So how is AI changing search engine optimization? There’s really two ways that AI has impacted SEO, and the first is that the way people are able to search for the answer to a question has changed.
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Hi there. My name is Michelle Grasek. I’m a practicing acupuncturist and a marketing strategist and the host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast. And today we’re talking about how AI is changing search engine optimization and what we can do about it as acupuncturists and local brick and mortar small business owners.
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So before we get into that today, I would love to say thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you. All right, let’s get into the slides. So how is AI changing search engine optimization? There’s really two ways that AI has impacted SEO, and the first is that the way people are able to search for the answer to a question has changed.
So if you. Recall, and originally we would simply type a couple keywords into the search bar in Google and we’re gonna use Google as our primary example. I know there are other search engines, but really the one that owns everything as and is the most important is Google. So we’ll use Google as an example.
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So we used to just be able to choose a couple keywords like acupuncture, frozen shoulder, or maybe. Frozen shoulder acupuncture near me, just a mishmash of keywords and put them into a Google search. And of course we can still do that, but that used to be the most common way that people would search.
Now people can use their Alexa and ask full sentences, so there are, they’re using a voice search or they can type full sentences into chat GPT. So instead of just saying acupuncture, frozen shoulder, they can say things like. Can you find me at an acupuncturist specializing in frozen shoulder near me, or can acupuncture help my tennis elbow and X, Y, Z?
So these are more conversational, they’re full sentences, and these are called high intent queries because they indicate that a person is really very interested. In what we have to offer, right? They wouldn’t be asking about, natural alternatives for frozen shoulder or acupuncture specifically for frozen shoulder if it was not their intent to pursue that line of treatment.
Okay? We know that the way we are inputting our query has changed. It’s a lot more long tail keywords. So when you’re entering a whole sentence or multiple keywords or big concepts, that’s called the long tail keyword, right? And these long tail keywords are often conversational in tone, right?
They’re phrased as an entire question. And then we also know that AI is changing the output, that social, sorry, that search engines are providing as an answer to a question. So you may have noticed when you search on Google that up at the top, Google will give you an AI summary of the answer it thinks is most relevant and most accurate to your query.
And. Google also has a specific AI search, so let me skip ahead here for you called AI mode where you get a much more comprehensive AI generated response to your query. So as an example, I typed into AI mode in the Google search. I put in. Acupuncture to manage celiac disease symptoms near me. So this is a longer tail keyword, and this is the response that it gave me.
So first it says, yes, acupuncture is likely to be helpful for celiac symptoms, and then it went ahead and it listed the local. Acupuncture clinics. So my practice is very close to my house, so I knew that my practice was gonna come up, but I was curious what the ranking would be. I have a lot of content on my website about digestion and I really just wanted to see are we ranking for these kind of local searches for symptoms that we like to treat?
You can see it’s listing five different clinics and we’re at the top and it provides the most information about my practice. And now why is that? If you take a look at this, it’s summarizing the specific answer to the question about celiac symptoms. At some point in creating content on my website over the past six years, I must have mentioned that I have Celiac and that I have been using acupuncture to help manage those symptoms for a decade, and that contributes to the reason that I love to help patients with a variety of digestive conditions.
I know that I wrote this content, I don’t remember when, I have no idea what page it’s on, but it’s very specific, right? And it is. A direct answer to this question that was put into the search query and Google found it. And there’s a specific reason that I am sharing this with you. So to review the two ways that AI is changing search is, one, it’s changing the way that we ask questions of Google.
So the questions themselves have changed. And two, it’s changing the way that the search engines AKA Google are providing the answer. Okay? So as you can see here, it says results are summarized with relevant points and fewer clickthroughs are necessary because if it’s summarizing your an answer to a question, you don’t actually have to click through to that website that it’s referencing to read the same information.
Okay. So all of this is important to keep in mind when we ask ourselves, okay, those are the changes. What can we do about it as local brick and mortar businesses, as practice owners, and truly high quality, detailed content that talks about your specific experience and mentions local keywords is going to be more important than ever.
This AI models is referring to any, aI that’s built into a search engine. So we just saw, if we skip back here, this is AI mode in Google, but different search engines have different names for it. But AI really prefers content that is detailed, that it feels is going to be authentic because it mentions a real person’s experience or background or expertise, and also incorporates local keywords.
