VMP 311: SEO For Veterinary Hospitals In The AI World

Brandon 00:00:01  Just a little bit over a month ago, Google announced that they're going all in on AI search, and the immediate response by pretty much all of the marketing people was, SEO is dead, paid is dead. Everything is dead. But here's the thing things are not dead. I can't tell you how many times I've heard this saying in the headline, SEO is dead. Today we're getting real answers from one of the best in all of SEO. In my opinion, it's Darren Shaw, and I have him as a guest, and I've been waiting for the right time to bring him back on the podcast. Last episode was really, really helpful, but today we dive into how AI is changing the way SEO is done and also the way that AI is going to be impacting local search. So if you want to be shown when somebody's chatting with AI, today is a great episode for you. We dive into all kinds of topics that are relevant to exactly what's going on today. And I think this episode is going to age well too, because if you're listening to in the future, there's a lot in here that I think is going to be justified by what happens here.

Brandon 00:01:11  But AI search, I think, is a really, really great opportunity for practices because everybody gets the chance to rank for it and making sure that you're showing up for the right AI chats and the different language models is really, really important. So as we move forward through this new era of AI with respect to marketing, this episode is going to be really, really valuable. So without further ado, here is my interview with Darren Shore. All right, Darren, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I'm really, really excited to talk to you just because of all of the changes that are coming out. And for people who didn't see episode one or have never heard of you. Could you give us a quick rundown of who you are?

Darren 00:01:56  Yeah, sure. My name is Darren Shaw. I'm the founder of Whitespark. Whitespark. If WhiteSpark provides solutions to help businesses rank in Google. So, mostly in the local results. So, we have a fantastic local ranking grids software that shows you your rankings on the map, amazing competitive analysis in there with all kinds of other software for managing your reviews, your reputation.

Darren 00:02:25  we have services for building citations, and we'll even do SEO as an agency as well. So that's Whitespark. We've been doing it for 20 years. I started the company in 2005, so I guess 21 years. And I'm also extremely active on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter. oh. Actually not Twitter. TikTok, Instagram, all the all the social channels you find everywhere.

Brandon 00:02:51  You're you're my personal SEO guru too, by the way. You didn't know that. But like I always, I'm constantly learning from you. And so I'm always, always learning from you. You got the best content on organic in my opinion. And anyway.

Darren 00:03:06  Thank you. Appreciate that.

Brandon 00:03:08  Well I really appreciate you. So Google just came out three, four weeks ago. I can't remember when it was. And they said, okay, this is it. We're going to AI search. And I have some personal thoughts about how that's going to roll out and what it's going to look like. I, I personally don't think it's going to be as pervasive as they say.

Brandon 00:03:31  I think it might be a little bit hyped. but I wanted to get your take first on that. Do you think that is everybody cooked now and we just need to make our websites to build so that agents can talk to them. What's your take on it? I've been seeing the sky is falling. Paid ads are dead. SEO is dead. Everything's dead except for AI.

Darren 00:03:55  How's Google going to make any money?

Brandon 00:03:56  That's what I'm wondering.

Darren 00:03:58  Yeah. No. So nothing is dead and nothing is even dying. Isn't this an exciting new world? New interfaces just yet? Someone's looking for a veterinarian. Where they're just gonna trust whatever AI gives you. The first result. Not really. I think you're gonna get a lot more personalized. That's a huge takeaway from this announcement. And we're already seeing it. That's the way AI results are. And so personalization times 100 because everyone will get different results. So right now if you go to Google and you say veterinarians in, you know.

Brandon 00:04:34  Miami, Austin, Texas or Miami.

Darren 00:04:37  Austin, Austin, any city, you're going to get a list. Here's Google's list. And that list is relatively stable. It's like, oh, there's the person that ranks at number one. And oh, shoot, we're on page two of the results. We're in position 12 or something. Right. That doesn't exist in an AI world. And which is a bonus? Everybody gets a chance to rank and the thing. In an AI driven search world is every search result is personalized and so everyone sees different results. So if I run that search and you run that search, the A is going to recommend different things. Because the AI has my past history, the AI knows where I live. The AI knows what my budget is. The AI knows so much about me. And so it'd be like, all right. The AI knows what kind of pet I have. Oh, I have parrots. Well, here you go. I don't even have to tell the AI that I need a veterinarian for my parents.

Darren 00:05:34  It already knows because I. Because two months ago, I was asking about the best bird seed, you know. So these kinds of things, it's just so extremely personalized. But anyways, Google's will continue to do that. And on the add front, it is a dream scenario for Google. And I'll tell you why. It's a dream scenario, because they can charge way more for ads, because the target market is now so perfect. It's like, oh, you sell birdseed for domestic parrot parrots. Well, when someone searches for this and we know that they have parrots, we're going to deliver your ad to specifically to that person. So now you're not delivering ads only to people like to people that are dog owners and cat owners. You're delivering ads to your very specific target market. It's incredible. So Google is actually going to make even more money in this new world with the ads.

