Empowering Women in Chiropractic - Top SEO Strategies for Chiropractors

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Hello everyone and welcome to the show Empowering Women in Chiropractic. I am your host for today's show, Dr. Nathalie Beauchamp. We're going to talk about SEO for our practice. And this is something that my guests is an expert at among other things all Google related. And the reason I have her on is that she is currently actually auditing my own website.

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And I went, Oh my goodness, there is so much more to do than I anticipated. And the value of doing it and keeping your website and your search tip top. My guest today is Elaine Lindsay. Welcome, Elaine. Thank you so much, Nathalie. I'm thrilled to be here. Yeah, so you and I have known each other for a while.

You're the person that I phone when I have some complex YouTube search, Google, everything. And you always say, Stay on top when it comes to search and so forth. And I think it's important for us to, as chiropractors, because we put so much effort into getting out in the community and so forth, but now people are looking online.

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So we want to be found. So Elaine, just take a few minutes. Cause I know you've come up. With your own way of doing things. Tell us a little bit more about you and what you do, and then we'll dig into strategies because those shows are all about strategies for chiropractors. Absolutely, thank you.

I made my first website in 1999, and I did it for a regional councillor. And as soon as I was done the website, everybody kept telling me, Oh my God, it's beautiful. And I thought that's great, but how do you find it? What's the point of all this if we have to give them directions how to get there?

It just didn't make sense to me. And that began my search before 2000, for what could we do to make sure you get found. When you're putting so much money and effort and information into a website, you don't want it hidden somewhere. And this was, Google was quite young at the time. And I had come to 2002, I found someone named Brad Cowan, who was very big into SEO, and that began the journey.

By 2011, I was getting super excited because Google was changing from Boolean search to semantic. And that's really technical terminology, but what it means is no longer was it just type in a word and search would come up with things that may or may not relate to what you're looking for, but search was going to be contextual.

So you could ask, actually, whether there was a restaurant close to you. Where's the nearest chiropractor? I've hurt my back. What's the best chiropractor to go to? Or help, my husband hurt his shoulder or his neck, or I have headaches. Those are all full questions. And that's what you can now target so that you're getting people coming to you at the time they really need you.

They're getting exactly what they want and you're getting the clients you want. It's no longer SEO. It is integration and optimization. And I'll talk about that as we go, because Nathalie, this is my favorite subject. I know. And there is so much, those shows are not hour long, but this is a topic that we could talk for hours.

As I mentioned, you are currently auditing my own website and I know that we've been at it, doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. So when you work with someone, when you assess their website, just Tell us what you're looking at and then let's, like I said, dive into specific strategies that people can go, Oh, I didn't know about this.

I can implement that. Absolutely. An audit takes into account literally every single thing you have online. We go a little farther because we want to know what you have offline as well. The biggest issue for people, the one thing that people don't understand, is congruency. Everything you put online has to be congruent.

Whether it's social media, whether you're having someone optimize your site, or it's the website itself. Or for that matter, it's Yelp, or it's a directory, or it's somewhere else on the web that has your information. It is critical that all those pieces, your name, your address, your phone number, and the pictures you put up of you, must be congruent across all mediums.

People make the mistake of using different pictures on all their profiles. And it's really confusing for people when they're trying to find you. Because, today I have turquoise hair. Who knows, next week it might be different. I have to decide what picture am I putting up, and put up that same picture right across the internet.

Now, I know that you all don't have to be on every single platform. I do, so that's an awful lot of pictures. But I find even people that only have, say, LinkedIn and one other social. Might have three different pictures, and more than that, they don't use the same name everywhere. And again, that's the biggest thing.

If you confuse the customer, They usually do nothing. And that means you're basically giving your money to somebody else. So that's an important point. And, even for myself, because my city has a name and then the suburb has, the suburbs have other names. And, it took us a while to clean that up because people are still, Talking in suburbs and really the name of the city has been amalgamated.

So it is, so it's trying to find those strategies. So let's talk a little bit, cause I think you bring a really good point that it's no longer just search engine optimization, right? Like it's more complex than that. So what are the biggest. Things that people can focus on and I know you and I are working a lot on my blogs.

I've been blogging for my goodness 15 years probably. Actually, I have two blogs. One for my Dr. Naly as a book author and speaker and one for the clinic and I've known and I've really paid attention throughout the years to focus on blogging on certain keywords, the keywords that you want. So can you talk about the power of blogs, but how they need to be done appropriately to get all the, what I call the Google juice.

