How to Rank #1 on Google Maps in 2025 (and Why Most Clinics Are Missing the Mark)

Local SEO has changed—fast. If you’re running a physical therapy clinic and still relying on traditional SEO tactics like keyword-stuffed blog posts and high-traffic vanity metrics, you’re already behind.

In this episode of the PT Entrepreneur Podcast, Danny sat down with Jeremy Dupont, founder of The Patch System and one of the sharpest local marketing minds in the game. Jeremy’s helped dozens of clinics rank in the top 3 on Google Maps in competitive markets—and today he shares exactly how.

Here’s what you need to know (and what to stop doing immediately).

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Why Local SEO Is Now Your #1 Online Growth Strategy

Google’s search results have changed dramatically in the past 6–12 months. The old playbook was all about driving as much traffic to your website as possible. That no longer works.

Here’s the new reality:

• Most traffic is now going to Google Business Profiles and Maps, not your website.

• AI-generated summaries (like Google's Gemini or ChatGPT) are pulling directly from your Google Business info and local directories.

• The blue links we used to fight for? They're buried beneath paid ads and AI overlays.

If you’re not optimizing for local intent—as in “physical therapist near me” or “dry needling Dallas”—you’re invisible.

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3 Things You Need to Rank in Google Maps (and AI Results)

1. A Fully Optimized Google Business Profile

Google now considers your Business Profile the most important factor in local rankings. That means:

• Adding consistent weekly updates (photos, posts, holiday hours)

• Listing all your services and linking to the right landing pages

• Treating your GBP like it’s your homepage

Most clinics haven’t touched their profile since setup. If that’s you, start there.

2. Authoritative Location + Service-Specific Pages

Jeremy calls these “money pages”—and they’re essential for showing up in AI summaries and Google Maps.

Instead of generic content, create real, useful pages that sound human:

• yourclinic.com/back-bay-boston-physical-therapy

• yourclinic.com/atlanta-dry-needling

Avoid pasting AI-generated lists. Google knows. So do your patients.

3. Build Trust Through Reviews and Directories

Google wants to know you’re real and active. Two easy ways to prove that:

• Google Reviews: Consistency matters more than volume. Shoot for 5–6 new reviews a month, every month.

• Local Directory Listings: Make sure your clinic is on Google, Yelp, Yellow Pages, ZocDoc, and any industry-specific directories with matching NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data.

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A Word on Paid Ads: Don’t Set It and Forget It

Google has made it easier than ever to “spin up” an ad—but harder to make it profitable if you don’t know what you’re doing.

The problem? You might get clicks and calls, but if they’re not qualified leads, you’re wasting money and time.

Pro tip: Combine paid ads with your top-performing local SEO pages and track conversions, not just clicks.

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What to Focus on If You’re Short on Time

If you only have time for one thing this week, do this:

✅ Update your Google Business Profile
✅ Post a photo or offer
✅ Ask your last 3 patients with Gmail to leave a review (give them a direct link)

It’s simple, it’s free, and it directly impacts your visibility and lead flow.

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Final Takeaway: Local SEO = Future-Proofing Your Business

AI isn’t going away. Neither is Google.

If you want to protect your cash-based practice, grow your visibility, and fill your schedule with better-fit clients—get your local SEO house in order now.

Want help figuring out where you stand?

➡️ Get a free SEO audit from Jeremy’s team at thepatchsystem.com
➡️ Or follow @_jeremydupont on Instagram for tactical examples and real clinic wins

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🧠 Remember: SEO isn’t dead. It’s just different. Learn the new rules, and you’ll win.

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Want help navigating these phases?
Visit physicaltherapybiz.com or book a free strategy call to talk through your goals with someone who’s helped over 1,000 practices do the same.

Do you enjoy the podcast?  If so, leave us a 5-star review on iTunes and tell a friend to do the same!

Ready to elevate your practice? Book a call at the link below with one of our expert consultants today and start your journey to delivering unparalleled physical therapy.

Podcast Transcript

Danny: [00:00:00] Hey, what's going on? Danny Matta here, the PT Entrepreneur podcast, and we got Jeremy DuPont back owner of Patch, which is our favorite marketing company. Um, one of the smartest marketing minds in the space. And in particular, it's interesting when someone's run a clinic like Jeremy has and then can apply that skillset to help other clinics, uh, grow their, their businesses.

But this is 20, 25. Things are changing. It seems like on a monthly basis in terms of like, you know, technology and advancements in, um, AI in particular and how that's applying to, uh, things like being found on the internet. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about local search.

What's the difference between that, you know, an SEO, how are you putting, how to put yourself in a position to actually be found when. Lots of people are searching for solution to their problem in your area. Uh, and make sure you're positioning yourself to be able to get that lead flow of really high intent, uh, you know, potential clients that wanna come your way.

