I’m sharing one very simple SEO strategy to help more local people find you on Google. And before we get into it, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.
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Well, I’m Michelle Grasek, acupuncturist marketing strategist and host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast, and today I’m sharing one very simple SEO strategy to help more local people find you on Google. And before we get into it, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.
All right, so let’s get into the slides and talk about this strategy.
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So I know that most people already know what SEO is search engine optimization, but I wanna offer a, maybe a slightly different way of thinking about it or a new definition that is going to be useful for us today. So search engine optimization is really the art of getting your website and your business to rank higher in a Google search.
And I think it’s really important to note that we have the opportunity through. Search engine optimization to tell Google. When we are the answer to a question that someone has typed into the search, right? When our business is the answer to a search query, and it means that we also have the opportunity to tell Google what kind of patients to send us, right?
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And I think this is very important because so much that you can do with search engine optimization is free. And we really underestimate the impact that we can have. But we have to be willing to, I. Help Google help us, right? Because Google’s only using what’s already on our website and our Google business profile, for example, to understand our business.
And if it’s very thin in terms of content and we don’t have any keywords that reference the symptoms and the patients that we like to treat, how is Google supposed to know? When we are the right answer to a search query or how is Google supposed to know which sort of patients to send to us, to our website?
So really what we’re doing with search engine optimization is we are teaching Google when we are the answer to a question and helping it better understand our business. We are helping Google help us. Okay. So it’s a great opportunity that we have. And specifically when we’re talking about local SEO, there’s three things that have a huge impact.
So they are relevance, proximity, and prominence. So let’s talk about each of these briefly. So relevance is essentially how, how well does your business answer the question that someone put in to Google? How closely aligned is what you offer to the thing they are asking for. Okay. Are you a good fit for this search query, right?
Or your business? And proximity, of course is how Google determines when someone types in something like acupuncture near me. How Google determines whether you are within a reasonable range to show up for this person’s search, right? So if someone is searching acupuncture near me, and your clinic is an hour away.
Maybe Google’s going to decide that’s too far, right? There are other acupuncturists who are closer and it’s going to prioritize them towards the top of a search, right? And again, this is specific for near me searches, okay? Because Google is using the location of the user, like where is their cell phone, what are the coordinates when they’re typing in this question, and what is the address of your brick and mortar business and what is the distance between them?
Okay, so that’s proximity. And then prominence is really how authoritative, how engaged, how popular is your business, how much are people talking about your business? And this is both. In terms of online and offline, but Google is using signals like reviews of your business, links from other business websites that are local, that are near your clinic to your website.
Mentions of your business. Social media or elsewhere on the internet, that doesn’t necessarily have to be linked, although that’s always great, but maybe someone is talking about your business on Facebook. Maybe someone actually tags your business in a post on Facebook. Okay. Or Instagram. And Google’s paying attention all of these signals to help it understand like how well known, how established is your business.
Because all of this. All of these factors that contribute to prominence, build trust with Google, because really Google wants to make sure that any business that it recommends in the search results is actually active. And is a part of a community, right? It’s called the Worldwide Web for a reason.
Like it’s building a web of all of these threads that come back to your business and your website and your Google business profile. And it’s checking to see is there a local web of people who are referring to your business? And that just builds a lot of confidence and trust in Google and makes it more likely to rank your website.
Above some of your competitors who maybe have less prominent signals in the search results. Okay. And today what we are gonna focus on is just one very simple. Addition or change that you can make on your website that has a huge impact. And this is called location modifiers. And that’s just a fancy term for adding your location to specific places on your website.
Very strategic places that Google cares about to help Google better understand your business. And I wanna clarify, because what we’re doing is we’re going to add things like. Let me see if I can give you an, I’ll just give you an example. Instead of having a conditions page, like if you love treating migraine patients, maybe you have a big long page on your website that’s acupuncture for migraines, and you talk about what are migraines and who’s a good fit for acupuncture, for migraines, and what has been your experience what are the symptoms that you’re helping people with why should they pick your clinic, et cetera, et cetera.
