Listen to the podcast here: How to Increase your Online Visibility
In this episode of the DPC Pediatricians, Phil and Marina discuss practical ways pediatricians can improve their online visibility and help more families discover their practices. They cover the importance of creating and maintaining a strong Google Business Profile, collecting patient reviews, improving website SEO, and using relevant keywords and backlinks to increase search visibility. They also explore how blogs and social media can help physicians establish credibility and connect with prospective families, emphasizing simple, educational content based on the questions pediatricians already answer every day in the exam room. Throughout the conversation, Phil and Marina share strategies for using AI to simplify some of these tasks while keeping content authentic, as well as tips for making online marketing manageable and consistent for busy DPC physicians.
Welcome to DPC Pediatrician. We’re Dr. Phil Boucher and Dr. Marina Capella, two DPC Pediatricians who are on a mission to share our love of direct primary care with you.
Welcome everyone to another episode of DPC Pediatricians. Thank you so much for listening. We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about how useful the content of this podcast is. Every time we go to the annual pediatric DPC conference, we have people come up to us and say thank you. And it’s just really heartwarming that people are listening.
And more importantly, people are being helped by this. So thank you. Thank you to our wonderful listeners. Also, I’d like to remind anyone listening, if you have not registered already for the virtual summit, please do so it’s coming up really soon at the end of September, tickets are still available and if you can’t attend live there are there is an There’s an option to purchase the recordings so you can access those whenever you want. So we look forward to seeing as many of you there as we can.
So today, Phil and I are going to talk about online visibility. Basically, it’s the question of, okay, once you open your practice, how do people and families and your ideal patients actually find you online, right? Because it’s not just like you hang your shingle and suddenly the world knows you’re there, right?
There’s a lot of work that has to go into marketing and online visibility is a big part of that. And I know that when I first opened my practice, I created my own website on Squarespace because I wanted to save money and I didn’t really know very much about this world of online visibility.
And one of the things that is important to understand and we’ll talk about today is SEO, search engine optimization. So we’ll get to that in a little bit. But to start us off, I think one of the most important things that is free to do and pretty darn easy to do is to create a Google business listing.
Bill, do you have a Google business listing for your practice?
Yes, absolutely. And I think that is the number one thing. If you take away nothing else from this episode and you’re distracted baking or driving, take away reminding yourself to go check your Google business profile because that will be the most important part of all for search. Most people search on Google.
All of the different AI platforms also reference Google and Bing when it comes to the way that you show up both on search and also like for when people ask chat or Claude or their favorite AI, you know, best pediatrician in Fresno, then you’re going to be more likely to show up there
if your Google business profile is up to date. I mean, you can go just try it on your own, open an incognito browser, and then type in pediatrician in your area, and you’ll see how chat pulls And so you can see how important that is and making sure that that is set up.
So do not sleep on that. Don’t waste your time writing blog posts or Instagram content or fixing the headers on your website. And if you do not have your Google business profile set up correctly.
Absolutely. A hundred percent. That’s one of the first things that I did, because I know that when I’m looking for A service professional or I’m looking for a massage therapist or I’m looking for somewhere to do my nails. Like I go on Google and I look at the reviews.
So the second component of that is, of course, create your profile. But then also, as soon as you can, as soon as you get your first patients, as soon as you see happy people leaving your clinic, ask them for reviews. Right. And it can feel really uncomfortable at first to say, hey,
can you give me A five-star review, but you can tell when families leave your practice happy and you can phrase it in a way that says, hey, I’m new. My practice has just opened. I really want to attract more wonderful families like yours. Would you mind leaving me a review? Because that really helps people define me, right?
It doesn’t have to be just selfish. I want five stars on Google, right? It’s about helping your business to thrive, right? And so making sure you get those Google reviews and just pull off the bandaid and ask. It doesn’t hurt. Most people are not doing it. Most people…
Just need to be asked and they need to be reminded and they’re willing to do it, but life gets busy and they forget. So those gentle reminders are totally fine for most people. And then I would also add to put some photos on your Google profile, get a,
you can get A family member or friend who’s a photographer, take pictures of your clinic space, take pictures of you because that just enhances your profile in general. And profiles that have more pictures, people are more likely to click on and to kind of look through to kind of check
the vibe and see if it’s a good fit. So Phil, anything to add on things that you do with your profile?
For the profile, I think definitely having pictures and things like that so they can get the visual of what it looks like, that it is a legit business because they might have the impression that, is this real? Sometimes it’s like it sounds too good to be true and when you can show them that you’re a real person.