So, uh, first of all, Jeremy, thanks for jumping back on the podcast for, I think [00:01:00] my must be like the sixth time. I don't even know I've lost count.

Jeremy: I know. We gotta keep count. Yeah, I'm excited to talk about this. I think this is something that I've been leaning into the last probably six to eight months.

And I think it's because like you said. This is where the most like traffic is coming from right now. This is what was working the best. And like that's, that's the thing with marketing is you have to go where the leads are coming from. And right now it is this local SEO buzzword that's happening and.

You know, with all the changes that are happening on Google, with all the AI tools being rolled out, um, there is kind of a new wave of, of SEO and where that old website traffic that would've gone directly to your website, some of those blue links, it's now going to some of these AI models, it's going to Google Business Profiles, is going to Google Maps.

So, yeah, excited to dive into it.

Danny: So why don't we start with this? Like, why don't, let's, let's, let's lay out, um, you know, even, uh, within the last couple years. [00:02:00] Traditionally, what were strategies that people were doing that were, uh, were, were, were going well, that they, they were winning with? And where's the transition to kind of what's happening now and what people should really, you know, kind of maybe lean more into, uh, focusing on that isn't necessarily, you know, whatever this, uh, these strategies were that they were doing previously.

Jeremy: Yeah, so I think like the, the way that I look at it in, you know, more of like traditional SEO, um, you know, when I first started my clinic in 2021, like SEO is just all about like, how do we get as much website traffic as possible? And I think that's kind of what some of these SEO agencies were doing as well of like, there's one metric that we care about and it is the amount of website traffic that is coming to your website.

Which I think was good, right, of like the more website traffic, ideally the more leads you're gonna have, and then ideally the more patients you're going to have. Um, but things have changed a lot in that sense. And, you know, [00:03:00] I think that that strategy is a little bit outdated now too, in terms of, we, we work with a lot of clinics that have had, you know, quote unquote traditional SEO done and they're getting, you know, maybe five to 10,000 website visits a month, which is a lot of website traffic, but they're getting website traffic for.

Super random keywords that don't really matter for them. Um, for example, like one of the clinics that we looked at was ranking for like rib flare and just that keyword. So if somebody typed rib flare into Google, their website was popping up and people were going to their, their website from there. And that was counting towards their website traffic, which again is great.

They had high domain authority. They were getting that website traffic. But somebody searching for rib flare like. It's not a potential patient unless they are right down the road from you. Um, so this new wave of SEO and kind of what local SEO is, is still trying to get as much website traffic as possible, but more so on the local side of things for, so for somebody searching for, [00:04:00] you know, best physical therapists near me or showing up for keywords that are your city physical therapy clinic or your city dry needling or, you know, whatever that keyword may end up being and it's just a different.

Thought process in a different way that you do your SEO and the things that you put into your SEO in order to actually show up for those keywords?

Danny: Well, I mean, let, let's, let's kind of define, so SEO search engine optimization. And so tr traditionally it was volume, right? Volume. You wanted to kinda show up organically and for, for this set of change that we see that's happening now is.

Is, is this more driven by the fact that, you know, we're seeing maybe, uh, more people use AI tools for search purposes and get recommendations. So, you know, being able to be like hyper localized is helping with that as well? Or like, what's, what's driving the change? Because I think for a lot of people, if they've ever used any search of search engine opposition or if they've gone [00:05:00] down the path of really trying to build density in their website with blog posts and things like that, you know, they might just be missing the mark on where things are going.

They have a ton of work they probably have put in or continue to put in, and maybe they're even spinning their wheels and not even realize it.

Jeremy: Totally. Yeah. So if you look at like page one of Google, right? And if you're a clinic owner, I always suggest people do this is if you just type in physical therapists near me and you look at what the page one of Google looks like.

What it looked like six months ago versus what it looks like now are two totally different things. Page one has totally changed. So beforehand, when you type that in, basically what you'd get is you'd get a number of of paid ads, and then you'd get all of the blue links, and that would be all like the traditional SEO that you're doing.

You're trying to get your website links to show up on page one for a certain keyword. But now if you do that same thing and you type in best physical therapist near me, you still get the paid ads at the top. But now what has changed is, uh, like three quarters of the page are all [00:06:00] Google Business profiles and Google Maps, and then you have a, a, a handful of the blue links down at the bottom.

But people really don't get down to that point. So optimizing for those blue links or website URLs. Sometimes is, is kind of a lost cause because people don't even get down to them. Whereas with the local SEO and kind of what we're we're talking about today, that's more so optimizing for your Google business profile and making sure you're showing up in the top three on Google Maps, because that's what Google's page one looks like now.

So you need to be optimizing for again, what people are actually seeing.

Danny: Yeah, it is interesting to see the difference too in the search because they, I, I'm assuming, you know, Google is in an interesting position. They, they are obviously dominant. Search, they become their own verb, right? Like that's, that's how in integrated they are in people using the internet, but they've even changed the way in which they're, um, [00:07:00] you know, providing feedback from searches to where they have their own, you know, AI summary basically of.