Brandon 00:06:29  I think that's really interesting. One one thing that I'm kind of concerned about from just being in the ad buyer space and focus, is that there's so much informational search that they serve ads on.

Brandon 00:06:42  And so there's like so much garbage if we don't have controls. And so like I foresee especially early times of this just being like selling remnant ad space. That's crap about like, informational searches, right? And so I think that's going to be really, really interesting. one one thing that I wanted to get your take on and that I get lots of questions about from my paid clients, is where they should be like, I think especially with the AI overviews, we're going to have a lot more contextual, like research being done by AI's to see social channels, to see Reddit, to see PR stuff. That's like real life things happening. How much do you think practices should be diversifying? Like they're social and like YouTube and all of the different places that they should be on? And do you think that that's going to have a.

Darren 00:07:38  Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Pretty important. And I think, you should get ahead of it because it's going to become more and more clear how important it is over the coming years.

Darren 00:07:48  So everyone listening to this podcast. Listen up. I really think it's time for you to spend the time and invest in your socials. I think that it's really critical because there's this thing that we're really seeing the shift for the longest time. SEO and your performance in Search was really related to your website and your Google business profile. You get those two things dialed in, you optimize them, you add more content, you update your content, you keep those two things fresh, and you generally doing pretty good in a new world of AI search. It's much more driven by what the broader web is saying about you, rather than what you're saying about yourself and your socials. Do play into that. And so the game changes a little bit. So in a couple of ways, reviews become absolutely critical and not just reviews on Google. This is a mistake a lot of businesses are making. They're really focused on only getting reviews on Google. But in any space, like veterinarians, for example. If you whatever the prominent sites are that your competitors are getting reviews on, that's really important for you to know and that you to start driving review requests to those additional sites.

Darren 00:09:00  This is an absolute key thing because the way AI works is that it's aggregating information from reviews and then on Google itself, which will become the number one AI engine like ChatGPT. Claude. They're going to continue to be dwarfed by Google. Google is the information engine, and so your Google reviews in local are going to continue to be critical. And it's amazing to see how much information Google is. AI is mining from your reviews. So what that tells you is that your review strategy must be not just can you leave us a review on Google, it's could you leave us a review and tell us a little bit and in your review would be really appreciated if you described the situation. Talked a little bit about your pet and talked about, you know, how we helped you with that. Like going beyond that. So it's like my dog came in, had a tumor on its abdomen. Had, you know, we worked with Doctor Sarah. She was great. Helped me sort out this issue through multiple surgeries.

Darren 00:10:07  Doug is doing great. Happier than ever. Like, that kind of information is really. You want. You need really rich reviews. And when you get those really rich reviews, you start to show up for additional search terms. Or we can't even call them search terms anymore. You show up for prompts, you show up for queries, someone goes to an AI and be like, my dog has a tumor on its abdomen and be like, well, hey, guess what? Sarah, the veterinarian just got a review talking about the exact same case. You're going to be like, boom, AI will recommend you because the the review explained that you are a specialist in that area. That's the kind of stuff. And so your review, your reviews have to really go the extra mile when you ask for review to be like. I would really appreciate it if you explained your situation more rather than just great doctor. That's not a good review.

Brandon 00:10:59  Yeah, exactly. That's that's a really good point when it comes to strategy that you're thinking about, do you still start with site or do you think that, there's just should be a lot more focus on optimization for these, these other channels? Or do you think that, there's maybe a hybrid of both, but like, let's say you were starting a practice.

Brandon 00:11:24  Okay. Well, what would you make as your primary focus? Like get as many reviews as possible. Like make sure your structural SEO is good, but then start there or start from a content perspective maybe.

Darren 00:11:37  So yeah, I would lay the foundation first. And the foundation is your website and your Google business profile. I would start there for For sure, because you have to. And actually, this is another thing that is new in a world of AI, search is going overboard with the amount of content and the explanation about the nuances of the services you provide. So don't just say we provide veterinarian services for dogs. What kind of veterinarian services? What makes it? What makes you different? what different types of, cases and situations do you handle? do you handle fleas? Do you handle a cancer? Do you handle broken legs like all the legs? Everything. Make sure it's on your website. Because if it's not, you cannot be returned by the AI. We're going to call them chats.

Darren 00:12:32  They're called large language models. And so that's that's really what they call. But if you go to an AI chat and you ask for something and that information is on your website and it's not in your reviews, and no one's ever said anything about that, well, at the very least, you could say it. Now you can be considered so that your. Your website and your content is 100% still a foundation. You must do it. The problem is, is that now going forward, you got to do even more work. Yes, it's got to be on your website and your Google business profile. So in this, in your Google, there's a tip on your Google business profile. There's a section called Services Go Hog Wild. Fill it out. Lots of stuff. Fill that all into your services section. A lot of businesses are ignoring them right now and they don't even know it exists. Get in there, fill up that services section and go into extreme detail. Another area for optimization is your business description.

