Do location modifiers like Near You or Near [City] in product and service titles improve Google Maps rankings?

Case Study Summary

This case study examines how enhancing Google Business Profiles for a medical practice with products, services, and targeted phrases influences Google Maps rankings. Data was collected over 12 weeks from March 10 to June 6th, tracking keywords grouped into services-only, products-only, and control groups.

Key findings:

1. Adding a full catalog of products and services improved average ranking by about 20 to 23%.
2. Generic phrase “Near you” provided modest gains (~12 % for services, negligible for products).
3. Geo-specific phase “Near [City]” yielded stronger improvements for both service and product groups. (~9-10 %).
4. Removing products and services caused rankings to decline by 11–18 %.

Objectives & Methods

Determine how listing enhancements affect rankings across four interventions: adding products/services, adding “Near you,” swapping “Near you” for “Near [City], and removing products/services altogether.

Methods: Keywords were divided into three groups (services‑only, products‑only, control). Average ranking positions were monitored across 7 dates using a 9×9 ranking grid covering a 3-mile radius, representing 49 individual points. Data was logged sequentially on March 10th, March 24th, April 7th, April 21st, May 5th, May 29th, and June 6th to measure performance trends over time.

Analysis & Results

After adding products and services, average rankings improved — from 24.00 to 20.76 for the services group and from 11.37 to 9.40 for the products group.

• When “Near you” was added to titles, the service group rankings improved further to 18.27, while the products group held steady at 9.42.
• Replacing “Near you” with “Near [City]” produced the best results, improving averages to 16.35 (services) and 8.60 (products).
• Finally, removing all products and services caused rankings to decline to 18.18 (services) and 10.13 (products).

This progression highlights a clear trend: completeness and location-specific phrasing drive visibility. The initial improvements from adding products and services suggest that Google rewards fully fleshed‑out listings because it values authoritative practices. 

The modest boost after appending “Near you” shows that generic proximity modifiers provide limited value, potentially because Google’s local algorithm already infers proximity from the searcher’s location. However, replacing the generic term with the actual city name yields a larger benefit, indicating that explicit geographic keywords strengthen local relevance cues for both users and Google. The sharp decline following the removal of products and services underscores how critical comprehensive information is to maintaining visibility. 

Recommendations

1. Create a comprehensive catalog of your products and services.

Include both products and services within your Google Business Profile to achieve the most significant ranking improvements.

2. Localize your titles.

Incorporate city-specific names (e.g., “Eye Exams in Portland”) rather than “generic terms (e.g., “Eye Exams Near You”) to reinforce local relevance and improve visibility in nearby searches.

3. Keep content up to date.

Regularly review and update your products and services to reflect your current offerings or new technologies. Google rewards active, accurate profiles, and consistent updates signal to both users and search engines that your business is engaged and trustworthy.

Conclusions

Optimizing Google Business Profiles with a complete set of products and services, including location-specific verbiage, delivers measurable improvements in local visibility. Listings that incorporated both products and services saw ranking gains of up to 23%, while removing them led to clear declines. Including city-specific verbiage within product and service titles further enhanced performance.

This case study demonstrates that the quality of content and geographic specificity in Google Business Profiles directly influence local search performance. For medical clinics, maintaining detailed offerings and using location-specific keywords is essential for staying visible in highly competitive markets.

Ready to boost your practice’s local visibility? Contact the team at ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć to get started.

AI has influenced search algorithms for years, but the introduction of LLMs represents a seismic shift by enabling conversational, generative responses that often bypass traditional web links. For example, a patient querying an LLM about “top orthopedic surgeons in California” might receive a synthesized summary without visiting clinic sites.

This transformation hits the medical digital marketing sector hard, as patients increasingly rely on AI for instant health insights. Industry forecasts suggest AI-mediated searches could dominate by 2026, potentially slashing website traffic unless clinics optimize for these tools. In healthcare, where precision and trust are critical, this demands content that AI deems reliable and authoritative.

The outcome is an intent-centric ecosystem where success hinges on visibility in AI outputs, not just SERPs. Medical clinics must now blend human-focused and AI-optimized strategies to sustain patient engagement.

The Rise of AI and LLMs: A Game-Changer for SEO

Artificial intelligence has been influencing search for years, but the advent of LLMs marks a pivotal turning point. These models, powered by vast datasets and advanced machine learning algorithms, can generate human-like responses to queries, often bypassing traditional search results altogether. 