And have a real office, then that helps. Going back to what you had said too about ripping the bandaid off of just asking for Google reviews. The way that we typically phrase it is we want to find more great families like yours. Would you mind leaving a Google review?
Like it gives them a little bit of a compliment in the process. And it’s true. Like, I mean, we, we kind of handpicked to some degree who we send Google review requests out to. And we do want more families like theirs. And so it’s true. It makes them feel good. It makes them feel useful.
And people don’t mind doing that. The vast majority are going to be in the midst of their busy day and the text came in while they were driving and they looked at it and then they looked back at the road and they forgot about it forever and they never went and did it.
And it was no skin off their back because people are used to being asked for reviews. But a percentage of those will take the moment that it takes, especially if you give them the actual link. And if you go to your Google My Business Profile,
you can get the actual link and then you copy that into the message or email that you’re sending so that it’s Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I completely agree. Yeah. Those are super helpful. We have a little QR code, like quarter page thing that we hand them sometimes when they’re leaving the office or sometimes we’ll text them, but sometimes my front office just finds it easier to do the paper and hand it to them right there.
But yeah, that has helped quite a bit. So that’s your Google business profile. Yeah. First thing, like Phil said, if you take away nothing else, make sure you pay attention to your Google business profile and you get reviews. The second thing is really all about the search engine optimization of your website. Whoever is creating your website,
whether it’s you or whether it’s a team or website expert, You need to pay attention to this SEO, right? And so your website went, I know this because I kind of toyed around with it when I was creating my website. Every page has these like SEO keywords that you can put into it and sort of on
the backend, it’s not something that’s being It’s just these keywords or key phrases or sentences that you associate with the homepage in general. And then every sub page has its own kind of SEO keywords and be thoughtful about what keywords you choose because a lot of people don’t know what DPC is. If you just emphasize the term,
for example, direct primary care or DPC, Most parents looking for a great pediatrician like you are not going to be searching DPC. They’re going to be searching like in my case as an integrative physician. I know that the word holistic is used a lot. And so that’s in one of my keywords on my website, right?
Is holistic pediatrician. And then I have a couple of others that are not so focused on DPC or my pricing model, but that are focused on the quality of care and the type of care that I provide. So make sure that you’re emphasizing the terms that people are actually searching
as opposed to what you think characterizes your practice from a business perspective, because people don’t really care about the business part. They care about the clinical and the persona part, right? Exactly. What do you do in terms of SEO optimization for your website?
I mean, it’s so easy now to just ask, and a lot of it is ask Claude to go sweep on your website and then see how it looks from an SEO perspective. And then instead of paying somebody $1,200 a month for SEO optimization, You can go to Claude and say, hey, how’s my website looking for SEO?
What sort of things? Here’s what platform my website is based on. What do I actually need to go and change? Talk to me like I’m a kindergartner. And then it’ll say under heading two, add this word, under heading three, add these phrases. And so that’s a really easy way.
I think in the world of SEO and it’s always changing so much, which makes it really easy for SEO experts to say, hey, we need to monitor this. You’re not going to be able to see really good metrics. Of what your website is doing, but it’s going to cost you $1,250 per month to manage your SEO.
And you don’t really know what you’re getting, but you can just do it yourself, especially when you start up and realizing that like it’s one part of the overall how people find you. And so Giving that a little bit of time and attention and just starting off at least with asking Claude,
asking chat, your favorite AI guy to go in and say, well, how’s my SEO? What’s missing? What could I do to optimize my SEO if I’m trying to attract these specific people? And that’s where I would start with making sure that those things are lined up. And if you say my website’s hosted on Squarespace,
it can tell you, okay, your website’s on Squarespace. Click here, click here, click here, add this line. Like it’s, you know, good enough that it can do a lot of the walkthrough for you.
I love that. And I love that you mentioned now we have AI tools that help to demystify this process for us and give us some simple things that we can do. Because I know a lot of us are so budget conscious when we’re opening our practices and $1,200 a month for someone who does SEO applications.
Optimization is really, really unrealistic for most of us. And nor should we be paying because honestly, the amount of work that they do for most basic websites, like a DPC website is not worth it. Now, if you’re Apple corporation, or if you’re in some huge business, right? Hundreds of locations, that’s different, right?
Then you’re going to want a really expert team to be managing the back end of that. But for us, for these tiny micro practices, we do not need to be paying anybody even a few hundred dollars a month for SEO optimization most of the time. Now, of course, once your practice grows and you have more financial flexibility
and maybe you really want to just offload a responsibility from Your to-do list, okay, fine. When you have the money in the future, go ahead and do it. But in the beginning, it’s totally unnecessary in my opinion. Whoever’s creating your website in the beginning, make sure that they are conscientious of the SEO stuff,
which if they create websites, they should be, right?
