[JOE SANOK] This is the Practice of the Practice Podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 797. I’m Joe Sanok, your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. I am so excited about everything going on in the world of private practice. Many of you received our awesome magazine just about a month ago where we did some spotlights. That’s where I did an interview with Daniel Pink in that. He’s such a business legend. It’s just amazing to have him as our feature interview within that. In just a little bit here, in less than 15 days, we’re going to be hanging out in Cancun. So if you didn’t get your last minute ticket to Killin’It Camp, you’re going to want to grab that. That kicks off on October 20th in Cancun, Mexico at the Club Med. We negotiated a Keller rate, 200 bucks a night if you’re double occupancy, $250 a night if you are single occupancy. That’s all your food, all your beverages. We’re going to be hanging out, getting to know each other, talking about private practice. We’ve got some killer keynote speakers as well. So make sure you grab your ticket over at killinitcamp.com. It’s just going to be such a fun, fun, fun event. Well, today we have Cinthia Pacheco, and Cinthia is the owner and founder of Digital Bloom IQ and is passionate about helping therapists and counselors grow their businesses and heal more people in the world through SEO, search engine optimization. After five years of corporate experience working with companies like Avon, Sears, and Hyundai, she transitioned into the small business world focusing on her SEO and Google Analytics services. Cinthia, welcome to the Practice of the Practice Podcast. I’m really glad you’re here with me today. [CINTHIA PACHECO] Thanks, Joe. I’m super excited as well to to chat with you all things SEO. [JOE] Yes, yes. Well, let’s just start with at the time of this recording, we’re in 2022. I know that Google is always changing things and Google’s still the main player with all SEO, what maybe that a year or two ago was true and being taught has changed in regards to SEO? [CINTHIA] That’s such a good question because that comes up a lot, like all these old, I mean, they were really effective. One of the things that a lot of people used to do would be to stuff their keywords or words into the page in random places, so it would just, it would look like hashtags, I guess just like one word after the other of things you wanted to rank for. That’s really not recommended nowadays because it can actually make your site look super spammy. So yes, it’s fascinating how things have evolved pretty quickly in in Google’s world. [JOE] I know that Google is doing a lot of things with Google Translate and with Google, like being able to even scan podcasts for SEO and things like that. What are you seeing in regards to technology advances with whether it’s artificial intelligence or things that Google’s exploring that people need to be aware of in regards to just ranking better in their practice? [CINTHIA] Google’s language processing technology has advanced quite a bit over the last few years, and now the algorithm or parts of the algorithm can understand English and not just understand single phrase questions. So if I’m asking something, I’ll give an example in a second, but if I’m asking like multiple questions within one sentence, Google can actually separate that and understand that there’s multiple components to that question. That can make things pretty complex in terms of just what you’re getting in the search results. So for example if I was searching travel visa, US travel visa to Costa Rica, maybe previously Google would just take that phrase and try to find something matching and just apples for apples. Now Google understands, okay, this is someone who’s not from the US who’s looking for a US visa, so they’re able to distinguish the two parts of that search and really break it down so they’re able to show you something relevant, even if that’s not in the search, in the actual search term. What we can pull out of that as a health and wellness practitioner, as a counselor, as a therapist, is that of course we need to understand the keywords and the words we want to rank for, but it’s really important to take it a step further and understand what are people needing when they’re searching for that thing that you want to rank for, and how can we basically exceed those expectations, not just match what they’re asking, but thinking a little bit more ahead and not be as focused on just like adding the keyword maybe multiple times to a page. Like that’s just not really valid anymore. It needs to go a little bit deeper. [JOE] Is that why longer form articles, more authoritative articles like Google tends, maybe, I think they tend to like that. Is that even true anymore? If it is that why, because they’re looking for those multiple types of answers? [CINTHIA] Yes, that’s another myth. So depending on what you are writing about or you’re wanting to rank in a long form article might not necessarily rank better. I was actually just yesterday looking for a health related term and the first article that came up, which was really helpful was like 500 words, and it was a health term. Again, it just really depends on like, what do you think people are wanting to read on the other side of that? Is it a 2000 word blog post that’s like very in-depth with images or maybe an infographic, or is it something shorter and maybe it’s a video or maybe it’s images. So yes, I know it feels a little bit like random or it could be very broad because we all want like a recipe for SEO, many of us, but just taking a step back and understanding what is this person expecting, what are they needing, is it