Darren 00:13:19  And this is fascinating because I run a survey called the Local Search Ranking Factors and the local search ranking factors for. I've been doing it for a long time. Since 2017 I've been doing it. David Min was doing it before, for a decade before me, and until recently, the description field on your Google business profile was not a ranking factor. But whatever you want there, Google doesn't care. They just ignore it. It had no impact on your rankings and people didn't know that. And so it's like a local search myth. But now in the world of AI, they're actually looking at that. So this is another space where you have characters to use where you could describe your number one differentiators, your number one. Sort of like we are the only veterinarian in the city that specializes in X, like that kind of a thing, or we're one of the very few that that handles guinea pigs. Yeah, whatever it is. Right. So getting that kind of stuff in your description is actually helpful.

Darren 00:14:14  Yeah, I feel like I've lost track. So. And then that's okay. So yes, lay the foundation and then yes. Then you have to do all that other stuff that we've already talked about. Social Reddit.

Brandon 00:14:24  Yeah, yeah. When it comes to creating blog content, are you doing anything differently to like make specific calls to action or like making a way for the language models to then like know what the immediate next step would be or anything like.

Darren 00:14:39  That There's not a lot of value in it. I think blog content is relatively low value, describing your business and the services you provide massive value. So we're really talking about service pages. When I'm talking about a website content, I'm talking about your home page, your service page, you're about page, your contact page blog content. Sure. But usually blog content people go educational information. Right? Like, yeah, ten tips to Keep Your dog healthy. this or to to prevent your dog from getting ticks. Right. That's like an example that's useless content.

Darren 00:15:14  I'll tell you why it's useless because you don't have to go to a blog post anymore. The large language model already has that. You go to ChatGPT chat to tell you and they just steal your content. So what are you going to do with that? No value. I wouldn't really lean into that unless you're producing what's called. So that content would be commodity content. Non commodity content is like a tool or you are providing firsthand experience about something. A very specific case that you handled. Dog came in covered in ticks. How did you help the dog? You said you saved the dog's life by doing this out. And the other thing like that's that's good content. So it's almost like, forget the blog with educational content, but 100% focus on like, you could maybe convert your blog to just case studies that make much more valuable content, because that's also the sort of like direct, first hand experience based content that's really valuable, and that can actually elevate your authority in the large language models.

Brandon 00:16:15  And that makes sense.

Brandon 00:16:16  It's really interesting. We were trying to we were like, this is an anecdotal story, but I was working with the practice that was in Austin, and they had a competitor who was getting a lot of the records, and they're like, are we showing up on AI? I'm like, let's do a test real quick. Yeah. And so I put in this scenario like, my dog's having stomach issues. Who should I see? And then it pulled local competitor as the first option and like this competitor, had niche blog content about GI issues and like what you should do to fix it. That was like the only difference, right? And so I was curious, how much do you think that that kind of blog content for context is going to matter in the future?

Darren 00:16:55  Yeah, it's a good point. I think there is value in that. And I think you've demonstrated it with your anecdote there. But, even better, I think, is if you describe rather than just general advice, it's more here's a case that we handled and how we dealt with it that I think is more powerful.

Darren 00:17:11  And so I think.

Brandon 00:17:13  I think you.

Darren 00:17:14  Overtake the other client because of multiple case studies. It's almost like a portfolio, like.

Brandon 00:17:19  Yeah, experience is not duplicated by blog content.

Darren 00:17:22  Yeah. And I really think the large language model, because it can't be duplicated, you have that direct experience. And then when you run you write up that experience, get a video testimonial from the from the client. I guess the dog is the patient. So I do call the owners the the clients, I don't know. But anyways, get the video testimony, get a written test, a little pull quotes, put that into the whole thing like that. That's an incredible content strategy. Way better than top ten things to look at for GI issues and dogs.

Brandon 00:17:55  Definitely since since I want to ask you about YouTube because you have some really good stuff with YouTube in just a second, so I don't want to forget that. But, are you familiar with Amex placements on Google Ads? Do you know what those are?

Darren 00:18:07  No.

Brandon 00:18:07  If you're an SEO guy ads guy. Yeah. Okay. So search they have this placement that's called AI Max. Yeah. And basically it's paid organic if you think about it like you basically say, here's my website. If somebody's doing a query that matches it, find the best page to serve to it and then serve it right. So it's more customized. and when I was seeing that, it feels kind of like early social, where if you had a post on social that does well on organic. If you use that as an ad creative, right? So if it has a direct hook to some type of an offer, it's going to do really well for paid. Like hands down you'll test a positive performing organic versus like the best creative you can come up with. Not tested the organic ones always going to do better. Sure. and so I think that Google is trying to, on the paid side, duplicate some of that same activity, right? Where if there's a blog post that does well organically and they serve it and it's valuable, they need to figure out where to send that informational search.

Brandon 00:19:13  And so I think that maybe practices that use like an advertorial style organic content model for their blog posts, then would get a lot of benefit from paid on it too. But I was wondering, do you think there's anything to that? Or is it just what do you think? Is there anything.

Brandon 00:19:31  I wouldn't think about.