For instance, when a patient asks an LLM about “best dermatologists in New York,” it might compile and summarize information directly, drawing from web sources without directing users to specific sites.

This shift impacts the medical digital marketing sector profoundly. Patients increasingly turn to AI-driven tools for quick, conversational answers on symptoms, treatments, or clinic recommendations. According to recent industry analyses, AI-powered searches could account for a significant portion of online queries by 2025, potentially reducing traffic to traditional websites if clinics aren’t optimized accordingly. In healthcare, where misinformation can have serious consequences, this underscores the need for authoritative, optimized content that AI systems recognize and prioritize.

The result? A more dynamic, intent-focused ecosystem where visibility isn’t just about ranking on page one of Google; it’s about being the go-to source in AI-generated narratives. Medical clinics must now optimize for both human users and AI interpreters to maintain patient inflows and build lasting trust.

Demystifying GEO: Optimizing for Generative AI

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) emerges as a response to LLMs and AI-driven search tools. Unlike traditional SEO, GEO focuses on making content appealing to AI models that generate responses, ensuring your clinic’s information is included in those outputs.

What GEO Is and How It Works

GEO involves tailoring content so that generative engines (think ChatGPT or similar tools) favor it when compiling answers. Key strategies include:

• Authoritative and Structured Content: Use clear, factual language with statistics, quotes, and easy-to-parse formats that AI can readily extract.
• Semantic Optimization: Emphasize natural language processing by incorporating synonyms, related concepts, and context-rich explanations. For a medical clinic, this might mean detailing “symptoms of seasonal allergies” with comprehensive, evidence-based insights.
• Visibility in AI Datasets: Encourage inclusion in training data through high-quality, shareable content that gets referenced across the web.
• GEO overlaps with SEO in areas like content quality and keyword relevance, but it’s distinct because it targets AI’s generative processes rather than ranked lists. It requires specialized efforts, such as monitoring AI response trends and adjusting content for conversational queries. At Glacial, we provide dedicated GEO reporting, tracking how often your clinic appears in LLM outputs, which differs from standard SEO metrics like click-through rates.

Evolving SEO for Clinics: Integrating GEO and the “3 C’s” Model

AI-powered search, especially through large language models (LLMs), is reshaping how medical clinics are discovered online. The attached article dives deep into this phenomenon, highlighting new strategies required to maintain digital visibility, and it can be made even more comprehensive by further connecting its concepts to the foundational “3 C’s” (Content, Code, Connections) from SEO and their evolution in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

From SEO to GEO: Why the Shift Matters

Traditional SEO is built on optimizing your clinic’s website (via the 3 C’s: Content, Code, Connections) for organic Google rankings. Today, however, AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity pull information directly from multiple sources, sometimes without leading users to your site. This means your clinic must be visible, trustworthy, and *AI-ready* everywhere your brand appears.

The article rightly points out that success now depends both on human-focused SEO and AI-optimized GEO. To ensure comprehensive patient engagement, clinics must update content, structure, and visibility across new search tools, moving beyond the website, and into the broader medical information ecosystem.

Making Your Practice AI-Ready: Practical Steps

1. Reimagine Your Content for GEO & SEO

• Content (from SEO): Provide medically authoritative, keyword-rich, and patient-centric materials. For GEO, also ensure information is structured for easy extraction by AIs, use bullet points, summaries, and clear FAQs.
• Connection: In classic SEO, gathering quality backlinks builds trust. For GEO, this extends to being cited and referenced in medical databases, reputable publications, and datasets AIs rely on to generate summaries.
• Code & Clarity: SEO emphasizes technical implementation (structured data, schema). GEO makes this actionable, ensure every key page has schema markups (FAQPage, MedicalWebPage, etc.), uses scannable HTML, and is formatted for AI parsing.

2. Track, Analyze, and Optimize for AI Mentions

• GEO demands tracking not just website traffic, but AI-generated citations and appearances. This means using new metrics like your clinic’s visibility score in LLMs, answer-engine engagement rates, and position tracking in AI-sourced responses.
• Monthly prompt testing: Regularly “ask” AI engines the most common patient questions for your specialty, and audit whether your content is being surfaced as the answer.

3. Blend Strategies: Human & AI Optimization

• SEO and GEO work best together. Clinics must audit and adapt every touchpoint from core service pages to educational blog posts to be relevant for both Google algorithms and AI answer engines. 
• Include E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness) principles to boost credibility in the eyes of both patients *and* AI systems.
• Publish content widely—not just on your website, but on industry journals, LinkedIn, and video platforms. AI engines source data from across the web, so broad presence increases your odds of being cited.