like a big guide or is it just more like a quicker resource? To answer your question, it doesn’t, Google doesn’t count the words or anything like that. They just really look at what’s going to be most useful and how are people interacting with each of these pages and what seems to be the most relevant search result for this query. [JOE] Yes, yes. What are other trends we’re seeing this year and probably into next year? [CINTHIA] Well, if voice search continues to be something that we want to look at, like how can we connect our content and connect with people who are using like Alexa or their Siri to ask questions? We just want to make sure that all the markup in the backend is correctly set up so that Google can like match up and understand if your content is relevant to those voice searches. I mean, yes, video continues to be interesting, like Google is ranking a lot of videos just directly in the search results and they’re skipping ahead. I’ve seen this multiple times where someone, you search for something, not only do they recommend the video, but they actually tell you, okay, like two minutes in, this is where the answer to your question is. That’s like fascinating and it’s just so cool like Google can, I mean, there’s a lot of controversy because maybe as a business owner, you’d want someone to actually watch the full video, not skip ahead. But I guess the trend there is to, again, think about your content isn’t just one thing. There might be multiple questions that people are asking and so there’s like sub-questions within this question and so you might actually be ranking for something that isn’t the exact search term that you are focused on, but like a sub term. So you might be doing better in that sub term and just being in thorough with your content and going into those areas that maybe you wouldn’t normally talk about. Again, going back to what I was saying before is like understanding what are the questions that people are asking but what do they, they not know? Maybe there’s someone who if we bring it to counselor, like a counselor, maybe there’s someone who’s asking about their anxiety, but they really actually need to make some lifestyle changes around their eating that impact their anxiety. So thinking about could I speak to that as well as the direct question around anxiety, because that’s giving them the full professional response. So yes, it’s getting quite complex, but I think at the end of the day, it’s a good thing because Google is prioritizing businesses that are really, they know their stuff and they’re certified to talk about what they want to rank in. [PoP] We brought together all of our checklists, videos, and other free things in one spot, so you don’t have to opt in all over the place just to get another checklist. We’ve put it all together over at pillarsofpractice.com. Whether you’re just getting started or have an established group therapy practice, we have a free e-course for you. As well we have eight-minute experts, which are short eight-minute videos around specific topics completely free. If you want to take your practice to the next level, head on over to pillarsofpractice.com to get access to our free e-courses. Again, that’s pillarsofpractice.com to get all of those free e-courses. [JOE] Now, using that example of someone that searches for anxiety, but also might need some lifestyle changes in the past I had heard it’s good to have one big authoritative article that breaks all that down, but then you have smaller articles that are like just on healthy eating habits or the role of sleep or the role of, and then you have all these smaller articles that are maybe 500 words. Is that still the trend that Google prefers, or is there a different approach? I know that there’s not a one-size-fits-all and Google never fully reveals itself as to how it’s doing things, but what’s your best guess in regards to if someone with that example of anxiety, like what types of articles should they write? When should it be a giant, like, authoritative post? When should it be a small snippet? Like how would you help a client break that down? [CINTHIA] I’d say the first thing I would do is also just check in with the client if they feel confident that they can put together an in-depth guide, because that is a big undertaking. If they’re able to do that, great. I know a lot of clients are open to learning and like putting in the resources to doing that, but it’s also okay to just check in of like, what is your style of blogging and creating content that feels doable for you and feels sustainable? That has to come first. Maybe some of you are shocked by that, but it’s like, oh wait, isn’t this just about Google? Well, no, like, you’re running a business. How are we making your SEO and your blogging sustainable? Because if you’re doing something that’s going to burn you out now, then it’s not going to be really great in the long run. [JOE] If you can hire a copywriter for 20 or 30 bucks why wouldn’t you? [CINTHIA] Yes, of course, yes, if you have the money to invest in that’s great too. I think again, it has to like align with the brand as well. But the other part of this is also looking at your competition. So if we go to that anxiety search term, that’s a very broad term. Are we competing, just looking at who am I competing with on that page one of Google? Do they also have a guide or do they not, like, how can I distinguish myself or just pop out of that competition and be a little bit different or just be more relevant again, to what the searcher is wanting? So at the end of the day, Google doesn’t care if it’s like a guide. They don’t care if it’s, yes, like the format isn’t something that they’re like prioritizing