Things. Um, and even whenever I've looked for things, I've actually seen them recommend certain companies in their summary, which is interesting, right? So if you, if, if you haven't done this or aren't using this, um, it's just, I don't know if you know if you can turn this feature off, it's just how they've sort of changed their search feature.

But you'll see, you know, overlaid AI summary at the top and then you can go down below that. So when, when we look at these strategies, 'cause obviously they work together, where do you feel like this fits with. Uh, with ads and you know, how they work together.

Jeremy: Yeah. I think like there's, there's a couple different ways to look at this, right?

And I think there's, you know, the way I break it down is there's really like two different types of searches happening as well. There's more of like a informational search and there's more of like a transactional search. Mm-hmm. So somebody that's doing like more of an informational search. This certainly could happen on like [00:08:00] more of like a, like a chat GPT platform where they're trying to just gain more information about what they're trying to search.

You can do it on Google as well. That's where a lot of these AI like Gemini summaries are coming into play. So a search like this would just be like, you know, my back hurts. What do I do about that? And then the AI will give you some type of summary based on what that is. So it'll give an, you know, an article about the five best back pain exercises, or it'll send you a WebMD article or whatever it might be.

So that's one side of it. That's more so where we're seeing these AI summaries come into play. The other side is going to be these transactional searches, which is going to be like somebody actually that has a little bit more intent. That would be best physical therapist near me who does dry doing in my city.

And those are people that are actually looking for a service. Right. And those are certainly, like, we're getting the AI summaries for those. Um, but that's where like the, those type of searches, those are getting like directly, [00:09:00] um, sent to Google business profiles and Google Maps, that's where that traffic right now is being sent to.

So. What we're seeing and what's working the best is whatever you are doing. And we can talk about the three things that go into like ranking on Google Maps and this local SEO. Um, but those things that you're trying to do to optimize yourself on Google Maps, the AI summary, that's what it's pulling from is, you know, however, you know, you're showing up on Google Maps.

That same information that got you to number one on Google Maps is also what's getting you listed in these AI summaries. So the good news is that you don't need to be doing a ton of different things to be showing up on Google Maps and in the AI results, they're really pulling from the same things.

Danny: Yeah, I mean that's, that's basically where they're get their information. Right. And I, I think what's interesting is, you know, we look at user behaviors. There, there is going to be a transition where people will use, you know, different large language models and AI for [00:10:00] information purposes like we were talking about.

Um, but like, you know, uh, we we're recently in, you know, Portland, Maine, where you live up that way and, and if we were like looking for. A coffee shop or whatever, some something that we were looking for. It's not like we were getting on, like I don't actually think it's very helpful to use chat GBT in those specific scenarios versus just go to like your Google map and look it up, you know?

And then, and so, so I think from a local service business standpoint, which is what we're talking about with physical therapy clinics. That is probably gonna be one of those things that's like very resilient and probably worth you continuing to spend time and, you know, energy on. Um, because there are, there are many things that will change pretty quickly, but I don't really see people's.

Uh, habits in terms of how they're looking for those types of businesses changing anytime soon. And if anything, like they feel comfortable with that, they, they see reviews, there's a lot of benefits that are built into that that's just like really, really hard to kind of remove. So let's talk about the three things you're talking about to actually improve your, you know, local [00:11:00] SEO so people can, can be found easier.

Jeremy: Yeah. So the first thing, and this is the most important thing, and it's good to know too, like Google rolled out new documentation, uh, when they rolled out their, their new page, one on, you know, the factors that they're looking at in order for people to rank on page one. Um, one of the biggest highlights in this new documentation that they rolled out was the prioritization of your Google business profile.

So this is not something that really mattered beforehand. Um. But now is the biggest factor for showing up in AI search results and getting yourself to the top five on Google Maps. And we look at Google Maps like in a, like a five mile radius. So if you wanna show up, you want your clinic to show up, number one within a five mile radius on Google Maps.

You have to have your Google Business profile dialed in. And a lot of what we see, and I think it's pretty common because you just kind of forget about it, to be honest with you, is you start your business. You set your Google business profile up, [00:12:00] you fill out a couple things, you hit skip, skip, skip because you have a million other things to do and then you totally forget about it, uh, two years later and you have an updated photos, maybe you've moved and you haven't updated your address.

And it's just one of those things that kind of falls to the wayside, but is now the number one ranking factor for this new like local SEO and these AI models. So making sure that. That full profile is fully optimized. You are continuing to update it consistently as well. Consistency was one of the biggest, like the, the, the word that was said the most in Google, Google's new SEO rollout was, you know, you need to be consistently posting on Google business.

You need to have consistent new pages on your website, which we can kind of talk about afterwards, but. You can't, it's not just a set and forget thing thing anymore. You need to be continuously adding post updating services. If you were closed for the 4th of July, you should have updated your hours and said that you were closed for the 4th of July.

