looking for an orthodontist in that area, that specific page and also the cluster of content that we build that support that page around Dr. Phillips, it forces it to rank higher. Right. So that's one thing. Also, we want to build proximity around specific neighborhoods. As I mentioned earlier, when it comes to Google Business, they have really cracked down with proximity if you're using near me terms. Right.

[00:34:00] Well, the one thing that we could do to build proximity is mention specific neighborhoods that you know patients are coming from. Right. And have that optimization on your site as well to give a good signal to Google when someone's typing in, you know, orthodontist in and it's a specific neighborhood. If your site mentions that, it's linked to your Google business. We're trying to like feed Google. Hey, we're also relevant for this neighborhood that is within our area.

[00:34:28] We got a question because I know we're kind of like in the second half of the stream and everything. Eugenia asked over on Instagram and going back to separating the pages, she asked, how would you suggest to separate like the different treatment types? I would separate them completely. So if you're doing Invisalign, I would separate Invisalign from braces.

[00:34:51] I would not try to put Invisalign, braces, sleep apnea, any type of treatment that you do should have its own designated pages because you want to make sure that you have a page title that is optimized for that treatment and location. Right. So and if you have multiple locations, you want multiple of these pages.

[00:35:11] So if you do Invisalign in Las Vegas and you do braces in Las Vegas, if you do ShoreSmile, Las Vegas, like you want all of these terms, spark aligners, everything should be separated. Inbrace, Las Vegas. We're not going to try to squeeze it all on one service page. That's a no-no because Google's not going to value all of that squeezed on one page.

[00:35:38] And also you only have room, so much room to optimize your page titles, your headers, right? You're going to confuse the bot of going like, all right, this page mentions it. But if there is a competitor that has a really good page about Invisalign treatment in Las Vegas and they answer all the questions around that, like what's the average cost of Invisalign treatment in Las Vegas? And this page is just designated for Invisalign, frequently asked questions, right?

[00:36:05] And I also encourage that, FAQs around that. That all lives on a page. A nice optimized image of Invisalign maybe being practiced in your practice. Optimize it fully. That's on that page. If you have a video from YouTube that's optimized for Invisalign treatment in your city, which I encourage too, you can also embed that. There's plenty of things you could do just on that page that is up. A lot of sites are missing this. So you definitely want to just separate it all out.

[00:36:34] And if you do multiple treatments in multiple cities, you want a page for each. I know it sounds a little crazy, but it works very, very well. Yeah, I think that is a superpower because several larger practices will have. We know one that's in the Pensacola area, like they have several locations within the Pensacola area. And then they have one in Navarre and then one in Pace.

[00:37:02] And it's like when you think about that, it's like you could just put it lumped all together and then you have your different locations. But when you optimize it SEO, because again, it goes back to that proximity, that is going to be your huge push on the search engine side of things. Yep, that's exactly right. And like even that example you gave, if you're trying to bunch up a bunch of optimizations on one page, it's not going to work. That's the easy way out, but that's not the right way.

[00:37:32] Right. Because all you have to get is one competitor, even if they have one location, let's say one competitor is just in Navarre and they're completely, their whole site is optimized for Navarre. If you have 10 different locations and you just mentioned Navarre once on one service page, you're never going to outrank that competitor. Right. So you have to step up and make sure you're doing the right type of location page, supporting neighborhood pages, treatment pages for all that.

[00:37:58] That it's, it's putting up that robust content and putting it up the right way, making sure everything's optimized on that page fully. It again, SEO doesn't happen overnight, but if you do this, I can promise you that the keywords that you're tracking, especially if you're tracking these keywords, you're going to see a big jump. I think that is a big point to make right there. SEO doesn't happen overnight. This is not, uh, you know, anything in life doesn't happen overnight overnight.

[00:38:25] It's like going to the gym. You're not going to get on the treadmill, walk five minutes and then walk out looking like, you know, the eighties Arnold Schwarzenegger where he's just, you know, one Mr. Universe. Like that's not going to happen. You've got to be consistent and you've got to keep going and going and taking the time to do it. Right.

[00:38:46] It's just like treating a patient. You wouldn't have a patient come in and be like, you look at their teeth and be like, okay, you slap some braces on real quick and you do a half done job and be like, all right, your teeth might straighten out. You know, that's the same kind of thing that a lot of people think of SEO and optimizing their sites are like, it's just like, ah, well, we'll just throw it together.