At the top of that page, instead of just having the title be acupuncture for Migraines, adding a location modifier would be as simple as saying acupuncture for migraines in Scottsdale, Arizona, or maybe your town. Or your neighborhood. You could narrow it down a little. Okay. And I wanna clarify something.
So if we go back, my students, my marketing students ask me this all the time, and they are assuming that by adding our location keyword, they’re. Addressing the proximity piece of their local SEO when this is actually not the case. So what we’re doing when we are adding location keywords is we are improving the relevance of like helping Google better understand our business, who we are, what we do, who we serve, and like where we serve.
That it just counts under the relevance category because you can’t really impact proximity with keywords because Google knows your physical location address, and it also knows the physical location of the searcher. It knows the coordinates on their cell phone as they’re Googling something. And so if someone’s typing, acupuncture near me. It’s calculating that distance right and no amount of you adding other location keywords can change Google’s mind about your physical. Location and your address. Okay, so I hope that makes sense. So we’re not impacting proximity here. We’re impacting relevance because what if someone searches cosmetic acupuncture, Rochester, New York, right?
And you are in Rochester. Now you have the opportunity if you’re including Rochester as your keywords. You are telling Google, okay, I’m more relevant for this specific search query because my business is the answer to what this person put in. I do cosmetic acupuncture. I’m located in Rochester. I’m perfect.
I am the answer to the search query. Show me at the top of the search. Okay, so I hope that makes sense. So our focus here is going to be helping Google understand our business in this specific context based on location. Okay? And it’s super easy. These are very easy changes to make on your website.
So we’re gonna do two. Things. So the first is you are going to add these location modifiers to specific pages on your website. You are gonna update existing pages and blog posts, and then in the future, as you add more pages or blog posts, you always wanna remember to include your location. And then the second thing I’d like you to do is to add location modifiers to specific places on your Google business profile.
So let’s talk about your website first. So I’ll give you a bunch of examples. I mentioned the acupuncture for Migraines page. So I find that a lot of people do have these conditions pages on their website. So for example, if you wanted more pain management digestion in women’s health patients, like those are your favorite.
You would wanna have on your website, one page for each. Talking about, what kind of things can acupuncture help for in pain management? And who’s a good fit and what are the outcomes? What are the symptoms? Why is you, why should they pick your clinic? And I often find that sometimes people will just give that page the title, pain management, or maybe they’ll do.
Pain management, acupuncture. And all we’re doing in this case is just adding your location to that title, right? So Pain Management Acupuncture in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Okay. Because then think about. Each of those parts of that title is a key word, right? You have acupuncture, you have pain management, and you have Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
If we’re thinking about how your ideal person is searching for you, they’re probably searching for a combination of those things, okay? So this is really optimizing your website in a big way, and I just can’t emphasize this enough that it’s helping Google better understand your business and helping make you more relevant to your.
Ideal patient. We are just, we’re giving Google more information and we’re repeating, we’re gonna add your location in multiple places. We’re repeating it so that there’s consistency across your website, really emphasizing this. Okay, so some more examples would be migraine Acupuncture in Scottsdale, Arizona, acupuncture for Chronic Knee Pain in Rochester, New York.
You can also add your location. To service pages, so not just conditions, but also your service pages. So most people have a page that describes, what is acupuncture, and then another for what is cupping, what is Chinese herbal medicine, maybe? What is Chinese dietary therapy. So on those pages, you also want to add your location.
So for example, nutrition for hormone balance in Queens, New York. Okay.
So specifically, where are you at in your location? And I’m actually gonna go, I’m gonna share my screen and go on the backend of my website to show you what I’m talking about for some of these. So on your homepage above the fold, you wanna make sure your location is on there somewhere, and on your conditions pages and your service pages, you can see I’ve got it in parentheses here.