Yes, you got that juice for me. The whole point of your blog You are communicating your expertise and your experience to Google as well as your customer. I don't want anybody to simply do blogs to aim for Google, because that's going to get you nowhere. Okay, they understand that. The whole idea, it's not keyword.

We can't use a keyword anymore, and this is where people go wrong. Keywords worked in the early 2000s. There are billions, and that's with a B, websites out there. Keywords don't work. You need keyword phrasing and entire sentences. Better than that, questions related to your niche. When you're doing blogs, what you have to start with, and this is for everything you do to do with optimization and integration, you need to start with a keyword phrase list.

And people show me their list when we audit, and the list is sometimes 25, 50, the odd one will be 100 keyword phrases. They're usually not long enough or inclusive enough, and I'm gonna tell you, you need three to five hundred. Keyword phrases that cover all of the pertinent areas within your niche. For instance, if you do different technologies, you have modalities like shockwave therapy what is the LL, LT, laser, yeah, biomarker, laser and and say you have a massage therapist.

Those are all niches that you must address. The most important thing when you're blogging, address them to one, okay, people don't read blogs in groups. One person reads that blog, you're speaking to them. You want them to be able to put themselves in that story. If you're talking about a bad back, you want them to be able to go, Oh my God, that's how I feel every morning.

So that they can envision themselves coming to you to get help. It sounds super simplistic and it really is because the bottom line is this, Google has never, ever changed the main focus of what they want. They want to answer every single query. That comes through online, and they want to answer it with the very best expertise in that niche.

It's now called EEAP, which is Experience, Expertise, which are two very different things, Authority, and Trust. And Google looks for that specifically. in the medical field, in chiropractors. They're looking for it in lawyers. They're looking for it in areas that are really important to our lives and to what we do.

That is a part of the algorithm that looks at, how focused are you on your niche? How much expertise do you have? How many years experience do you have? And, is your information so authoritative that you are in fact building trust? And that's critically important and it's something even a brand new chiropractor can do because you don't want to do anything that isn't who you are.

If you're new, say that! Explain, because some people want people that have just come out of school, they're fresh, and have the latest techniques. And if you put that out there, and you're putting up the best answers to questions, and the best blog posts, then Google is definitely going to be highlighting you.

Getting on page one is critically important, but here's the thing that people lose sight of. SEO, optimization, integration, is not a one and done. This is ongoing, and you should audit your websites every quarter. Because there are things that fall by the cracks. I talk about what is really, it's minutiae.

It really isn't. If, for instance Nathalie had her name as Nathalie Beauchamp on two social media sites and had her name as Dr. Nathalie Beauchamp on two others. Guess what? That's two different people as far as the algorithms know. They are very smart, they use AI, machine learning is a big deal, but there are certain things that they still can't take into account, and that's inference.

Thanks. Knowing that some people call her Nat, and some people call her Dr. Nat, and some people call her Nathalie. That's a possibility for three different people. So you have to be sure when you choose what you're going to be called. Stick with that. Don't suddenly put in your middle initial or add a middle name to be cute because it's just going to confound everybody and you'll drop in the ratings.

And you and I have had many discussion on this that, myself, I want to attract wellness practice and so forth. But at the end of the day, no one's. I feel great today. I want to feel better. Like it's, they're not looking at this. So those long key phrase are crucial and also very good point.

And you even had me redo my FAQs because I was talking. Too complex. So I went back to the drawing board and say, okay, how can I not dumb it down? Because, that's not the right way to position this, but just to make sure that I'm answering questions that people are legit legitimate typing.

So my answers and my FAQ page may be found. Very good point on that. And now there's amazing tools, for even your. Your blog title to make sure that it is something that is popular. Elaine, what's the tool that you're using to help with the title? I can't even remember the name. AM Institute.

So that's aminstitute. com. They have a headline analyzer and it gives you the emotional, intellectual and spiritual leanings of your headline. The media use this because the media usually gets between 35 percent and 50, 55%. You can actually get higher than that and it does change how people react to what you're putting up on your blog specifically.

Headlines are important because you want to stop people when they're searching. the keyword phrases that you want to use. And Nathalie, yes, that was such a good example is, Oh my God, it was great if she wanted to attract all kinds of chiropractors because the expertise is absolutely there. Nathalie has more than 24 years in chiropractic and I think she knows all there is to know.

Twenty seven actually, then. Twenty seven. Oh, I'm so sorry. Or even better. Yeah, even better. And with all of that, it's really important that we communicate that in a way that people are not intimidated. Because this is a problem people with expertise tend to talk in their own jargon. And that's really lovely if you're talking to your peers at an event or some such, but if you are trying to attract customers, they are going to speak in the language they speak daily.