Darren 00:19:33  The intent of the person who ran that search. Right. So and then also the if you were going to spend money on ads with, with educational content. Right. So like, what do I do when my dog keeps scratching behind their ear? I don't know, whatever it is. And so now you've created a piece of content about that on your blog. You're running these special ads to that content. And I think it only works if you've designed that, so that the educational content does provide useful information, but a very clear, direct funnel into, you know, book an appointment with us that. Yeah. Your calls to action have to be really strong throughout that whole thing, because it's like this is a serious issue because of X, Y, or Z.

Darren 00:20:21  We are the specialists in the city. We deal with this, you know, book, book appointment. Yeah.

Brandon 00:20:26  Yeah, that totally makes sense. And Google has mentioned that they have are moving away from keywords and moving towards intent. for from the ad side. And so I think that is exactly right. So if you're doing information around like a mass cell tumor where the dog has a tumor and cancer, and if you don't fix it, it's going to die. But people are in research mode. So like there's a short window of urgency. Right. That's probably a good informational search to target. Probably.

Darren 00:20:51  So you're actually convincing me of the value of like some like traditional blog content.

Brandon 00:20:57  Okay.

Brandon 00:20:58  Yeah.

Darren 00:20:58  I like it. I'm glad to hear it because.

Brandon 00:21:00  Well, I don't know as much about SEO as you do, so I'm always interested.

Darren 00:21:04  On the SEO perspective. And from an SEO perspective, what should I do if my dog is scratching behind his ear? Like, the answer is already given to you by the AI and they just stole it from your blog, so it's like there's no reason for them to go to your blog.

Darren 00:21:20  But now, if you connect it with an ad strategy where your ad is appearing. And that's actually an interesting thing when we think about the future of ads in AI results. The mat actually does make a decent amount of sense. It's like, oh yeah, Google's currently siphoning off the traffic you can get from content, but maybe they're just starving you, and then they're going to open it back up with the ads and be like, we're not going to give you organic traffic, but if you want to get traffic to your blog post, you could do it with the ads. Pay us well, we'll send traffic to you. So maybe that's their play. That's where they're going when the AI results.

Brandon 00:21:54  Maybe. Maybe so. So in your take to rank like as a source link inside of ChatGPT, is that pretty valueless in your opinion? For the most part.

Darren 00:22:04  There's very little clicks from ChatGPT, so the actual clicks from it, but there is value in being a recognized authority. One of the troubles with if we just look at ChatGPT is that they often don't mention the source.

Darren 00:22:21  So if you wrote the the perfect article about, you know what to do if your dog is facing the situation, then ChatGPT just gives the answer without citing you as the source. No link, not even a mention of your business like ideally the large the response should say, well, you know, Happy Paws vet in Austin says you should do this, this and that. They don't say that. They just say you should do this, this and that. They, like, cut you out of the equation, which is not cool, but it's just the nature of AI right now.

Brandon 00:22:56  Yeah. Okay. So then, would you map more of your content than around intent rather than volume and just make sure that you're doing everything you can to show up so that they refer you in somebody like my my dog sick, what should I do? And yeah.

Brandon 00:23:11  Basically and I.

Darren 00:23:12  Would try to get that content in not necessarily in a blog, but I would build, I would build obviously a dog's main service page, you know.

Darren 00:23:22  So we've got the service page for like services for dogs. And then under there I would break it down into multiple pages, like cancer, like each of these sort of conditions and issues. I would put those as separate pages for dogs. So it'd be like cat, all the funnelled pages, dogs, all the funnel pages. This is not blog content. This is direct website service page content. And then in there, that's where you would then link off to your case study. So like so like let's say you had a page on broken broken limbs with with the dog broken legs. Then from there you could be like here are three case studies that we did. That's fantastic content. I would do it that way. And in those you can then sprinkle in some of that informational stuff like what to do. And in fact that's what makes those pages better. What should you do if your dog breaks? Like how soon should you come in? Should should I be managing it before I come in? Should I give it Mandy meds like those kinds of things.

Darren 00:24:17  Right. So that's where that content should live. Not necessarily in a blog.

Brandon 00:24:22  Got it makes total sense. And I saw recently talked about preferred source. So like choosing your site as a preferred source. Yeah. Do you think that that still has. I mean, do you think that's going to be a short term value, or is that something that long term should be used based on the fact that there's like zero click happening within these language models?

Darren 00:24:42  Odds a little bit sensational in my post there when I talk.

Brandon 00:24:45  About preferred source.

Brandon 00:24:47  Well, it seems like nobody's doing it. It's early. If you do it, there's not going to be any downside.

Brandon 00:24:51  Sure.

Darren 00:24:51  Yeah. I guess the trouble is for the average veterinarian is that Google usually wouldn't put you up as one of the options. So like if you start typing in your website, it doesn't even come up as an option because the preferred sources typically are for people that are publishing timely news. So Whitespark does come up because we're publishing all the time, like new local search tips and strategies.