Because really what Google's looking at is the [00:13:00] more you update your profile. The more it actually believes that you are a business that's still in business. Yeah. And if you just haven't touched it for two years, Google doesn't really know if you're still in business. 'cause there's loads of dead Google business profiles out there.

And the last thing that it wants to do is send users to a business that's not in business anymore because then people are gonna go to Chachi bt and that's how they lose all their traffic share.

Danny: Yeah, that makes complete sense. I mean, if you think about it from the standpoint of, you know, you, you get a hundred percent of the blame for a bad referral and 50% of the credit.

So like if they. Are, you know, sending people to businesses that are not, not functioning or they're not very, um, active, uh, then they probably do that as a risk for them, right? And versus if you are active on their platform, which is just kind of the trade off that we have to make, like, as, as physical therapists.

Like, like I, like, I get it, like I just wanna treat patients and I didn't really give a shit about Google [00:14:00] or SEO or these things would've made me fall asleep. And maybe you're falling asleep right now, but wake up because this shit is important and it's how people are looking for you. And, and the reality is it's more about learning like the, the rules than it is, uh, you know, about the end result.

Right. So it's, it's like my son is. I'm, I'm basically his summer math tutor is, he is getting very hard for me because it's like hard math and it's, it's getting into like algebra territories. It's like the tapping me out in terms of where I'm at. But, but you know, the thing with math is it's not really about the answer.

It's about understanding the rules and how you got what you were, you're getting to. So, you know, if, if you look at this from the lens of if you wanna win in terms of getting more clients and building your business, you seem to understand what are the rules that we're playing by. And the, and, and the rules change.

And that sucks. 'cause like, I remember when we were doing a lot of like meta ads. And they did an iOS update and a lot of it changed in terms of being able to target certain people when it, it really changed the ability for you to do those effectively [00:15:00] without a, you know, a ton of, um, tracking in other ways.

And it just changed. And that's just the way it works. 'cause it's their business, not ours, but it heavily. Can affect our businesses. So, so you just gotta be comfortable with the fact that these rules, they change and businesses change. You gotta be adaptable. So this is something that we wanted to bring up because we're seeing a lot of really fast progress for people that are really leaning into these, you know, and if you can be, uh, on the, the front end of that versus a lagging, you know, individual, you're gonna have exponential, you know, benefit from that as well.

Jeremy: Yeah, we're just, I just, I don't think that like a, a bigger chain clinic are gonna be able to make the snap changes that a smaller cash based, CL based clinic is going to be able to do. And we're seeing it right now. Um, some of the clinics that we work with, one of them is like in the Dallas area and Dallas is really hard to rank for.

There's a lot of businesses there and. We got, uh, their clinic to within a five mile radius in Dallas, which is a pretty big radius, uh, in, you know, uh, [00:16:00] the top three in that five mile radius for physical therapy and dry and dry needling within 30 days. So it was a very quick turnaround.

Danny: You could you ever seen, you ever see the video of the guy?

He is like the newscaster and then he's uh, he swallows a bee. Uh, he is like, next to that's, that's what just, that's what it makes me think of. Like, no, take, take a minute. I, dude, like, I, uh, it happens to me sometimes, but the, the reality is like when you look at ranking for these things, where you're talking about with, uh, with this clinic, that's a big market.

Tough market. And the other thing too, you know, if you think of. I, I, I look at it in, in relation to how much would you have to spend on ads to consistently rank in the top three of, of that, you know, in comparison, because it would be quite expensive.

Jeremy: Yeah. Especially in a competitive area like that. Like cost per click is certainly going up.

Um, just in general across the board. Um, just because there's more competition. Hinge Health is coming in, they're spending a bunch of money on advertising. [00:17:00] There's a lot of changes happening all over the place and that's where I think for us as small clinics, if we can go in and tweak some things on our Google business profile and now own the lion's share of some of the search traffic that's coming through Google Business and Google Maps, like, we should be taking advantage of these things because we don't have unlimited amounts of ad spend, um, to compete with some of these bigger clinics.

Not saying that you shouldn't be running ads, you certainly should. But like, you've gotta be playing both sides with this. Um, and I think we kind of just talked about it too. I think you know, the, this, this local SEO strategy here, it really is AI proofing your business as well because whatever route AI goes and whatever, wherever all of the search traffic ends up going.

I think like these factors that are getting people to rank on Google Maps and this local SEO, that is what is going to continue to happen in chat GPT and inside of some of these AI models. So you really are the foundational work that you're doing now, not only can you take advantage of these new changes, but you're also [00:18:00] setting yourself up for the next three to five years for whatever's gonna happen with ai.