Something else you can use is the Flesch Kincaid scale of readability. You can find it anywhere on the net. And that it's suggested that you use between a grade 7 and grade 8. level for reading because it's just easier for people to comprehend. If we put big words in there, if I talked about all the stuff that I used to say about SEO, people's eyes glaze over because that's my expertise.

They don't know that. The other thing, and particularly for you as chiropractors, it can be very hard to get people to respond to you on social. The reason for that is. People are intimidated by expertise, and there is one thing everybody does not want, and that's to be called wrong. So try and put up your social posts in a way that people can voice their opinion or tell you how they feel, but not in a way that someone can say, oh no, you're wrong, it's this.

You want to make it more inclusive, so everybody can put their information in, and believe you me, it changes how your engagement goes. It will up the engagement, because when you take that intimidation factor out, Much more will happen with the people that are coming to you. Why is that important? Because as much as they keep telling you that social's not included, I beg to differ.

When you put good posts and get great engagement, you can find that in search. Facebook has its own algorithm. LinkedIn has its own algorithm. Insta, they all have an algorithm. And the way to be sure that you are getting what you deserve for your expertise and experience is make sure that you are talking to one person.

Yeah, and it's, we, I constantly have to remind myself. Let's touch a little bit about mobile and mobile optimization, because that's another huge thing that even when I go in the back end of my website, which is WordPress, I can see that it's regular websites and then mobile. And there's a lot, of thought that I think needs to be put on there because what people will see when they're on their phone.

So everything that we do, every page should be visualized on phone and you don't necessarily have to do it on your phone, right? There's a setting that you can visualize it even if you're on. So tell us about the importance of mobile. Yeah, I am going to upset your designers right here and I'm terribly sorry.

But I come from building websites and everything else. So this is cool. Critically important. We switched to mobile only search years ago. There we go. Don't design on desktop. Have your designer set your site up for mobile and then you make it fit desktop. Don't do it the other way around because it never fits.

It doesn't make it easy. And there is nothing worse than losing someone on mobile because it took six seconds instead of three. for them to be open your website. Time is such a factor. Google wants under two seconds for a mobile site. And one of the things, Nathalie, I'm so glad you brought that up.

One of the things that is a serious problem for people is Are your images. Yes, we all love images, and I think they are wonderful, but there is a really important rule, because unless you own the server, you're paying for a virtual server, that's only you being hosted, your images need to be under 100 kilobytes.

I don't care what size they are, I'm talking about the weightiness of the image. When an image is too large, And recently found a number of images that are one meg. When you're on a shared hosting, and most people are with their websites, you have a certain amount of bandwidth. You have a certain amount of space that you can take up on that shared server.

If you have five images that are each a meg, at some point, you're just going to shut your site down. Because you're trying to take space on everybody else's bandwidth as well. ChiroSecure. com For one meg, you should have ten images at least. And having, yeah, having five megs that are barely five images is just going to slow your site down.

When your site gets slow and gets bogged down, just imagine on mobile, it's twice as slow. People are clicking in and clicking out. I know our attention span has decreased. So this is something, I've had a website, I'm guessing for 27 years. I don't remember when I started, but this is something for the doctors listening to you.

Phone up your web designer, phone up the person who's helping you and say, could you do an audit? They can do the audit themselves. And sometime when you work with someone for a long time, they get complacent. So he's okay, I want to see the speed of load. I want to see the ranking, the Google analytics and so forth.

And then, put their feet to the fire to say, okay, how are we doing? What can we do better? This is something I have done in the past with previous people who had who were helping me with my website, but what Elaine is saying, like designing for mobile, those are all Point that, I didn't really realize it was that important.

I knew it was important, but not for the designer to design on that. So these are interesting points to bring up to whomever is helping you with your optimization online. So thanks for this, Elaine. And then I guess, like I said, we could speak for hours, but let's touch upon. Google My Business, because this is something that I think is super important.

It's often missed. You're the one who brought that to my attention years ago. It's a tool that I think can really be impactful. Very impactful. It's now Google Business Profile. Your GBP is free. It gives you access as a local service. You basically think of it like a combination of Yelp and four chiropractic directories.

It has the ability, when done correctly, to show up on the right hand side of the search page, and when it shows up, when yours shows up, nobody else's does. It is on the right hand side, right at the top. And you get pictures, you get all the information, your business hours, your reviews will be there as well.