All of this in addition to mentioning the keywords relevant to the symptom that the person mentioned in their query. Okay. And we’re gonna talk about an exact page structure for a new page on your website that you can create, where you can incorporate all of these things. But I think this is really interesting.
We’re emphasizing that. The AI search part of search engines wants to ensure that the content it’s providing as an answer to a question is authentic and relevant, as opposed to providing really basic, vague information that may have been generated solely by ai. AI generated content is not a bad thing.
When I’m creating new pages for my website, I absolutely use chat GPT to help me. The important thing to note is that. If you ask chat GPT to help you write any content, the quality of the output is going to depend on the quality of the prompt that you give it. So you need to tell chat GPT about your target market, your ideal audience, your expertise.
You can tell it the things you want it to include. The things you do not want it to include, you can even tell it that this is going to be content geared towards SEO. So you need it to mention a specific keyword or phrase and your location, et cetera. Okay? So this is not to say that you can’t use AI to help you write these pages, either the content or the outline, but what you wanna avoid is.
Content that sounds very basic and generic that doesn’t reference any particular experience or expertise where the examples are really vague and just not helpful. I think you’ve probably come across that sort of content before. That’s probably AI generated content. Instead, what the AI search is looking for is deeper, right?
It wants more detail, it wants more testimonials about the symptom on the page. It wants more information, okay? Because that’s indicating that it’s authentic and it’s relevant and it’s most likely a good answer to the person’s question. So before we move on, I wanna emphasize that search engine optimization.
And really Google’s goal, everything Google is doing. It is about the user experience and we can maximize that when we are creating pages for our website for SEO. And what do I mean by user experience? Google cares very much that the answers it brings up to a search query are authentic, relevant, and useful answers to the actual question that was asked.
It does not wanna be tricked into putting a website at the top of a search. That actually doesn’t answer the question, right? So it’s become very savvy in that way because it wants to provide the best answer to a question. Do you remember Ask j Eves? It still exists. Lots of people don’t even think it exists anymore, but ask j Eves algorithms.
To answer questions we’re simply not as good as Google’s, and so Google really took off and asked j Eves got left behind. Google does not want that to happen. Okay, so it’s like Google wants to help you. It really does. If you are the answer to a question that someone type in, it wants you, it wants your business, but we have to help Google understand.
When our business is the answer to a question that’s been put in the search, that is our responsibility. And so how do we do that? We build out our website with deep rich content that talks about our experience as practitioners, our expertise that mentions our location and. Can include testimonials, et cetera.
All of the things that help Google feel like the content is authentic and specific to the search query. Okay, so you know, one thing I always ask my marketing clients when they are a little resistant to. Adding more content to their website is, is the content that’s already on your website specific enough that Google would know what kind of patients you want it to send you?
And if the answer is no, then we have to write about those symptoms and conditions. Otherwise, Google will have no idea exactly who to send us and it’s gonna send those people somewhere that is specific. Okay. One way of maximizing the potential of your website for the new way that AI is impacting search engine optimization is to write these long form detailed pages about specific symptoms or conditions that you wanna see more of.
Now, there are lots and lots of SEO strategies that you can use that are very effective. This is just one, and I chose it. For today, because it doesn’t require us to have any technical behind the scenes knowledge of our websites, it doesn’t really even require us to have much SEO knowledge. We are just writing a really good, thorough, detailed webpage and including a couple key elements so that.
Google understands when our website is the answer to a question that someone entered into the search. Okay? And so let’s talk about the detailed format for these symptom pages. I’m actually gonna skip ahead. And just run through an outline of this page and then I’ll show you a real time example. So a really nice format and you can pause and take a screenshot of this, is to have the the title of your page be.
Acupuncture four. And then the symptom will say osteoarthritis of the knee, if that’s something you’d love to treat in Rochester, New York, or whatever your town or neighborhood is. And then each one of these bullet points would be a heading section for the page. So what is osteoarthritis of the knee? How can acupuncture in Rochester.
Help with osteoarthritis of the knees. How many treatments do I need? What to expect for osteoarthritis of the knee for acupuncture? Frequently asked questions about acupuncture and osteoarthritis. Why choose your clinic name? Why choose Ageless Acupuncture? Schedule your first visit today in Rochester, New York at ages acupuncture.