Yeah.
That would be my only caution. The other thing I would mention is also like, there were some surprising things when I talked to someone in the SEO world, they said like, even the image file names, like if you’re posting a photo of yourself, make sure that the file name is Dr. Bill Boucher.
So that becomes part of the searchability and the terms that come up when things like Claude and Google are scouring your website instead of just headshot.jpg. That doesn’t say anything about it. Make sure that you have file names of any images on the website that will bring attention to you and to what you offer.
And then also one thing that I learned in figuring this out for myself was that the more your website is linked by other websites the more the higher up you’re going to come up in google listings and so if healing arts pediatrics is referenced by DPC pediatrician and by Substack and
by this and by that then Then it’s just going to come up higher in the search results. And so make sure you get on the DPC mapper, dpcpediatrician. Anyone, any physician who owns a DPC practice for pediatrics can be added to that.
And then that way you are linked on our website and that helps you out a little bit. And also if you have I don’t know, friends in the community or you want to be highlighted in someone’s blog or newsletter, like make sure you take advantage of those opportunities if you can, because that also helps your online visibility.
Any thoughts on that, Bill?
I think that all of those are really good ideas. I like the linking, especially in the DPC mapper is an easy one to get your link up because you don’t have to go like ask somebody to put the link on. It’s just part of the DPC mapper.
I’ll push back a little bit like in terms of the renaming files. If you have 75 different tasks to do to open your practice and maintain your practice, I would put that towards the bottom of like, I’ve got some time to kill and I want to do something that’s boring.
I think that that’s maybe like a one So that’s a 100% sort of thing in the grand scheme of things. It sure doesn’t hurt. You can make sure that when you build your website that you try and put those things into place, but I wouldn’t knock that to the top of my to-do list on any given day,
just because I have a million different things to do.
Yeah, no, it’s definitely not on the top of the list. It’s more of a thing that whoever’s creating your website should be aware of, right? So that way you do it once and you don’t have to worry about it again. On your website and you don’t have time, please don’t go worry about that.
I would agree with that.
And not, again, to just plug in AI here, but if you have a folder of headshots or images that you’re going to use on your website, what you can do is you can point Claude at that folder and say, rename all these in an SEO-optimized way.
Look at the file, rename it, and then you can go sip your coffee or focus on something else. While Claude renames all those files, then you can give them to your website developer to put on your website or something along those lines. And again, save yourself some time. I mean, Claude, I tend to…
Think of different ways that AI can make my day a little bit easier. And that’s another way that you can do that.
Yeah. Well, yes. And yes, you come up with really, really impressive ways to use AI. So thank you for that suggestion. Another thing to consider, and now not everyone has to do this or may have bandwidth for this, but if you are creating a newsletter for your practice
and you’re already Having Claude help you write an article per month or two articles per month or you yourself are writing them, then putting them on a blog page on your website can really help to bring attention because the more refreshed content you have on your website, That also helps with visibility.
Someone who just created a website in 2014 and has never changed it, they’re probably, I mean, unless they’re being linked by a lot of other places, they’re not coming up as high on search results. I send out my newsletter. I have my virtual assistant just add the articles to the blog on my website. And it’s interesting.
I actually get this like Google Analytics report every month. And it tells me like how kind of like… What people are searching and how they’re finding me. And I did maybe six months ago an article on parasite cleanses because that’s something that just goes around on TikTok and Instagram and parents are believing all sorts of crazy things,
especially in like the integrative and functional medicine space. And I have parents come to me and ask, like, should I be worried about parasites in my kid? And all these interesting questions, right? So I did an article about it and there were like 1200 searches in one month, like, or like going to that article.
And I thought, oh, that’s so interesting, right? Because parents are searching that and they were finding my blog post about it. So I thought that was fascinating.
I love it. Now, I think that’s super helpful because that’s a great thing that people are searching for and people want somebody that can relieve the analysis paralysis for them. So it’s not like hopefully not everybody’s coming and saying, can you do that parasite cleanse that you talk about on your website?
Because you at the end of it didn’t talk about that. There’s these herbal parasite cleanses that do anything, but that they’re like, oh, this person. This doctor, this expert can relieve my analysis paralysis and fear that I’m missing something because she actually knows about this rather than the TikTok influencers and those sorts of things.
So I think that’s a great way to put content out there that gets people the information that they need.