Darren 00:25:13  And so if you are very active and you have some level of domain authority, Google may return you. If so, it's easy to check. You go to the preferred source thing you look. Is your website already there? If it is, then that's an opportunity for you. You can now ask your people on your newsletter. Ask your customer base, hey, Addison preferred source. And the next time you search for something related to your pets, we will come up. And so that is amazing if you can do it. but I think a lot of typical vet websites would not even be. It's not even an option for you. So I would go and check.

Brandon 00:25:50  That makes sense. one thing I wanted to talk to you about was YouTube in particular. Just because so few vets do YouTube, like, I would bet less than 1% are posting on YouTube and a lot of them are doing TikTok and things. And I think there's a lot of really good, like shorts placement.

Brandon 00:26:06  YouTube.

Brandon 00:26:07  Yeah, it's so interesting.

Brandon 00:26:09  I think the shorts placement is just like publish it to shorts. There's no downside. but there's so many cool things that you can do specifically with your Google business profile. Could you tell me sell me on why you think vet should be doing YouTube also.

Darren 00:26:25  YouTube is the number one cited source for large language models. Keep that in mind.

Brandon 00:26:30  Number one. That's crazy. I didn't know that.

Darren 00:26:32  So there you go. We're going to do YouTube. Like I just sold it to you. So and if you are already doing TikTok or Instagram, you're already making video content. How in what world are you not also publishing that to YouTube? That's what we do at Whitespark. We make I make one short video. It goes to YouTube shorts. It goes to our Reddit subreddit. We made our own subreddit, which I think has a good idea for every vet clinic to do to. It goes to, TikTok. It goes to Instagram, it goes to LinkedIn, it goes to threads, it goes to blue sky.

Darren 00:27:05  That's the strategy. And you can use software these days that you just put it in once and it pushes it to all the platforms. And I just like think you got to do it. And so there's just so much value in spreading because now you're actually presenting your content across multiple channels. Not everybody uses TikTok. Lots of people don't. They never even heard of it. They've never logged in or made an account. Those people are on YouTube. And then the other the other thing happens to a lot of people on Instagram, but they're not on YouTube or TikTok. So why limit your audience if you're already made the content, just push it to multiple platforms.

Brandon 00:27:37  That totally makes sense. Totally makes.

Darren 00:27:39  Sense. Not making the content start. It's.

Brandon 00:27:42  Yeah. And can can you put the local place, link inside of shorts too, or just long form?

Darren 00:27:49  There is this interesting connection you can do with your Google business profile. It's usually only happens like if you mention your business, then it'll be like, oh, was this the business? And then you can actually connect it on the each individual video connected to your Google business profile, which is cool.

Darren 00:28:04  people don't know that. And then the other direction is very important. And so in your Google business profile, Google has added social links and you can add up to seven and you can link your Google business profile, basically link your business entity with your social channels, this has become more and more important. We know without a doubt that Google is indexing the content in your social channels. So sometimes you know, you maybe you created your your Instagram or your Facebook a long time ago and it doesn't necessarily reflect your current name. Google may not make that connection. So make it explicit just by adding your social channel profiles to your Google business profile. Boom, now you've synced it all up, and every time you you publish something, Google Now has access to that. Because Google and every AI in the world, they are desperate for content because they now have a system that can ingest the world's content. No problem. And so whoever has the most data wins. And so they're all in this race to get the data.

Darren 00:29:07  And so Google really wants that data. And so give it to them and tell them everything about your business. Because honestly that's some of those are key studies. Like I talk about case study on your website. Well, maybe you made a video about, you know, spot came in with a broken leg, and you made a little video about it. Oh, here we are bending up spot. And then, you know, at the end of the video, spot's happy and the owners are happy and you're waving. I don't know what kind of content you're making in your vet practice, but make sure that's invisible to Google through the connection on your Google business profile. And you know what? While you're at it, consider your Google Business profile itself another channel because it is, you can upload your videos to your Google Business profile. You can make a Google post on your Google Business profile with that same content. Hardly anyone does that.

Brandon 00:29:51  Yeah, nobody does that.

Darren 00:29:53  Between your practice and the vast majority of others.

Brandon 00:29:56  That's that's really, really cool. So. Right, I think I saw it on I think it was your profile that you said, I, I don't know if it was a you or not, but it's about 30 times more difficult to rank for language models than it is your Google business profile. Was that you or somebody else?

Darren 00:30:13  I did say that.

Brandon 00:30:14  So okay, I think I.

Darren 00:30:15  Originally say it, I just quoted someone else's. I think.

Brandon 00:30:18  I'm pretty sure I heard it from you, but I might.

Darren 00:30:20  Have heard it from me. But I wasn't my original research for sure. I believe the original research came from Sochi or Yext.

Brandon 00:30:28  Cool. so that that being said, I think that, like a lot of business owners are trying to focus on how to rank for language models in general, but I think the better option would be probably just really focus on fundamentals within Google Business profile, especially until these major changes happen. Do you think that's the right way to go? And and general.