[00:39:09] I mean, that is a perfect analogy. If I came into a practice and said, Hey, I want straight teeth next week. They would laugh at me. It's the same thing of saying, Hey, I want to rank for orthodontist in New York city next week. It's like, okay, well let's see first where you're even at. And in the competitive area like that, Hey, I think we could create a blueprint and a roadmap to get there.

[00:39:32] But we have to really strategize and create a plan because Google is, is, is the rulemaker, not us. It's not like we could press a button and it happens. Google's a rulemaker, but we have a lot of data and we understand what Google likes. We just have to feed them that over time and build that trust.

[00:39:51] Yeah. It's a relationship with Google. Like they have their ad site and you can pop a ton of money into ads, but that is like going to a restaurant just because you went there and you paid once.

[00:40:03] Doesn't mean you could show up the next day and get food for free. SEO though, is like building a friendship and that relationship stays a lot longer than just paying for ads. And I think having that understanding when you're doing this, it's a long-term relationship. So I want to talk a little bit about local citations and directories. Like why do they even matter within 2025?

[00:40:29] Yeah. So the local citations and directories have been around for a long time. When it comes to SEO, we'll see, you know, like Yelp, yellow pages, these, these specific high authoritative citations and business listings, right? Just so anyone that is listening to this citations, business listings, same thing. Um, and the reason why they do matter is because building authority and also we want to build reputation.

[00:40:59] And I, I look at it as that. I look at it as foundational SEO. It's one of the first things that we do. So I know Google wants legitimate businesses to be on Google. And one of the things that they can easily do is find out information about your business and where it's actually mentioned and listed.

[00:41:22] So why not make sure, especially if you're a doctor, there are specific citations out there like health grades, ZocDoc, um, vitals, right? These, these like medical citations that Google can easily crawl and understand this is a legitimate business.

[00:41:41] And building, and building, building foundation and legitimacy is a signal to Google. It's one of the first signals. This is legitimate business. They have these citations built out. These citations have big authority. They also have a Google business built out, right? And they can connect those two.

[00:41:58] So it can help influence also your search visibility. And I would also encourage doctors to fill those, uh, citations out because there are actually citations that will require a license that I could not do because I am not a doctor, right?

[00:42:16] I'm, I'm, I'm just an SEO person who, even if I wanted to, they're going to say, no, like proof. I want proof. I want this. Actually the doctor has to do, uh, many practices have those, but I like to take it a step further. And when I call, I power up those citations. And what I mean by that is I work those citations into a campaign so that Google recognizes those citations.

[00:42:42] And I make sure that they recognize them. Because if you're, if you're just listed on health grades, or if you're just listed on WebMD, or if you're just listed on even like a local chamber of commerce, which is also powerful because it's at the local level. If Google, if Google doesn't recognize it, then I have a way that we, we use to record to make sure Google's recognizing this. It's just listed out there.

[00:43:07] And it might on the, on the front end, it looks like, Oh, I filled this out. My information is there. That doesn't mean Google knows your information is there. And we want to make sure that Google knows that you are signed up for these and you have an established business because it builds that trust signal that I'm talking about over to Google. It helps with search visibility, visibility, because it's a foundational business listing.

[00:43:31] It's again, SEO 101 and foundational SEO is I have a legitimate business. I have a Facebook page. I'm on Yelp. I'm on these. These are, these are things that we do at the foundation. They're not the most powerful SEO tactics, but they're very important, especially in the beginning.

[00:43:48] I think that's important. Like I, this thought just popped in my head. It's like when you're building a business, Google has a trust thing as well, where it's like, they want their customers. Anyone that's using Google is a customer. Let's just be honest. They're making money off of this because people are spending money on ads and everything.

[00:44:10] So they're not going to suggest something that they don't trust. And that's, that's the bottom line because they don't want to lose the toehold that they have on search engines.

[00:44:23] And that's so important for you to realize. It's like, you have to go on the dates. If you will, you got to go buy Google some ice cream. You, you gotta, you know, you gotta be there in the good and the bad times to make sure that Google knows that you're not going to be a scam. Essentially.