And the most important piece that people seem to forget, is when you put out a blog, if you do your blog weekly, then you need to put a weekly little information packet, whether it relates to your blog, or one of your products, or, say, Shockwave, you're having a special this week, then that needs to be on that, that Google Business Profile, because it comes up when people are looking, maybe they don't even know you exist.

They're just looking for a chiropractor who does shockwave. You come up on the whole right hand side of the page. They can't help but see you. And when you do it well, and when you use that posting on Google Business Profile on a continuous basis, you get much more Google juice. It's all about the Google juice.

Just to wrap up, Elaine, what are some, I, like I said, I know you keep on top of everything. Are there any trends that you see, especially with AI? And we don't want to dive into that one cause that's going to be for two hours, but are there any trends that we should be paying attention to when it comes to.

Being found online. Trends, not so much. What I will say is, accessibility is incredibly important. Everybody needs to be included when you do a website. They have to be able to see, hear, use their device, whatever they're using, to be able to peruse what's out there. So accessibility is a big deal.

And it matters to Google as well. The other thing is this, and this is not a trend. This is a bugaboo for me. Alt tags on images, on your PDFs. Alt tags are critical. They were originally designed for people that had visual or hearing problems so that their machines could read out what was in the image.

But that became part of the search engine's job because back then they couldn't see an image either. And it has become a very big part of what is out there. These alt images give Google something else to rely on when they're basically looking at your authority, your trust, your expertise, and your experience.

Part of those alt tags tells them that too. Now here's what people do tend to do. In an alt tag they put a keyword. That's not what an alt tag is. An ALT tag is to tell people who cannot see or do not hear, it's basically telling them what is in that image. So for instance, if I was putting an image on Nathalie's site about shockwave therapy and had one of, somebody standing with the machine on someone's knee, that's what I would say.

in the picture. The machine is being used on a knee. Prior to that, this is a really good tip. If you're doing a blog post and the blog post is, great uses for shockwave therapy, that goes in the alt tag as well. If that's the keyword phrase you're using, It is critically important that you put that in first and end on, in the photo, someone is using the shockwave therapy on a knee.

That will take you so much farther than almost anything else. Last thing, because you know I can't not say this, make sure that you have your keyword phrases on the images. that are on your site. If your site is named as Dr. Nathalie's is Dr. Nathalie Beauchamp, don't put your name on the images. It's already in your website URL.

Put the keyword phrases that you want to use. You should try and keep them under 70 characters. Try and do that, but make a point of getting in something that relates to you. So when people do a Google search for images, guess who comes up all the time. You can check that out, look for it for yourself. Oh, cool.

Thank you so much, Elaine. You're really giving us some good information. And for the doctors listening to this, you're most likely not posting your own blogs and so forth. I know what I had Elaine do is record herself. Going through, posting a blog, and making sure that the keywords, and the outwards, and the picture, and the padding, and the title and so forth.

There are tools like what is it, the one we're using, Elaine, for my website? A& M Institute? No, the ranking, to give you the score. Oh, rankMath. Optimization, RankMath. Yeah. So that's a tool that your staff can use. So I think it's worth doing it. And also you and I have discussed, Elaine, the consistency.

So we've now picked that the blog goes out at eight o'clock on Tuesday. Even if it's done before, it can be all scheduled now which is great. But again, I think Serge likes to consistency. So that's another tip that we can add to the equation. So Elaine, thank you so much for your time. And like I said, I know we could talk for hours on this.

Where can people find you if you don't mind sending giving us your website. And I believe they could book a consultation with you and see what they have and if it's a good fit because you take what you do very seriously, which I admire of you. And you want to make sure that. Your clients are getting found and this is basically your tagline and it is detail oriented.

It is for the long run, so I know that you can help people. So what's your website? Thank you. The website is TrollSocial, that's T R O L Social. com. And you can always find me, just look up at the corner of search and social. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elaine, for your wisdom. And if anything, hopefully it made people think, Oh boy, I better start paying attention to my website.

And it's something that moves so fast that we constantly have to do it. And like you said, auditing our website quarterly, revisiting the strategies that we have. So thank you, Elaine. So this was Dr. Nathalie Beauchamp for the show Empowering Women in Chiropractic, brought to you by ChiroSecure. And this is a great show for us to stay connected, to stay on top of how to make our practice better with the tools and strategy.

So I hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you.

Join us each week as we bring you the best in this growth, practice management, social media marketing, networking, leadership, and lots more. If it's about women in practice and business, you'll hear it here.

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