Danny: Yeah, and I mean, I, what you have to kind of think about is, it's not like the. The, the way that, that, let's say just chat GPT for instance, as, as like a large language model, that's sort of the biggest one that most people are using. It gets its information from the internet and the biggest search engine on the internet is Google.

Right? And, and Google has their own AI as well. And, and I've actually really appreciated. The AI summaries that they have for a lot of things. 'cause if I don't wanna, like, if I don't wanna like, get into something intricate, I don't want to go into chat chip chi and like look some shit up. In fact, I actually find that, that there's still a lot of mistakes that Totally.

That they make with, with, with many things and uh, especially when it comes to local businesses. But, but just being able to like that one platform that people are comfortable with, I think is really worth, you know, leaning into. And, you know, when. When you look at the work that you put in, if you see that things are trending away, where there's gonna be other players in terms of search and recommendations, [00:19:00] yeah.

You want to put yourself in a position to where you're an authority from where they gather that information, right? Like that's, that's the key. You can't just, you can't go into Chatt PT right now and do things per se that are gonna increase your business's visibility. You have to do them for where they're gathering the information, which is.

The internet.

Jeremy: Totally. A hundred percent. And that's where still like kind of the second factor leads nicely into like the second thing you should be doing with local SEO, which is continuing to still do and optimize your website. So technical, SEO is still like, you know, it used to be the number one factor for ranking for your blue links on page one.

It is now still certainly a factor. Maybe it's not as big as your Google business profile, but it's, it's one B if it's, if, if it's not the, the, the first thing. So. Making sure, again, this is where people fall asleep on me, right? Making sure your meta description is dialed in, all of your schema markups, your site mapping looks correct.

All of those things that, again, as clinic owners, you pro. Unless you are [00:20:00] interested in this stuff, you probably shouldn't worry about it and something you should look to hire out. Um, so all that stuff is, is still definitely the same. Blog creation, like continuous new content is still very, very important.

This content though, it has to be like Google terms it as like authoritative content. So it can't just be like a list of 10 things that chat GBD spit out to you for, you know, best exercises in physical therapy and then you copy and paste it onto your website. There has to be a human element to that as well.

And you need to show that you are the industry expert. Um, and then the kind of the last part with like the, the on page SEO is what I like to call money pages. These are, these are really what's ranking and getting people to rank really highly on Google Maps and also what's showing up in those AI summaries that you're talking about.

So if you search for. Best physical therapist, uh, back Bay Boston. So back bay in Boston is like a, a little neighborhood inside of Boston. What's gonna show up in those AI summaries? [00:21:00] Like you can see if you see those AI summaries, those are all just like hyperlinks and they're just like little, like they pull a little bit of information from each of the pages that the AI has scanned basically.

And what's ranking really well for those right now are very specific landing pages based on what that search is. So if somebody searches for Best Physical Therapist Back Bay, Boston, what's gonna end up showing in the AI summary and what's gonna get you to the top of Google Maps in that area is having a, a landing page on your website that is a.

Back Bay, Boston Physical Therapy, that would be like the slug of your URL. So if I use my old clinic for example, it'd be ripple basecamp.com/back bay, Boston Physical Therapy. And then that page on there has all the SEO elements to it. And we call those money pages 'cause that's where all the traffic is going to, and that's where you're getting all the results from.

So, um, those are really like, again, like kind of old hat, SEO of things that. You used to have to do in order to show up, um, but with a little bit of twist [00:22:00] with some of these new pages that just need to be site mapped correctly and index on Google. So

Danny: it's, it's almost like, um, landing pages. You, you're essentially building a, a search specific landing page for what somebody might be looking for, because it's going to be more similar to the actual term that their search, which, which is obviously, yeah, that's like SEO, you know, 1 0 1 in terms of a lot of those things.

But in conjunction with that, being able to have, you know, authority built into the page, which, you know, if you even look at recently YouTube just announced that it would not, uh, pay. Uh, the, the, the sponsorship ad amount that they pay for people that are not producing content themself. If it's AI generated content, they don't, they don't view it as, uh, you know, something that they're going to, uh, pay someone to give views for that.

And I can imagine that there's also going to be a heavier emphasis towards non-AI generated content, which it's pretty easy. To, [00:23:00] to see, like if you pay attention to any of this stuff, I know very quickly if somebody sends me an AI generated email because it doesn't sound like a freaking human being. Uh, you know, and, and same thing with the blog posts and people aren't dumb.

Uh, you know, like you realize those things and, and if someone's trying to be. A expert in like running, let's say, right? Like, you know, you'll know if somebody knows about running based on the verbiage they use or golf or whatever. Like there's, there's things that people that are involved in those communities understand and they're quite nuanced.

So I do think it, it, it matters and, and it's worth taking the time and. Especially, it sounds like, with these specific sites to really, you know, put a lot of effort into those 'cause they're gonna help you rank so much better.

Jeremy: Yeah, totally. And I think you can think about it. It's, it's a, it's a pretty, like, it's a easy thought process to think through.