You want to add your location in either your SEO title or your H one header? You could do both. It depends on the layout of your page and we’ll talk about that, but one. Is great. Okay. One or the other. And you can add your location into the first paragraph of each of your conditions, pages, and service pages.
If you feel like you can add it naturally, if it’s a challenge and it doesn’t flow with the paragraph or make sense, that’s okay. It’s not as strong as having your location in your SEO title and your H one headers. And then you should also put your location in your meta description for your. Various pages.
So let’s talk about these. So what is above the fold? So this is a screenshot of my website. Above the fold is when you land on a new website, before you have scrolled at all, whatever you can see when you land there, that is considered above the fold. And this is very high value real estate because Google puts a lot of weight.
On whatever you place in this section and this section. So if you are able to add text on top of a, an image, that’s usually pretty common on most websites. You have a header image and then you can put text and a button on top of it. That’s usually an H one heading. So this is the H one heading on your homepage above the fold, Google is giving a lot of weight.
To this section. So you want to make sure that you are adding your location so you can see that I listed the conditions that myself and my associates like to treat. So things we specialize in, women’s health, cosmetic acupuncture, and pain management in Seneca Falls, New York. Okay, so now let me go behind the scenes of my website and I’m actually gonna let me back up a little bit.
So I have WordPress and if you have Wix or Weebly or Squarespace, then your website is probably going to look different, but hopefully you can still figure out where to find these things. It’s probably just the layout or the organization is a little bit different, but everything we’re gonna talk about should still exist in your website and you should be able to edit it.
So over here on the left, I’m gonna click on pages. And then I’m just gonna pick a page as an example. Let’s do the diverticulitis page. So this is the backend of this page. And you can see right here in this section it says, acupuncture for Diverticulitis Relief in Seneca Falls. So this is my SEO title.
This is the title of the page. Okay. Pretty straightforward. And then if we scroll down a little bit, there is a section here, it says preview. It is giving me a preview of if this page were to come up in a Google search result, this is what it would look like and you can modify it. And that’s what we wanna do.
So I’m gonna say edit snippet. Okay. And then you can see, I can change the, so this is the meta title, and then down here is the meta description. Okay. So if you recall from our last slide, I said that one of the places where you can put your location is in the meta description. So that’s down here. So let’s say that someone Googles, diverticulitis relief, Seneca Falls or Diverticulitis treatment, Seneca Falls or something like that. And in the search results, in the list of organic results, you would see this if it, if Google decided that my business would rank. Okay, so that’s. The description is right here. So that’s where people are seeing like, what is this page about?
And helping them decide. Do I wanna click through and continue reading? So in my description it says, learn how acupuncture for diverticulitis can help reduce pain, bloating, and digestive discomfort. Natural diverticulitis care in Seneca Falls, New York. Okay, and then you can see I also added Seneca Falls, New York in this meta title, which is this part right here.
So I think it’s ideal to have it in both places and this section where you get to edit your metadata. Is often included at the bottom of a page. So if you are creating a new page on your website, it’s probably, you have to scroll down a bit. And I’m using an SEO widget called Rank Math, but a lot of people have a widget that is called Yost, Y-O-A-S-T, and these are free, they have free versions, and that’s what I’m using.
So I don’t have all the features, but the most important thing is it is allowing me to edit this. Snippet so I can edit the metadata and add my location. So then I’m gonna say edit. I use Elementor as just like a very common design platform that fits into WordPress, but I wanna show you something. So I also mentioned adding your location to H one headings on your symptom and conditions pages.
So what. This is the page and this here at the top, if you recall. This is my SEO title. This is the title of the page. So if I scroll down, I’ve got all of this text that can be edited and. Right here it says, what is diverticulitis? And it’s probably pretty small. I don’t know if you can see this, but this is, it says heading one.