in terms of like step one, step two, step three. What they do want to know is like, is this helpful to what the visitor and the searcher what they’re looking for? If a guide, if an in-depth guide is something you can do, it’s going to be really valuable and that searcher is looking for something that is more deep and not short, then yes, then go for it. You can always measure results as well. So what I have a lot of my clients do is we spend some time investing in maybe longer form content, and then we actually look at how it performs and we start to measure which things are doing better. But again, I’ve had clients that are on multiple page ones of Google for short, shorter form, like 500 word blog posts. Then I have other clients that it just makes sense for them to invest in a bigger guide and they have the resources to do that. I know I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t give you like a one off like answer. It just, it depends on each situation and what the search term is and who you’re competing against in the search results. [JOE] I think that that nuanced approach, like if that’s where we’re at right now, then that’s how you should answer it. What are some, if we’re, before we move into, I want to talk about Google Analytics in a minute, but before we go in there, what are some things that people could take away as action items? So they’re listening to this, they say, I want to invest, say an hour a week into something that’s going to help me rank higher in Google? What should they know about their community? What should they do? How should they, like, what should they be spending their time on if they’re going to spend an hour a week improving their SEO? [CINTHIA] Yes, totally. The first thing I’d recommend and I know we can talk about this more is setting up their search console. The Google search console, you can just Google Search Console. It’s a free tool that Google gives us to understand where we’re ranking today. This is a great starting point, even though maybe for some of you’re not really, maybe you don’t really like looking at reports and that sort of thing. Just take it slow, just put a timer on your phone and just like Joe said, like an hour, maybe 15 minutes or even five minutes of that hour just commit to like opening up the search console and getting curious and starting to learn how to read this tool. That’s starting point because you can see where you’re ranking today if you’re ranking in something and then you can start to use the tool to measure your results. SEO is all about measuring where you’re getting the most traction and continuing to build a plan over there. The other thing I would say to do, you could do week this weekly for sure, is yes, do some market research. You can just ask your audience, what are you searching for in Google? You can also ask them what keeps you up at night? What are the things in your life that are stressing you out? This could be related to your therapy or your mental health services or it could just be more broad because sometimes it’s nice for us to get a bigger sense of what people are worried about. That’s going to start to give you some ideas and then you can work your way to start to learn how to research each of these questions into keywords. That can be what you end up using for your blog when you end up writing about, [JOE] I accidentally, early on in Practice of the Practice I wrote this article about how to name a private practice and I went into look at the data and realized it was our number three page other than the homepage and about me. It was shocking because it was, I was accidentally ranking number one for how to name a counseling practice. Then from that, I had heard this podcast about like, when you discover a unicorn, make mini unicorns. So then I did podcasts about how to name a private practice. I did follow ups, I updated that page with extra information, so for a long time, that page alone was one of our biggest drivers for getting people into the Practice of the Practice ecosystem. So just that data side, even though, I like data, I like looking at it, but I also, I’m not going to comb through it, it was so helpful in just making decisions that expanded the business quicker than had I not done that. [CINTHIA] Totally. You don’t know how many times I’ve heard that of someone who’s had, even if you’ve had your site up for six months, I can guarantee you you’re probably ranking in something, whether it’s your name or the name of your practice. People are shocked, they’re like, I had no idea I was ranking. It can be really, it can be just nice to be like, okay, like I’ve done a nice foundation, now I’m going to be more intentional about this. The more you look at the numbers and the data, the easier it gets. But it really has to be something you’re committed to understanding as a business owner because it’s just a free tool that gives you that ability to measure your results and your progress. [JOE] Well, let’s dive into talking a little bit about Google console and understanding our analytics. What are a handful of things that once people get it set up, you would say you should know these numbers maybe monthly, like things that we don’t necessarily need people to be in there every single day and making micro adjustments, but the big picture, like monthly and maybe even quarterly, here’s the things that if you had a checklist to really understand what’s working that you would want people glancing at. [CINTHIA] In the Google search console, I recommend understanding your top 10 keywords. Those would be the ones that show up at the top of the performance results, search results report. Those are the ones that are bringing in the most