Darren 00:30:57  yes. But I would go back to what I said earlier where if you're only doing the foundation, the website and the Google business profile is not enough, that's where, you know, we talked about connecting your social channels, and then it's not enough to just connect them. You got to be active. So I don't know every every small vet practice in the world now it's like, oh, God. We have another job to do. We gotta start publishing content on our social media channels. And it's true. If. Yeah. Because if you don't, then you will fall behind in the new world of search. And so, your Google business profile continues and will continue to be the most powerful and your website most powerful source of data for Google's large language model in particular. But not only that, cloud is checking if you if you like, ask Claude to recommend a veterinarian, you will find that it's often pulling review data from Google, and you'll find the other ones are doing that too, because that's the richest source of review data, right? So the other large language models are referring to that.

Darren 00:31:58  But make sure you're diversifying your reviews on multiple channels as well because it's not just one source. That's the thing. It's like how many different sources you're talking to. So how do you rank? There's no such thing as ranking in a large language model. It's very it's different. You run that one search, you run the same search. Ten minutes later, you get totally different results. And that's just. It's a probabilistic system, right? So there's no rankings. But to increase your frequency of being returned in the results, there is work to do. And that's your website, your Google business profile, your social media getting mentioned on other sites around the web. There's citations. That's something that widespread can help you with. We build citations. We'll get you listed on lots of different sites. That's a valuable activity as well.

Brandon 00:32:39  Yeah, I've had a lot of clients that have used you guys and they have nothing but amazing stuff to say. So everybody go check it out. It really loves it.

Brandon 00:32:47  Yeah. so you mentioned Reddit and setting up a subreddit. Yeah. I don't have any organic experience. So like I'm thinking usually I thought that people talk about you in Reddit, but you, it makes sense you'd want to set up your own subreddit. Like. That's obvious.

Darren 00:33:06  It's a tough one, right? So Whitespark is a bigger brand. And so we and and Darren Shaw has a big social following, so we have the opportunity to build up our own Reddit. the one thing that's interesting, we are seeing our Reddit posts get pulled into like ChatGPT results and that kind of stuff. So we there's value there. The question I have is for a local vet clinic, would they would that same thing happen or is it because of Whitesparks authority and so is the effort worth it? Maybe not. If if it's easy enough for you to just make it and then just pump pump your content into it, you're publishing content anyways. Just stick it also on Reddit. That's interesting. Maybe.

Darren 00:33:48  but the better move is this you get involved into your local community subreddit. So let's say you're located in Austin. Austin has a subreddit, and sometimes people in there talk about their pets, or there'll be a slash r slash dogs subreddit, and people will often talk about issues with their dogs. Actually guinea pigs, we used to have guinea pigs, so that's why I kept going to that one. But guinea pigs is an interesting community as well. And lots of people are talking about guinea pigs on all kinds of forums. Find them. Get involved. Be. Be the helpful veterinarian who can. Who can provide answers to people that are asking. That kind of stuff builds your authority. So in your profile on Reddit you will link back to your website. You will talk about your website. So connect the entity. Not it's not just Doctor Sarah, it's Doctor Sarah of Happy Paws. Austin, whatever your name.

Brandon 00:34:48  Is, I'm sure there's a Happy Paws Austin for sure. They're in every.

Darren 00:34:51  City.

Brandon 00:34:53  In every city. I have five happy, Happy Paws clients. Town and country happy paws. Yeah, there's just very similar names in every city.

Darren 00:35:03  Yeah. So, basically, that's your reading strategy. And it's interesting. In fact, this is new. Google is pulling Reddit threads into the Google Business profile, so if you run a search for veterinarian, maybe it's only happening in food right now, but it's coming.

Brandon 00:35:22  No, I I've seen so I've seen inside of like it'll say users on Reddit mention specifically for practices. It'll say users on Reddit mention that it's a little bit more expensive, but it's a higher quality like service. And so it seems that most language models have price bias to like more affordable in general. But I don't.

Darren 00:35:42  Know. This is a thing that needs to be thought of in the world of AI. Search. Those kinds of things that people are commonly asking. You better be answering them. Like, what does it cost to for for this surgery for my dog? People want to know the answer that question.

Darren 00:35:59  If you didn't put it on your website, you're out of the running. So I think there's great value in putting that content on your website. And it doesn't have to be a number because you never know, right? Well, it depends on how to call the complications, how many visits? Like you cannot say how much is going to cost until you do the work. And I understand that. But put arrange. All you need to do is put a range, you know, somewhere between this and this is what you can roughly expect for this. That information is so valuable and pricing information is one of the most asked about topics. So putting there. And that's the thing. What are the most asked about topics. Find them. Put them on your website.

Brandon 00:36:35  Definitely. one other interesting thing that that we're seeing to you is that so like, there's definitely seems to be a price bias. And then also for practices that are independent, like if they mention that it's a privately owned, independent practice, a lot of times they won't be returned in results because they'll say, well, it's a smaller practice.

Brandon 00:36:54  They probably don't have as much availability. And so I referred this corporate large nationwide chain that is not necessarily better at all. And so have you seen anything that would confirm that or any strategies around. Like you want to maintain your brand identity, but at the same time, you're definitely getting passed up because it seems like they're getting the the bias of, well, this is a bigger company. They're going to have openings and handle it right now.