Yeah, absolutely. And just realize that not every person, you know, those 1200 people didn’t join my practice. It’s just increasing that some of them live across the country from me and are not interested in my practice, but they’re finding me and those clicks into my website are increasing. It’s basically affecting where I show up on Google.
When someone searches pediatrician near me, I’m coming up higher and higher because I have pages on my website that are clicked on more often. And so it’s really just about general visibility. It’s not necessarily about getting customers, but when the parents who are a good fit for your practice are then searching for pediatrician near me,
they’re more likely to find you because you come up higher in those search results.
Exactly. And I think that sometimes they share it with, Hey, did you use this person? This person’s near you. Have you heard of them or something along those lines? One specific caveat that I would share with people is if you’re not, if you’re going to blog intermittently,
Then what I would do is not date those blogs because there’s not much worse than going to somebody’s website and finding their blog and seeing that they blog once in 2022 and then once in 2018 and then once in 2014. That just feels like really old and stale.
What you can do then is you can make it seem like most recent articles, and then they don’t have a date on them, but they’re the most recent articles. And when you have the time, when you have the bandwidth, when you think of something that you want to say, then you do put that blog post together.
And note here, I don’t think that using AI for your blog post is a very good idea. Maybe for the big picture things I want to cover, but not for the actual results. Writing people can really still smell that from a mile away, but avoid putting the dates on there.
If you don’t think this is something that you’re going to be able to commit to on a semi-regular basis, which most of us are not going to be bloggers on a semi-regular basis. We’re going to be infrequent bloggers and we have something to say.
And so save yourself from it having to be like, Oh, that’s the last time I blogged was in 2023. Just put most recent articles, share a few of those without the dates on them.
Yeah. Yeah. I would push back a little on the don’t use AI to write your articles at all. I think it has to be done wisely. So sometimes when I do use it to write some articles, I give it a lot of information. Like I’m writing a few paragraphs of like This is a story of a patient
and I want these points to be emphasized and I want this article or this page from the AP or this publication to be referenced. And I think that produces a lot better content that still has your unique spin on it. And I only say that because I know like I put out a lot of slides.
Stuff that’s written per month. And I don’t believe in using AI for everything. Like I’m also writing a book and I am using zero AI for that. But when it comes to these articles, when you have this, like just activation energy, that’s just like, oh, who wants to sit down for an hour and like write one article.
Right. Right. If you find yourself in that position, just free type a few paragraphs about what you want to message into chat or cloud. And I think that’ll be helpful to generate content that’s still valuable, that still has your voice and your stories. Because I don’t like AI slop either.
Like if you just say, write me an article.
That’s what I was referring to is like, hey, AI, write me an article on croup. And then you just copy and paste that onto your blog. It’s like, okay, we totally agree. It’s not this, it’s that, or that’s the move or those sort of things that you see the AI slot putting out.
But if you give it, hey, these are the sorts of things that I want to talk about. Here’s what I typically tell families. I think that’s very different than just chat, write me an article about.
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m sure you do that. All right, so last but not least, social media. Phil, I’m gonna have you kind of share your pearls about social media because obviously that’s a really nice and mostly free resource for increasing online visibility if you’re willing to do it.
Right, and I think the big thing is like if you’re willing to do it is the big challenge for people. Most people are experts and can talk at length about the things. It’s more, do I want this to be part of what I do on a semi-regular basis?
And so when I talk with practice owners about doing social media, I tell them to pick one specific area to focus on. Yes, you take care of babies. Yes, you take care of teenagers. Yes, you take care of acne and ADHD and cuts and scrapes. But if you try and talk to everyone at once,
the algorithm doesn’t know who to show your stuff to. And so if you say, okay, this quarter, I really want to reach more feedback Young families of expectant parents, then pick some specific things about newborns and just talk about newborns. People with teenagers with acne will still find you through other means.
But if I’m saying I want more newborns and I’m going to talk about newborns and all the different little newborn things, and some of it can be the stuff that we do in our practice, the way we do home visits, the way that we have longer appointments,
the way that we have lactation counselors and those sorts of things. But most of it should just be focused on education. And so when I talk about that, I pick like one really specific educational nugget, like something that you say in the exam room all the time and create a post,
whether it’s a written post that you type, whether it’s direct to camera, whether it’s a voiceover, something along those lines. And focus in on there. So neonatal acne. Parents often worry about acne. And is it something that they’re doing wrong? Are they needing to change their child’s diet?
Here’s what I tell parents about baby acne when they come in at that two week visit and they’re Acne is starting to pop up. And then at the four week visit, when it’s going strong, here’s what I tell parents and pick one of those specific things. You could even get more nuanced and say,
parents often are worried at the four week visit because their baby’s acne started at two weeks and it’s worse now. And they think they’re doing something wrong or they need to change their diet. And here’s exactly what I tell them is like, just wait, it will be better in two weeks. That sort of thing.