clicks and that have the most impressions and impressions are how many times that page is being loaded as part of a search. So that could be, it’s loaded on page 50 or a hundred of Google search results or it’s on page one. Impressions is just really an indicator of how popular that keyword is, as well as how relevant your website and your content is to that keyword. It’s a great metric. So just understanding the top five to 10, I say 10 because just to keep it a little more broad, if you’re starting, just that awareness and keeping track of those keywords, like you said on a monthly basis is already so valuable because like you said you can understand, okay, this is something that’s already ranking. How can I improve this? How can I maybe add more opt-ins page or make the opt-in more relevant? Can I add links to other things on my website or other services or offerings? So suddenly it’s not just about doing the SEO things, whatever that means. It’s really specific of like, okay, I have a page that I want to improve. I want to get it higher up on that page one, or I want to get it from page two to page one of the search results. So I would say that’s a great starting point in the Google search console. In Google Analytics, because Google Analytics gives us data of, apart from SEO, we can see all our search traffic, or sorry, all our website traffic, like where everything is coming from and what it’s doing. So one great report to start with is the acquisition overview report. That is just basically what I said, like it tells you where is our traffic coming from? It could be from organic search, non-paid search results. It could be social media, it could be other website referrals. If you’re running ads, they’ll show up there too, your emails. That’s also interesting to just see where am I getting my traffic from? Then later down the line, you can start to see which traffic is actually converting. So you can, this is slightly more advanced, but maybe some of you have already done this. You can set up different conversions in your Google analytics, so it could be like your email list or an opt-in, an eBook, a course, it can be anything that’s on your website. You can actually set that up in Google Analytics so that it tells you which of these traffic sources are leading to the most conversions. Again, that’s like really interesting data. It’s literally telling you return on your investment for each of your marketing investments and so you can make some strategic decisions based off what you see there. [JOE] That’s so awesome. I feel like I’m going to have Claire and Josh, our two folks that are doing copywriting and overseeing a bunch of our website listened to this because they’ve been researching keywords and giving advice to like the podcasters and all of us on what’s trending. But I feel like this is just going to be like ninja level for them. So, Josh and Claire, when you’re listening to this you get a shout out on the show. That’s killer. I guess like, so big picture when you see people start to focus on SEO, start to focus on their analytics and make choices differently, what does that do to their businesses typically? [CINTHIA] It’s funny, I feel like a lot of people think that doing SEO is very creatively oppressing, like you’re going to be forced to write about things you don’t want to write about or like suddenly you have to do something because Google says you have to do something. It’s quite the opposite. When you understand the rules of Google, you are aware of your keywords, you’re aware of what’s moving the needle for your SEO, you’re suddenly liberated to make all sorts of different decisions because you know your numbers and you know where you’re getting your traffic from. You can be very intentional about writing either if want to call it blogging, content creation, whatever you want to call it, creating content for your website intentionally around keywords that you know you can do well in. It liberates a lot of creativity on the other side to just write about things that you want to write about because you have a gut sense of like, this is what people are needing. I mentioned that because while I know a lot of you listening just want to write about what you want to write about and that’s great, or talk about if you have a podcast or whatever, but it also, what ends up happening is that with that creativity, you end up ranking in things that maybe didn’t come up in the search console or maybe didn’t come up in your keyword tools. That’s something else I see with a lot of my clients is that they’ve taken care of their SEO enough and they know their traffic and they feel like they can also experiment on things that don’t have data proof, any proof in any sort of tool, but they end up ranking in those things as well because there’s keywords and things that are people searching that Google hasn’t picked up on yet. So if you’re in tune with what your audience is needing and you’re in tune with what your clients are really craving and the content you’re going to do well in the long run, and you can separate that I guess creative urge or whatever you want to call it, and also do SEO. It doesn’t have to always be one or the other. It can actually be both and just taking the time to do both. [JOE] That’s such a great point because wit practice of the Practice, we rank and want to keep ranking for tools that help therapists to start, grow and scale their private practices. That’s ultimately how we make money off of our membership communities, our consulting, things like that. Of course, we want to help people, but then when we know that that’s working, like what you just said I’m able to then in the podcast explore things that just interest me. For example, this summer, you’re doing it almost two-month series on how I got through it, where I just interviewed people that went through terrible things like a child dying or really rough divorces or all sorts of stuff that happened. But by being able to do that, it boosted so much of our audience because people just found it interesting and they got a sense of my voice and that I’m not just about business and making money, that there’s more to life than just making money. So that exactly what you just said, that that very thing that was just more of a creative endeavor for myself and for my own pain actually helped the business. But I could do that because I knew the other things were working because I knew that we were ranking well in certain areas. I mean, I’m so glad you brought that up. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but then it just clicked to my head. [CINTHIA] Yes. I mean, a lot of people again talk to me, they’re like, you don’t really seem like an SEO expert. You’re like numbers, but you talk about creativity. But the thing is, the clients I work with, they aren’t super, like, they want to feel that freedom in their business. That’s why they chose this career. If they were super like, just number focused, then they’d probably be doing something else. So being able to speak to that is very motivating and so you can suddenly see it as just like you do your finances or maybe other parts of your business that don’t come naturally is like you understand it. You have that awareness. You decide, do I want to learn this for myself? Do I want to hire it out? Do I want to train my team? You make a business decision and then you’re able to also explore yes, topics that maybe aren’t SEO friendly, whatever that means. But the funny thing is that that actually might end up ranking in one way or another. [JOE] Oh, such good points. The last question I always ask is, if every private practitioner in the world were listening, what would you want them to know? [CINTHIA] There are people searching for you on Google that desperately need your help and they’re needing your words, your expertise. I know a lot of people say how like Google is the worst place to go when you’re like having through a health issue. Yes, in some cases maybe it’s not great, but I really believe the opposite. I’ve had situations in my life where it’s 2:00 AM and I’m searching for something on Google desperately. Mental health is just something that can become so internal and so to be able to give someone that lifeline, hearing information about anxiety or O C d or stress or whatever and giving them that hope right, can be just so empowering. So just start now. Start today. The sooner you start, the faster you’re going to rank. Don’t leave this till the last, I know it gets pushed down to the bottom of the list many times, but just start small, start making little changes and you’re going to see a big return over time, [JOE] So awesome. If people want to work with you, connect with you, follow your work where’s the best place to send them? [CINTHIA] You can check out more information about me at digitalbloomiq.com. I also have a podcast called Digitally Overwhelmed, and I have over 200, I’m actually really impressed, Joe, you have a lot of episodes. I thought I had a lot of episodes with 200, but 400 you kicked my. What else? Yes my website’s probably the best place. I have all sorts of just free things. I also have an SEO course and you can get all that information on the site, again, digitalbloomiq.com. [JOE] Ah, thank you so much, Cinthia, for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast. [CINTHIA] Thanks, Joe. It was great being here. [JOE] Sometimes writing or focusing on SEO or looking at those numbers that behind the scenes stuff it’s not that creative squirrel that we’re running after, but what it can do is it can free us to do these different things, to go after bigger things when we know that the basics are working, when we know that your practice is kicking, you’re getting good leads coming in that want to work with you or your other clinicians. So I just love that point of that SEO can give you freedom. And that really in 2022 and 2023, Google’s not looking for a set format. In the past you would hear, here’s exactly how you should do your SEO, here’s the exact steps and ensure there’s best practices. But that right now you can lead with creativity, you can lead with answering questions in your own professional intuition. How cool is that? So there’s lots of resources out there to help you. Cinthia’s got some great resources. We also have a copywriting team here at Practice of the Practice. If you just go to practiceofthepractice.com, in the bottom right, you’ll see a chat with us. Jess, our director of details will get you connected with whether it’s copywriters, video editors, people to manage your social media, people to do blog posts for you. We have those services as well. Make sure that you check that out if that’s something you need. Really, we couldn’t do this show without our sponsors. Pillarsofpractice.com is the leading e-course for you when you’re starting a practice or when you’re growing a practice. You can get free eight-minute videos that it’s eight-minute experts that will help you level up around a number of different topics. You’ll get free checklists and all sorts of other things that will help you start your practice or grow it totally free over at pillarsofpractice.com. Thank you so much for letting us into your ears and into your brain. Have a great day. I’ll talk to you soon. Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publishers, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.