Darren 00:37:22  So you're saying this is happening now? I would imagine so. Google used to be like that. In the very earlier days. Google used to bias towards larger brands, but they actually shift because humans don't want that. They don't they don't want to go to the PetSmart for this kind of service. They want an actual thing. And so I think that we're going to see the large language models bias towards that over time, as well as they learn people's preferences. And so, I don't think there's much you could do about it. I think you should be upfront about who you are and what you do, but you should be clear about your availability.

Darren 00:38:02  That's a great example. So like if the large language, in fact, you could look for some of the objections that people are looking for in large language models. So like you could ask, you know, what are people commonly concerned about when they're trying to find a bet? And then whatever those things are, you put them on your website. There's a really cool free tool called Query Fan Comm. That's a little technical. You got to put in some API keys. Forget that one. Try intent gap's intent com Will, you can put in something like your common terms, and then it'll show you the kinds of things that you should put on your website. There's also and that's intent. Gaps is run by Mark Williams Cook who also has a paid software called also asked.com. Also, Ask.com is really solid for this because it tells you what people are asking about related to your topics, right? So you could put in something related to dogs into also ask and it'll show you all the other questions that people are asking about that.

Darren 00:39:02  And so it's really valuable to sort of see, like, oh, yeah, we should mention that on our dog service page. Yeah.

Brandon 00:39:09  That's that's super cool. TikTok I think, also has a video content gaps, tool also. But I don't know if that would be relevant at.

Darren 00:39:19  All as well. There's a thing called vid IQ. So if you are making video content, video for finding opportunities and suggestions for videos to make.

Brandon 00:39:28  Yep, definitely. when it comes to building on site, is there any new tools or structures that people need to be aware of to make sure that language models and then also these new AI results can can find the website or like structural items that are now game changers or something.

Darren 00:39:48  What a timely question. so this morning I scripted my video on this new thing just came out is called, Open Knowledge.

Brandon 00:40:00  Something is it open knowledge graph? Is that a thing?

Brandon 00:40:04  Not open knowledge graph?

Darren 00:40:05  It's okay f and I'm trying to remember what the F stands for. But Google just announced this.

Darren 00:40:09  It is a new data structure that you put into your website that allows. It's like specifically for the large language models to crawl. So you got your web pages, but that's all like, oh, well, I got to dig through the HTML and I got blocked because you have text on your images. I couldn't understand all that. And so there's this new format called the, let me, let me see what's the dang thing called? anyways, it's called the Open Knowledge something, and it allows you to create this weird set of files or all markdown files. Okay. But you basically are going to map out your homepage, your service pages, your FAQ pages, all that's going to go into this called it's called a bundle. And it's specifically for AI agents. When they hit your website and they're like, hey, hey AI agents, Welcome. Why don't you check out our Open knowledge funnel, which has all of our information. And so that is where there's a great value for it, too, because on your website, you don't want to necessarily barf 20,000 words of content about every tiny nuance and detail.

Darren 00:41:21  But in this you can you can go crazy, talk about every little tiny service you offer, the different brands, the different medications you stock, the different pet food brands, and each individual. You just go absolutely hog wild in this file structure. And actually, I'm in the middle of developing a tool that will generate that for you. It'll crawl your website, generate before you let you edit it, and then you can publish it. So that is the kind of thing that I think is very interesting going forward. in order to make your content easily injectable and understandable and just it just kind of like becomes your database for your website. If you have a website for the humans, you got this thing for the for the robots.

Brandon 00:42:09  Definitely. Well, that that makes a lot of sense. I think that was I was trying to find it to what it would. I can't find the F either, but markdown is just becoming more and more important across everything AI related. So I think that would make us make a lot of sense.

Brandon 00:42:24  Do you think that schema is still going to be as important, or do you think it is important to have on site or not really.

Darren 00:42:32  I don't necessarily find it, that helpful already. Like, I don't think it's huge. I don't think that the large language models lean on it too much. It's not that valuable. this open is called open knowledge format that the F is format. Okay. And so this is just markdown files and that you can just describe your business in excruciating detail in this thing. So, I don't find schema that valuable. I never have, and lots of studies have shown that large language models barely look at it. It's like, just as good to have a content on your page. You don't need to put it in schema.

Brandon 00:43:10  Okay, that that makes sense. Well, that is really cool. I think that is actually a really, really smart idea. They they're smart people working there. So yeah, that's very cool. So I want to be respectful of your time and everything.

Brandon 00:43:23  So before we wrap up here, is there anything like especially in this world of vet med? I think that what I'm seeing is that from the organic side, most people are just using templated like very, very generic websites that are from like one of four big companies that do it in the vet med space, very, very templated. How should a practice approach things to to stand out? And do you think that they should be dramatically different? Should they just kind of do what everybody else is doing. What's what's your thoughts on that?

Darren 00:44:01  I would be building websites today to focus on conversions and also be building websites to, as we mentioned many times in the podcast. Just really make sure you're addressing the most common queries people have about each individual topic. And so that's a big mistake. A lot of people might get this template, a website. They put it up there like, oh yeah, we got a website. They haven't touched it in two years. What? So get that content refreshed, add all this additional stuff, use something like also asked to like find the common things that people are looking for, building out your content issues.