It's a, it is tricky to actually execute on. I'll use Boston as like another example where, you know, within Boston there's a handful of neighborhoods that you would wanna show up for. So it'd be, you know, you, you'd want the the Back Bay Boston [00:24:00] Physical Therapy Landing page. You'd want the Beacon Hill Boston Physical Therapy Landing Page.

You'd want the South End Boston Physical Therapy landing page. But then you can do that with all of your services as well. So you could do dry needling, Boston Physical Therapy, you could do dry needling, beacon Hill Physical Therapy. And then that's how you start to attack not only the, the main keyword that we should be trying to show up for, which is physical therapy, but if you can do a little bit of keyword research and you can figure out like what is the search volume for some of these other search terms that are out there?

That's where you can really set yourself apart. And if you can capture 100% of the dry needling traffic that's out there and nobody else is really optimizing for that, now you've just unlocked a whole other, uh, funnel of new patients coming in the door. So there's a little bit of secret sauce behind all of these pages.

You can't just like clone a page and expect it to rank and think that you're gonna be good. There is like some actual, like technical SEO behind these and some of the things that you can do with the Google Maps. But that's the general like overall [00:25:00] idea on it.

Danny: Yeah. And it seems, how often would you say that like stuff like this is a meaningful change is occurring?

Jeremy: You mean in terms of like the, like the overall like algorithm?

Danny: Yeah, sort of like what, because it sounds like, okay, Google says. We're making a change. Here's the rules. Right? Like how often do you think that these bigger platforms are making like a significant change that people need to really adapt what they're doing and and modify their strategy?

Yeah, I mean, you know,

Jeremy: in the three years that I ran Ripple and you know, I nerded out on this stuff, I love this stuff. So I was always in the know with kind of everything that was going on. There were certainly changes that were happening, but they're pretty minor. The overall thought process of SEO was basically the same.

But in the last eight months things have changed almost monthly on this of like what you need to be doing. And it's a combination of, like you said, Google trying to keep up with the AI things that are happening and make their user experience a little bit better. [00:26:00] Um, you know, the way that people are finding businesses.

Um, in May when they rolled out this update, they said 70 per 77% of people are using Google My Business profile to find local service businesses versus going to like people's actual websites. Yeah. So Google has to adapt to that stuff. So I. I'll be honest, I don't see it changing anytime soon. I think this rapid like change and updates are gonna continue happening for God, at least within the next year, I would assume, if not the next, you know, three to five

Danny: years.

And it's interesting because I feel like if, if you really look at what's driving this, I feel like it's Google trying to navigate what to do and in such a changing environment that they've essentially. Just had a monopoly in for so long. Right. And for us as business owners reliant in a lot of ways on these platforms.

You know, it's just one of those things that like understanding where to spend your time, where to spend effort. It's so important. 'cause we have such, we have such finite amount of time, you know? And if it's like, okay, sweet. [00:27:00] My business page is really important. Like we're, we're gonna, we're gonna not, you know, uh, leave a dormant, we're gonna make sure we're posting on things.

We're gonna make sure that we're, um, responding to reviews when we get them, we're like actively engaging with people. And, you know, it's, it's, it's worth you saying like, okay, my, my admin that at my clinic is gonna dedicate a certain amount of time to this each week because it's that important ver versus.

Not knowing what to spend time on. You know, you end up just spinning your wheels on stuff or maybe you're just doing things that are outdated because the speed of change is just kinda hard to keep up with when, when you're actively just trying to run a clinic.

Jeremy: Yeah, totally. I think at the end of the day, Google's a business.

It's a big business and it's always gonna want your advertising dollar, so that's always gonna be a part of their platform. Paid advertising, I think no matter what ends up changing, is still going to be the main driver with all this stuff. Ads show up in AI mode now. Like we're able to run ads in like on Google Maps and in Google Business profiles now, um, [00:28:00] which has been working super well.

I. That's where again, like for clinic owners, you can go into Google ads and like spin up an ad pretty easily. Now they'll just like, you can hit a couple buttons. You can say you're a physical therapy clinic and they'll want you to go live, you know, as soon as possible. Because again, they wanna take your ad spend.

Yeah. But if you don't know what you're doing in there, then you know, a couple thousand bucks can go pretty quickly over a couple months and then you kind of just assume that ads don't work for me. But right now we're seeing, um. Google ads, like really being pushed, especially with these big changes.

Danny: Yeah.

And I think, you know, the, the difference there is for sure it makes sense for any platform to make it easier for somebody to spend money on their platform. Um, the, I think the challenge is, it's the, it's the feedback loop of what are you getting from that, you know? 'cause even for us, like whenever I first started running our Google ads.