So that’s an H one level heading. And if you do the dropdown, there’s heading two, heading three, heading four, blah, blah, blah. So heading one is where you would want to add your location, if it makes sense. So on this particular page. I already have my location in my SEO title and I felt like it would be detrimental for the user experience for me to repeat this exact statement.
Acupuncture for Diverticulitis Relief in Seneca Falls again down here. So you’ll notice that in this H one heading, I don’t have Seneca Falls because. I decided that it’s already in the SEO title. It’s fine and it is important when you are adding. Keywords for SEO to always keep in mind that readability is really important.
You don’t just wanna stuff keywords everywhere so that it is awkward and cumbersome for a real human to read because you also want your page to be compelling for potential patients and to make sense to them and not be really redundant. That’s very important. And Google also cares about that, right?
So you can choose where you wanna put your your location in this case on your symptoms and conditions pages. And if you can fit it into both the SEO title and the H one heading, then that’s great. Okay, so let’s go back. I think I covered everything. Let’s see, above the fold, SEOH one meta descriptions.
Okay, so we’ll keep going. There’s only a few more things to share with you. And again, these are very simple. So I also want you to think about your blog content and going back in and editing your blog posts and adding your location to the title of some of your blog posts. So let me give you some examples how acupuncture helps with seasonal allergies in Portland.
What to expect at your first acupuncture visit in Denver. Acupuncture for runners recovering from the New York City Marathon. Okay? So each of those is helping improve your relevance by including your location keyword. Okay? And then when you’re writing blog posts in the future, you wanna try to keep that in mind, like, how can I incorporate my location into the title of this blog post?
And maybe mention it at least one time in the body of the blog post. And then the other thing I would love for you to do today, and this is again very straightforward and simple, is to add your location to two places on your Google business profile. So one is in your Google business description you wanna add.
Your service, probably acupuncture, and then your town or your city. So the same exact thing we’ve been doing, right? Like acupuncture for pain management, digestion, and women’s health in Seneca Falls, New York. You would wanna add that to your Google business description, and you can also add your description in your Google Business profile posts.
Sometimes they’re also called updates. So let me share my screen again. Just briefly, so here we have my Google Business profile for my practice, and if we scroll down.
This is the business description. Okay? So you’d wanna make sure that your location was included in there. And I think it’s a little confusing. I like to point it out because it doesn’t say business description, it just says from Seneca Falls Acupuncture. Okay? But that’s what this is where it says from your business, that’s the business description.
And then down here where I have these. They look like posts to me, but they are technically called updates. You when you are adding an update, you can add some text. I would just make sure that you are referencing your location for whatever kind of update you are adding. Okay, so I do have an example for you.
Whoops. Let’s go back here.
So let’s say that you wrote an update for your Google business profile about knee pain. You could add a header, so to speak, where you’re sharing like what this update is about, treating knee pain and running injuries in Tempe, Arizona, and then you could continue on with. The rest of your information that you’re sharing in that update.
Okay. But just making sure that you’ve got your location in there somewhere. This really helps to tie your website and your Google business profile together, among other things that also assist with that. But this is a really helpful one that can have a big impact on where you show up in the map pack and the organic search results.
And you wanna think of your website and your Google business profile. Like an ecosystem, they should reflect each other, right? So both of them should be helping Google better understand your business and your ideal patients so it knows who to send to you. So a couple of quick things that you can do, if you can check off everything that I’ve mentioned, or if you just wanna do a couple.
And have some quick wins. I would change the I would add your location on your homepage above the fold. I would add your location to any conditions pages that you have, and I would make sure you add it to your Google business description. Okay. So just a couple things for you to do very quickly. That will have a huge impact on.
Your Google rank. So thank you so much for being here. As always, if you have questions, feel free to send me an email, michelle@michelleGrasek.com. I do have a couple of workshops that are on these topics if you wanna dive deep. And you can visit michelle Grasek.com/google. And as always, I would like to say thank you so much to the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here and share this information with you today.
Have a great day.