[00:44:43] I would say probably seven years ago, maybe, maybe even earlier than that. We, we would be, I would be able to go start orthodontist in Pensacola, a GMB, no problem. No verification. Like the verification was very easy to get past. And again, this is not legitimate, right? So they don't want that. That's why as much as they, they became a pain with like video verification. Now they want to see, right. It's actually to our benefit to make sure we're weeding out.

[00:45:13] Unlegitimate businesses, right? So they're very big on legitimate businesses and trust. And since we understand that we want to take advantage of that. I want to make sure that we verify everything. And I want to make sure Google knows we're legitimate and I want to build authority and trust signals in their eyes. And that's, that's why citations are important.

[00:45:35] You're going to be there for the long haul for the community. And that's where, where we're wanting to go. So I want to hit real quick. Cause we got only, you know, about 12 minutes left on the stream, but we've talked a lot about Google and the importance of SEO there.

[00:45:51] But I don't think a lot of people realize that YouTube is actually owned by Google and is the second largest search engine in the world. Google, of course, being the first, how can a orthodontic or dental practice utilize YouTube defer to their reach within their local community?

[00:46:09] Google owns YouTube. So that's one thing, right? Talk about trust. I think just having an optimized channel is the first thing and you can completely optimize it with tags right in the backend. Many people don't realize you can actually optimize your channel with keyword tags at a local level, at a local level.

[00:46:28] I would do that. And then having videos again, it's a perfect place to build trust and locally optimize them just like you would for your pages on your website. I like to treat YouTube very similar to how we treat a website. So again, coming back to, let's say orthodontists in Pensacola, we know our website is optimized for that. Well, we want a nice video. We can take a branded video or a perfect thing.

[00:46:53] It's like an office tour video, right? And we optimize it for orthodontic office in Pensacola. We link it over to the website. So now we're getting a backlink over to the site. It's a perfect branded piece. We can embed that on the office tour page of our website or other relevant pages. And we're just, again, building trust signals. And it's a social platform that Google owns. We can put our name, address, and phone number inside of that platform. And we could try to inspire engagement.

[00:47:21] And what I mean by engagement, engagement is another factor. Again, Google has patents for their Google search algorithms. So we know that Google also does look at behavior on your website. Are people getting engaged with your website? Are they clicking on specific things? Are they coming over to your Google business? Are they clicking on specific things? So it's another place that we can trigger that and just get additional optimizations in the backlink. Most people go on YouTube to find how to do something.

[00:47:52] Yeah. One of the most powerful things is how to blank, whatever it may be, how to straighten teeth. How do I brush my teeth? How do I get my child to take care of their, whatever it is, like you can do so many things to optimize that.

[00:48:09] And you're building trust. And if you're getting, you can get views from everywhere, but if you're getting views in your community, you are already warming up that lead without ever spending any money on ads. I think that's so huge that people need to realize you can warm people up to your practice without ever spending any money if you're doing these things.

[00:48:33] Definitely. And I've even seen local videos rank on page one for local terms as well. And I call it digital real estate. So the more digital real estate that you can take up on page one, the better for your brand.

[00:48:47] If I go and type in orthodontist in Pensacola and I see a Facebook page of your practice, if I see your Google business with five star ratings, if I see your website, if I see a YouTube video and you're taking up that digital real estate, you're going to blow away your competitors. Because people don't like reading. They like watching a video. So before we jump into the advanced stuff, if you do have a question, please pop it in the chat right now.

[00:49:16] We'll start answering questions as you have them and everything. We're here to do that. But we want to make sure that we're getting your question answered. So go ahead, type them in the chat and everything. And while you're doing that, talk about some of the advanced strategies that practices can employ with SEO. One of the main things that I'll mention quickly is generative AI, which is big right now.

[00:49:41] I'm sure everyone here hears about AI and not just not just leveraging AI to assist with optimizations because it's great at that. But what we're starting to notice is people also are using like something like chat GPT to actually do searches.

[00:49:59] So it's also understanding how do we influence not only Google, but how do we also influence something like chat GPT to put me as the number one in the search? If someone was to type in best orthodontist near me, best orthodontist in Pensacola, how are we influencing chat GPT? And there are specific signals different than Google. I mean, they take some stuff from the search engine, too.