I was like, man, I'm killing it. I'm getting all these calls. And they were terrible, like awful qualified. I mean, yes, we were getting, [00:29:00] our phone was ringing, but it was nobody we would work with. There were just like very, a lot of spam stuff like that. And so, so, but to Google, you know, they're like, we got you more traffic, we got you more calls, you know, but if anything, it was actually.

Worse than wasting money because it then wasted our time as well. Totally. You know, so for years we were just like, screw it, that doesn't work. And then, you know, obviously we get a little bit more sophisticated and realize, oh, it's more, it's more complex than that, than the, you know, whatever this click couple buttons are, get going.

And then you, you need to be more sophisticated with what you're searching or trying to rank for, for search and where you're sending that. Like there's a lot of components with it to where it's. What's the landing page say? How easy do you make it for people to, you know, get in touch with you? Um, you know, just, just like so many little things that can make a big, big difference.

Right? So I think for you, like if, if, if somebody zooms out. And they say, okay, look, sounds cool. I'm busy, right? Like, here's what, what's the most important thing for me to like [00:30:00] actually spend some time on or to have somebody on my team spend some time on? Because I'm not sure I can do everything and probably shouldn't do everything on their own.

But if, if they have a finite amount of but, and money. What's the number one thing you should focus on?

Jeremy: Yeah, I think like getting another like nice tee up for like this other part of the local SEO. Um, so like the third factor in like getting your, getting yourself showing up on Google Maps and, and ranking on Google Maps.

And I think this is just something that most clinical versus overlook too. Especially if you don't have a ton of money, this is something that you can do too. Really like, um, get your, get your rankings improved on, on Google Maps. And that's like building trust with Google. Um, so the way that Google ranks you on Google Maps, how much money you spend on paid advertising is all about how much like domain authority and actual trust that you have with Google.

So if you're a clinic owner and you don't have a ton of money, you're brand new, you're just starting, or you have an admin that like, you want them just try to do this. [00:31:00] Do things for you. Um, there's like two ways that Google measures trust. One of them is the amount of Google reviews that you have. So if you have an admin that you want them to get out there and you know, um, do some like admin task for you, following up with current patients and getting them to leave you a Google Review is used to be and is still, is one of the best ways to.

Get yourself onto page one and get more phone calls and, and leads in the door. Um, what we're seeing right now is something called like review velocity. So it's not like, uh, the amount of like lump sum reviews that you can get. So you might like, you might run a campaign or you do some sort of like internal competition where you get a hundred Google reviews, which is awesome.

Like that will. That will spike you up nicely. But what Google really cares about is do you get five or six every single month? So putting that process in place if you have an admin or again, you have more time than money, following up with people and staying on top of people to get Google reviews. Huge, huge [00:32:00] factor for the amount of trust that Google is actually gonna have with you.

And again, like the more trust you have, the less you're gonna pay per lead on when you're running paid ads and the more just organic traffic that you're gonna get. So I think that's a really easy thing to do. The other part of the trust is the amount of, uh, local directories that you're listed in. So local directories, what a local directory is, right, is like.

Google is a business directory. Yelp is a business directory. Yellow Pages. There's kind of like secondary ones like MapQuest and Easy Local and kind of all these random ones. Um, I. Making sure you're listed in all these and your business is actually just visible in a lot of these, uh, directories is super, super important.

There's also like some physical therapy specific ones that some of them you can pay for. Other ones you just have to, to register. Register yourself through. Zocdoc is one of those that you do have to pay for, but it is like one of these big registries. So I, you know, you can just search, you know, [00:33:00] physical therapy directory, um, and you can get yourself listed in there.

But you know, the, we do, I do a ton of SEO audits for clinics and I would say 99% of them are listed in Google and Facebook and that's kind of it, and, and nothing else there. So. It's either you pay somebody to get yourself listed in all these directories, or you go out and you sign up for Yelp pages, you sign up for Yelp, you sign up for, um, you know, all of these other directories that are out there, and you get yourself listed there.

Because if we're talking about AI traffic and AI proofing businesses. What a lot of the AI models are doing now is they're looking at all these directories. 'cause these are all theoretically businesses that are listed in there, and the more of these directories you're listed in and your name, address, product and services are the same throughout all of those then.

You're gonna look at, you're gonna be looked at like a legit business by Google. But if you're not, then they're gonna be like, again, I don't know if [00:34:00] you're really in business or not, because you're not listed in these other directories. So I would say if you got more time than money, get Google reviews.

Get yourself listed in these directories.

Danny: Yeah, Google reviews are, I mean, I feel like. For as long as I've been in business, they've been important, you know, and I have, I have a, a friend that has a home inspection business here in Atlanta, and he has just like an obscene amount of totally Google reviews and I, uh.

I was like, how did you get so many Google reviews on a home, you know, home inspection? And I don't actually know if this is legal, what he was doing, but this is what he was doing. He would, uh, send people a box of chocolate chip cookies, uh, and. I think they were the ones that Nashville, Christie's or something like that.