Okay, so keeping all of that in mind, let’s look at. And I apologize. I thought I had this, oops. Pulled up for you.
Okay, so let’s look at a real time example of this. For diverticulitis I mentioned I love to treat digestive conditions, so we try to have these pages for the various digestive conditions that I really enjoy treating and want more of those patients. So you can see acupuncture for diverticulitis relief, and son falls.
I’ve got my keywords, which are acupuncture, the symptom. And my location. Okay, and then I’ve got my headings. What is diverticulitis? I’ve got a call to action button here. Make an appointment. How acupuncture might help with diverticulitis. How many treatments? Another button to make an appointment. What to expect.
Why choose our clinic Is acupuncture right for you and ready to make an appointment with of course, another button. Okay, so if we hop back to the slides. I wanna go back one slide here. So really what you are thinking about is. Answering a long tail question that you think your ideal patient would ask, and you can actually like if you think the question is going to be, can acupuncture help with my frozen shoulder?
That could be one of the headings on your page, and then you answer the question, right? It’s okay to have the question be verbatim as a heading on your page. Okay, and what you wanna do to help Google understand that you are. An authentic business to build trust with Google. So it knows that sending traffic to you is a good choice.
You are a good answer to the query. You can mention your professional experience. You can mention testimonials. For example, you could say 10 years in business treating digestive conditions just like diverticulitis. Or we have been in business for eight years and we have 45, 5 star reviews.
Okay. You can talk about a case study, of course, where you’re scrubbing any patient information, but you can talk about the improvement that you have witnessed in similar patients in the past, giving Google an idea that your real person and you, again, you are just a trustworthy source to send people to for the search query.
Okay. And making sure that over and over again you are including the symptom diverticulitis, for example, and your location. Rochester Seneca Falls in the headings going down your page. Okay? And I pointed out that I had multiple call to action buttons saying book now you wanna have. You don’t want people to have to look around and figure that out.
You wanna have multiple going down the page. I also recommend having internal links. This is very good for SEO and can help improve the rank of this page in particular and the pages that you link to. So on your symptom page, you can link to other relevant pages on your website. For example, if you say, why choose Seneca Falls acupuncture and then say our our acupuncturists have a combined 30 years of experience. You could hyperlink that to the about page on your website. Okay? And this just helps Google understand the structure of your website better. And anytime we’re helping Google understand us, it has a better idea of when we are the answer to a question, and it’s more likely to send people to us.
Okay?
And Oh, I apologize. It looks like I didn’t quite finish this page. So to review, why do these detailed symptom pages work so well? So one, they match people’s new search behavior with the long tail keywords or the full question queries, like full sentence. They also position you as an expert, not only for potential patients, but also for Google.
And they improve your local search rank. So it’s not just about including the symptom, but also about including your location over and over again so that Google knows like within what range are you the answer to this question. So here’s what I would love for you to do. I’d love for you to write two of these pages.
The reason I say two is that it can take three to six months for these pages to really, bring you a return on your investment of your time and your energy for Google to start sending people to these pages. So the more pages you can write now, the like the better results you’ll have later on. Okay?
So if you can only write one page right now, that’s fine. Certainly better than nothing. But if you can, if you have time to write multiple symptom pages. Please do think about your ideal patients and two conditions that you love to treat and want more of. It could be it could be anything, right? It could be carpal tunnel and fertility for women with PCOS.
Okay, and just follow the outline that I provided. Ask chat GPT for help. That’s totally acceptable, and publish them so that you get an enormous benefit down the road. So I really hope this is helpful. As always, if you have questions, you are more than welcome to. Send me an email, michelle@michelleGrasek.com and I would love to invite you to a new marketing membership.
I just launched. It is a low cost membership. It’s called the Snack Size Marketing Club. The idea is about taking. Small bite size. I love puns. Small bite size actions every week, which done consistently really add up to practice growth over time. So you can visit the Snack Size Marketing club@michelleGrasek.thinkific.com.
I’d love to have you as a member. And before I sign off today, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council. One more time for the opportunity to be here with you today. Talk to you next time.