If you can kind of get into the weeds of very specific things, then People will see that and they will like it. They will also share it with somebody who needs to know that. Oh, my sister-in-law is expecting. Share. I’m going to send this to her because this is something that I worried about
and I had to call the pediatrician three times and go in for a visit just to be told this is just baby acne. It’s fine. I’m gonna share this with my sister-in-law who’s expecting, so she doesn’t have to deal with that. Shares get more visibility, more visibility, more visibility.
And then when people find you through any of those means, then they see, oh, this is somebody who has some content Around newborns, they get shared frequently. And so in the big picture, that’s kind of how I would look at social media. If you are saying, I want to get into it,
but I only want to do it on one platform, I would say that’s the right approach to do. Start on Instagram. Don’t worry about Facebook or TikTok or YouTube or LinkedIn or anything like that. Just start on Instagram and start looking and seeing what you like and resonate with
and how you can create similar things that are in your voice with your spin, with your specific things that you want to teach on. So I look at social media as a teaching platform for practice owners as a way to spread good messages that then eventually people say,
I just wanna see this doctor because they are the expert. They’re known for baby acne. And so I wanna go see them and get their insight. I don’t think anybody will sign up with you just because of baby acne, but it will contribute to their overall gestalt of somebody who teaches and reassures.
And then eventually they will say, he’s had all these different things about newborns. I’m expecting, I’ve been really concerned about these things. I feel so much reassurance just from watching these little videos as I swipe through. I’m going to check out their website and then I’m going to check out their practice.
I’m going to book a meet and greet. And that’s kind of the unaware to aware, to trusting, to signing up kind of journey that patients go on.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think like you alluded to, Consistency is the key, right? So if you want to do it, set aside just 30 minutes a week, like schedule it in your calendar to just, okay, this is social media time. That’s what started to work better for me. Now,
at times I’ve been really inconsistent because I had too many things on my plate, but more recently I’ve been like, oh, okay, like the ideas are always coming. And just this week I had… Two parents ask, is it normal that my four to six month old is drooling all the time?
And I was like, that’s a great question. It’s such a common question. So I did a social media post about it and had another one asking about like reading. They had like a two-year-old and like, he just will not like sit still for me to read. Like he’s just so different from his brother.
His brother would sit still for half an hour and let me read to him. And he just wants to be up and moving and moving. And so what am I doing wrong? Or is this something I should be worried about? And so we talked about a reading as a means for language development,
but it’s not the only means that you can do it in different ways. You don’t have to read all the text on the page. You can use the pictures in different ways. To encourage that language development and that interactive communication. But point being, those questions that come up,
use that whenever you finish a visit and you’re like, oh, this issue came up, this question came up, jot it down on your phone, have a list. So that when it comes time to actually sit down to record, just pretend you’re like you’re talking to that parent and just say,
how did I answer that question in the exam room? Let me pretend I’m talking to them again. And this is going to reach a wider audience. It doesn’t have to be rocket science. It doesn’t have to be super complicated. You don’t have to do research about novel stories. Drug therapies and things like that.
You just talk to the parents that are already asking you great questions in your practice. And that’s a way to get more comfortable because you already are doing it. It’s just a matter of doing it in front of camera, right?
I don’t think you should have to research anything that you say. I mean, you can get some background information if you want, but these are the things, the questions that parents have, you hear so many times that you can probably kind of tune yourself out mentally as you just go through and you You say like,
hey, when you want to start solid foods, you should do peanut butter. Here’s how I tell parents to introduce peanut on a regular basis to their infant. You do this and this and this and this. And those are things that you’ve said a million times. And that’s what parents want to hear.
And so it makes it really easy for you to just spout off kind of the usual things that you say on a regular basis too.
Absolutely. And also, if you are signed up for our DPC Pediatrician newsletter, our mid-month newsletter always has social media scripts. It has one per week. It’s there if you’re like completely out of ideas and you’re completely stuck. I’ve heard feedback from some pediatricians who do use that and say that it’s helpful. You can, of course, adapt it.
These are generic scripts that we send out for topics that are seasonally appropriate. You give it your own spin, but it’s just a way to kind of like get the wheels turning and give you some inspiration to get more regular on social media.
So we hope you found this helpful and that you have some ideas now for how to increase your online visibility if it has been a struggle at all, especially if you’re new and you’re trying to get the word out about the wonderful care that you offer. Thank you so much for listening and until next time.