Darren 00:44:37  And I don't think it really matters what the template is. It's like as long as the site's been designed and it looks good and you look modern. I think the.

Brandon 00:44:46  The thing that's crazy is that the these big companies that will have like 5000 veterinary hospitals, they have the same exact template for URL structure. Each one tags like all all of this technical things are basically the same.

Darren 00:45:01  I think it's okay. Maybe they have a formula for title tags url structure h1. Like from an SEO perspective. And they've kind of refined it and they tweak it. So they're like well why would we do something different for a new client that comes on. We already got the the winning formula. We're going to do the same kind of thing on their website too. And I think that's actually it does make sense because at the end of the day, as long as you were hitting all the SEO structural things, technically it's okay that all these websites look the same. The one website in Austin might look different, might might look exactly the same as that as a vet clinic in Dallas.

Darren 00:45:40  But two different humans will never see that. So I think it's okay.

Brandon 00:45:43  So the crazy thing is that actually competitive competing practices have the same website company, and so they have the exact same. That's I see that happen in actually a lot of markets.

Darren 00:45:53  Yeah. I wouldn't love that if like, I was a user and I was digging through the results and I was like, wow, this website looks exactly the same as the one I just looked at. That's maybe a red flag. Okay, so if you're seeing that in your own market, I would think it'd be worth it to check who your competitors are. And if they're all kind of using template, then I would go to my vendor and I'd be like, can you give us a new template? Because we're the same as like three of our top competitors? I might do that.

Brandon 00:46:15  Okay.

Darren 00:46:16  Are you doing that for the humans? Not for the bots.

Brandon 00:46:18  Got it, got it. Totally. Totally makes sense. Yeah. and then any last things that people should stop doing, in your opinion?

Darren 00:46:28  Stop doing, stop ignoring your Google business profile.

Darren 00:46:36  Stop letting your.

Brandon 00:46:38  Offline. Should they check it?

Darren 00:46:40  or they should be updating it at least weekly. And that's mostly Google posts I'm talking about. So they should be publishing a post to their Google Business profile weekly, but you should also be reviewing your services, reviewing. There's a product section. If you're if you sell dog food, put it on there. If you sell bowls and all, all the stuff that you might sell. And I think most vets are looking for an additional revenue stream and they sell stuff. So put that in there as well. They'll do the Google post, but also you need to monitor because Google keeps changing stuff on you and they won't even tell you. They'll just change your services. They'll change your categories. They'll mess with your with your, your fundamental data. Sometimes, Mark, your business is permanently closed. You may not even know this is happening. And so we actually have a $1 per month software at Whitespark called, Whitespark local platform, and it monitors your Google business profile and tells you when anything changes.

Darren 00:47:35  And so it's kind of an insurance policy. So that will give you an alert if Google has made a change. And sometimes competitors are making changes too. I wouldn't say it's that common in the vet space, but every once in a while.

Brandon 00:47:47  I actually messaged you. I don't know if you remember somebody. I had a client that they got a call in. The client showed up in there like, hey, I'm in Aurora, Colorado. At this place, it's a little Caesar's. And they're like, what the heck? Yeah, they the one of the people who worked there went to a competitor practice, and then they think that that person edited the pin and moved it to 120 miles away.

Darren 00:48:10  So you gotta know this. So yeah, there's this, like your pin, so your address might stay exactly the same. But in Google you can actually drag the pin to a different spot. You'd be like, oh, I'll put you in the middle of the ocean. And then no one will ever find your business because your rankings are actually based on the pin.

Darren 00:48:26  So you'll be you ranked great. If someone was in a yacht in the middle of the ocean and they search for veterinarian, but no one's gonna do that. So this is another reason for it. It's just such an inexpensive insurance policy for your Google business profile at a dollar per month for a local platform. It's like a no brainer for me. So I would keep I would I would sign up for that.

Brandon 00:48:44  Definitely. Definitely definitely. Well, I really, really appreciate all of your insight. And, definitely, follow Darren on LinkedIn. I'm going to include your link in the podcast episode, but, how can people get started and help get help from you? It's the best way. In your opinion.

Darren 00:49:04  That's where, you'll find all of our products and services. If you're looking for SEO help, you have a whole agency side and we'll just do all the work for you. So that's a nice thing. but if you want to do it yourself, well, endless resources. You can find them on our YouTube channel in our resources section of our website.

Darren 00:49:21  follow me on all the socials and every day I'll be in your in your socials giving you some new tip and sign up for our newsletter too. Great resource there. It's just free, free info on, you know, if you're interested in this and how to improve your presence on Google and increasingly all the AI results, then, follow me on all the places and get on the newsletter.

Brandon 00:49:42  All right. Thank you so much, Darren. I really, really appreciate it. Have a wonderful day.

Darren 00:49:46  You too. Thanks for having me.

Brandon 00:49:48  Great.

‍