[00:50:29] But there are specific things that you would like to have placed in a specific way so that you're also feeding now AI searches. And this is something that we are building case studies on and getting data from. And we're understanding this better. And I also do see that this is going to be another path. I don't think Google's going anywhere, but I also do think people are going to leverage AI.

[00:50:54] And I think some of what AI is understanding is coming from Google as well. So I think you want to start understanding, hey, there are people that are going to be searching with these AI tools. How do we leverage that and make sure we're optimized specifically for those tools so that we also get influenced and popped up? So that's one thing.

[00:51:18] And some of the ways, and I know it's still new, some of the ways to do that depends on the actual search. It gets very specific. So if they're using the word best, I notice that the AI is looking for credentials that are associated to best. So if you won an award and were featured as the best right from an authoritative site, that influences the AI because it scans and goes, oh, so-and-so practice.

[00:51:47] They were awarded the best orthodontist in Pensacola. And the site that mentioned them is, let's say, Forbes.com. And they're like, it's associated. It's a best award. Forbes mentioned it. Boom. Boom. It's great for a Google search as well, but also it can influence AI. Now, speaking about that, like being mentioned in Forbes, the next thing is high authoritative backlinks.

[00:52:13] And I see this get missed all the time. And what I mean by high authoritative backlinks is having sites that live on the web mention your website in contextual content. So that means within like a blog post and links back to your site. And it's on a topic that's very relevant. We want relevancy. Now, in the SEO world, we'll discuss like backlink building.

[00:52:43] Some people are like, oh, you can't do backlink building. Some people are like, oh, backlink building is – you need backlink building. I could say the data proves you need backlink building. But you don't just need any backlink building. You need trusted backlink building. And what that means, and I'll give an example, is a site like dentaltown.com, I believe is one of them. It's all about the dental space. So relevancy. We want relevancy.

[00:53:11] It gets traffic. That's a trust signal. If we know it gets traffic and we can prove that through software, right? So dentaltown.com gets traffic. If there's a blog post on Dentaltown and you get mentioned in that blog post and it links back to your website, it's a good trust signal. It's a high authoritative link. That's what we would consider a high authoritative link.

[00:53:37] What you don't want is a site that just blogged about something. And if we look at the site, we don't know what it's about. Maybe it's about everything under the sun. That's just spammy looking. If there's also pages that are not in English, that's a bad – that's a red flag. If you're linked on something that's not relevant to ortho or dental, that's a red flag, right?

[00:54:04] You want to take the time out to actually build quality relationships with these sites because that's actually what it takes. We build quality relationships with these sites and we're able to get certain features on these sites. And what you can look at it is as like a voting system. The more votes that your site gets, Google can see that. Their algorithm can calculate that.

[00:54:28] And when they go, oh my gosh, XYZ practice is mentioned here, mentioned here, mentioned here, mentioned here, mentioned here, mentioned here, mentioned here. On all this relevant content from authoritative sites that are relevant to your space, it builds trust and authority. And it's an advanced specific tactic that pushes the needle more than anything from my experience.

[00:54:52] That's interesting because when you look at the vote system and everything, if you can build those relationships – and again, it's all trust. It's all making sure things are relevant. Like if you're getting voted for an award, the more votes you're going to have, guess what? You're going to win. And when you're winning, that means more patients are walking in the door. That means that you're getting – so many other things are getting taken care of in all of that as well.

[00:55:19] And it's like you're not having to worry about overhead and all of that because you are just crushing it. And it all comes back to making sure that your game plan with SEO is actually effective and it's not an afterthought. Because, you know, anytime I've built a website, I'm not an SEO guy. It's something I don't even think of. And I'm like, yeah, here's a few keywords. And then I'm like, all right, I don't understand anything else. So that's about as good as it's going to get.

[00:55:48] And, you know, like hearing you talk about this, it's like knowing that and being able to utilize that is so powerful. But that is our stream today, everybody. Make sure to like and subscribe so you don't miss out on our weekly live streams that we're doing. And our podcast, the Grow Ortho podcast, to hear more content just like this. That actually can help grow your practice. And Mark Twain said it best.

[00:56:16] The secret of getting ahead is getting started. So get out there and get started making the changes you want to see in your practice now. This has been Zach. And I'm James. Y'all have a great weekend. And this has been the Grow Ortho podcast.

local citations and directories.

Grow Your Online Authority: Key SEO Practices for Orthodontists