You just get like a bunch of tins and they would be branded as company and it was a thank you card for working with them. And uh, and then he, part of it would be an ask and they're like, oh, by the way, like we're a small business people really. Uh, you [00:35:00] know, they, they value the pains of others and it would be like a link to their, uh, their, their Google page and they could go and leave a review and they get so many, and he was, he's not, I mean, he's a sharp guy.

He's like, look, dude, you send somebody cookies, everybody loves cookies. Then you have reciprocity and they're more likely to want to go and leave a review, you know, and it's like, I don't know, 15, $20 worth of cookies or something like that. But it was one of the biggest drivers. For people wanting to work with their business because they might, they, they may search your business and find you through there, but there's also a level of credibility that you give to complete strangers that have decided to leave their opinion on a business.

And you know, if you have, if one clinic has a hundred and another clinic has a thousand. Like it is exponentially different. What you don't want to do is be that one that has like three, uh, and there's all these other ones that have 50 to 500 or whatever, and then you really get left out. Right. So I, I completely agree with that.

I think it's such a big part of the decision making process for so many people.

Jeremy: [00:36:00] Yeah. I call it digital, word of mouth. Basically. These are other people talking your business up and instead of people doing it in person, you, you can just see other people talking about your business online, which obviously more and more people are, are, are going that way.

And I think, yeah, the home inspection business I learned a lot from like the home services world, so pest control, lawn care, like all of the, like all those guys are. Killers in the SEO game and the paid advertising game. 'cause they have to be like, that's, you know, that's just their, their market there. And you know, same sort of tactics of, you know, hey, you know, I sprayed the whole house.

I'll do up there on the porch, if you don't mind just leaving a Google review. I'll go and do that really quickly for you. And if you can figure something like that out, then um, you know, you're just gonna get that consistent flow of Google reviews coming in the door. Um. It's, it, it is, I think, like you said, it's, it's that word of mouth.

And if, you know, five years from now your clinic has 2000 Google reviews and a new clinic pops up, like good [00:37:00] luck trying to beat you. Like it's never gonna happen.

Danny: No. And, and one thing we actually found a lot of success with was honing in on people that had Gmail accounts. So. And if we had a patient that they sign up and in their, you know, in our CRM we see they have a, a Gmail account, then whoever the provider was, we would make sure like, Hey, make sure you touch base with them and we'll follow up with an email with a link that makes it super easy.

They click there and they're right into it. Uh, and some people. You could even let 'em know, like, you just leave us a zero to five brand. You don't have to write anything if you don't want to. And if you do, here's an example of like what other people have written. Um, and narrowing down the people that had Gmail accounts, it increased our odds significantly because.

There's no friction. It just, it's just like automatically, they're probably already signed in if they have Yeah. Uh, you know, Gmail and then they can just leave a review so fast versus somebody that, let's say somebody has a Hotmail account, probably not asking them to leave a Google review. You know, like it just unlikely that they're gonna, they're gonna do it and create a Gmail account just to, just to do that.

So [00:38:00] you might be able to like narrow down some of your focus with that. Um, but it is incredibly important. Uh, Jeremy, this has been super helpful. I've actually learned a ton on this and, and if, if people are interested in. Getting an audit on the SEO stuff, like seeing if they're even focused on the right, the right things or, um, you know, the, the new things that are, that are being rewarded a lot more, uh, what's the way in which the, they can like, get patched to take a free look at their business and, and see if they're doing okay on the local S-E-S-E-O side or not.

Jeremy: Yeah, so if you head over to the patch system.com, you'll see like in our free goodies tab, you can sign up for a, a free SEO audit. Um, basically this is an audit where we take a look at your clinic, we see where you're ranking on Google Maps, what your domain authority is, what your site map looks like, what keywords you're looking at.

It's a super informative call just to kind of see where you're at. We'll kind of give you an idea of like, here's what you need to be doing and here's a potential. Um, a really cool factor with all that stuff is just seeing like, what is the search volume in your area? And I, I think a lot of people don't realize like, oh, like [00:39:00] somebody's searching.

There's 3000 searches a month for. Greenville Physical therapy. I, I would've assumed that there would've been 20 searches for that. Okay. Um, so it, it really, like, it puts in per perspective how important this stuff is and yeah, it's totally free. Call head over to the, to our website there. Um, you can message me on Instagram too, just at, uh, under Jeremy DuPont.

Uh, happy to point you

Danny: in the right direction. Yeah. I would say too, if you're interested in this stuff and you want to kind of get a better idea, especially visually of some of the stuff Jeremy's talking about. You do a really good job of highlighting that on, um, on Instagram as well, you know, with, with kind of doing case studies and things of that nature.

So if you're interested, definitely head over and check out his, uh, his account for that. But, um, Jeremy, dude, you're the man. You know us much about marketing you. Uh, you help us out a ton. Thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Sam. Appreciate it. Alright, see ya.