Why Specialized GEO Services Are Needed

The article highlights that services like GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) are distinct from classic SEO because they target the mechanics of AI-driven answers. These approaches require:

• AI-focused technical markup (advanced schema, custom JSON-LD).
• Structured, clear content designed for direct extraction by AIs.
• Competitor benchmarking in AI visibility, not just Google rankings.
• Dedicated reporting dashboards and inclusion tracking.

Treating GEO as a mere add-on to SEO dilutes its impact. Specialized offerings ensure that resources and expertise are directed solely at the new mechanisms shaping patient discovery in an AI-first world.

Synthesizing the “3 C’s” for GEO

Just as the “3 C’s” powered traditional SEO, their adapted versions underpin GEO:

Content → Context: Make each page rich in semantic details and up-to-date medical insights.

Code → Clarity: Use technical best practices to ensure that AIs can easily parse, structure, and feature your answers.

Connections → Credibility: Build trust and authority throughout the web, not just backlinks, but presence in datasets and references used by AI models.

The Art of Ranking on Answer Engines

Answer Engines are centered on direct answers provided by search engines or AI tools. This is what happens when Google displays a featured snippet or an LLM offers a concise response to a query.

What Answer Engines Entail and Their Mechanics

• Targeting Zero-Click Searches: Answer engines aim to provide complete, self-contained answers that satisfy user intent immediately, such as “What are the side effects of ibuprofen?” for a clinic’s pharmacology page.
• Structured Data and Schema Markup: Implementing JSON-LD schemas helps engines extract and display your information as direct answers.
• Concise, High-Value Content: Focus on FAQ sections, how-to guides, and bullet-point summaries that AI can pull verbatim.
• Answer Engines share ground with SEO through elements like schema and content relevance, but it’s a separate service because it demands precision in answer formatting and ongoing analysis of query intents. For medical marketing, optimizing for Answer Engines ensures clinics appear in health-related Q&A, building credibility. ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć handles the challenge of optimizing for Answer Engines with tailored workstreams, including performance reports on answer visibility, distinct from SEO’s broader traffic analytics.

Why GEO Services Are Fundamentally Different from SEO Services

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), is a fundamentally different service from traditional SEO. At Glacial, we have designed these offerings as distinct packages for a clear reason: the work, expertise, and reporting required for success in GEO go far beyond what is covered in classic SEO Setup or Maintenance.

Distinct Requirements and Workflows

Regular SEO focuses on improving a site’s position in traditional search engine results through content creation, technical optimizations, and authority building (the classic 3 C’s of SEO: Content, Code, and Connections). These activities primarily serve organic ranking algorithms designed by Google, and while they are foundational, they are no longer sufficient in a world where AI and LLM-driven engines now directly influence patient discovery and clinic visibility.

GEO requires:

• Deep analysis of LLM outputs and conversational queries (something not included in normal SEO audits).
• Content creation tailored to AI/LLM consumption, which means new formats, structural markup, and testing with real-world AI prompts.
• Ongoing technical implementations like advanced schema markup, custom JSON-LD for medical entities, AI-focused FAQs, and complex tracking/reporting across both traditional search engines and emerging generative tools.
• Competitor benchmarking and inclusion monitoring in AI-driven answer engines, tasks that are not monitored or reported in a regular SEO campaign.

Need for Substantial Additional Work and Expertise

Implementing successful GEO strategies is not a purely incremental step added on top of SEO, and in some aspects a parallel track. Although a solid organic SEO implemented on a website is substantially a pre-requisite for GEO success, each piece of content must again be audited, adjusted, or re-written to align with AI algorithms and rapidly changing generative engine behaviours. The research and technical requirements are significant:

• Continuous monitoring and monthly prompt-testing of ChatGPT, Google’s Gemin,, and other AI engines.
• Development and analysis of specialized dashboards to measure AI inclusion, answer-box frequency, and semantic content gaps.
• Strategic consultation to future-proof client content and ensure early adaptation as new AI-driven platforms emerge.

Lumping GEO work into organic SEO dilutes both the impact and resource allocation. Treating GEO as something to be “included” within SEO would result in under-prioritized initiatives and ultimately less effective results.

Maintaining this competitive edge requires dedicated resources, hands-on expertise, and bespoke reporting; none of which can be sustained under standard SEO retainers. Ultimately, this separation adds real value and delivers measurable results in a market where being first in AI-driven discovery is the new key to growth.

ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć is your expert in the 3 C’s Ecosystem

We’re pioneers, from coining SEO’s 3 C’s to innovating for AI. Contact us at glacial.com to optimize your clinic’s presence across all engines, or click the button below for a Free GEO Audit of your brand and website.

Onur Birsen

Onur is the Co-Founder and CTO of ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć.

In today’s fast-moving digital climate, medical clinics must navigate a drastically shifting landscape in online visibility. Traditional SEO, which is focused on optimizing websites for search engines, remains foundational. Yet, the emergence of AI-driven generative engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity is transforming how patients discover healthcare providers. These aren’t just search tools, they’re intelligent intermediaries, synthesizing, citing, and sometimes even replacing conventional web search results.

Medical clinics, therefore, must update strategies to remain competitive in a world where trust, accuracy, and reach are defined not only by Google’s algorithm but increasingly by how AI engines parse and present your content.

At ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć, we have led the frontier in developing custom websites and executing digital marketing strategies for medical practices since 2000. As leaders in this field, we’re committed to clarifying these shifts and formulating the optimal strategies for our clients’ success. 

In this article, I’ll delve into the impact of AI and LLMs on SEO, distinguish between organic SEO, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and emphasize the reasons behind the urgency to act now. I’ll also re-introduce the foundational “3 C’s of SEO” – which I coined in the early 2000’s, and extend this framework to a new concept: “The 3 C’s of GEO” which will highlight their connections and differences, with the goal of dominating search results on Google and LLM platforms alike.

Before you continue reading the article, if you are interested in a free GEO audit for your website, you can use this link to request one: /geo-audit/.

Let’s start with the basics. Organic SEO refers to the practice of optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) without paid advertising. It’s all about earning visibility through relevance, quality, and user experience.

Understanding Organic SEO: The Foundation of Digital Visibility

How Does Organic SEO Work?

Organic SEO is about growing visibility in search engine results without paid ads. Key elements include:

• Keyword Research and Content Creation: Identify terms patients use, like “eye doctor near me” or “LASIK in New York,” and create informative content around them.
• On-Page Optimization: This includes meta tags, headers, alt text for images, and mobile-friendly design to ensure search engines can crawl and index your site effectively.
• Off-Page Factors: Building backlinks from reputable sources, such as medical directories or health blogs, signals authority to engines like Google.
• Technical SEO: Ensuring fast load times, secure connections (HTTPS), and structured data to help search engines understand your content.

In the medical sector, organic SEO drives long-term traffic by positioning clinics as reliable resources. For example, a well-optimized blog post on “managing chronic dry eye” can attract organic visitors seeking advice, potentially converting them into patients. However, with AI’s rise, traditional SEO alone may not suffice, as LLMs often synthesize information without linking back to sources.

The 3 C’s of SEO: A Timeless Foundation

Before exploring new frontiers, let’s revisit the bedrock of optimization. I originally coined the 3 C’s of SEO: Content, Code, and Connections, in the early 2000s. These pillars encapsulate the essentials for search engines to crawl, interpret, and rank websites effectively.

1. Content: Prioritizes high-quality, relevant material that addresses user queries with value, incorporating optimized keywords for better discoverability.
2. Code: Focuses on clean technical structure, including proper HTML tags, meta elements, and user-friendly design to facilitate search engine indexing.
3. Connections: Builds authority through backlinks from trusted sources, expertise demonstration, and strong user engagement signals.

This framework has powered organic SEO for decades, driving traffic to medical clinics via informative content like symptom guides or treatment overviews. Yet, as AI evolves, it sets the stage for advanced adaptations in GEO and other AI based searches.

GEO: Generative Engine Optimization: A New Era

With AI’s evolution, classic SEO isn’t enough. Enter Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): a strategy tailored for AI-driven search and answer engines. GEO ensures your brand and expertise get surfaced and cited by large language models in instant answers.

Introducing the 3 C’s of GEO: Context, Clarity, and Credibility

Building on the 3 C’s of SEO, we’ve developed an original complementary concept for the AI era: the 3 C’s of GEO: Context, Clarity, and Credibility. This new triad addresses the unique demands of generative and answer engines, ensuring medical content resonates with LLMs and direct-response features.

1. Context: Emphasizes rich, semantically layered information that provides full situational awareness, helping AI models understand and incorporate nuanced details like regional healthcare regulations or patient-specific scenarios.
2. Clarity: Demands precise, concise language with structured formats (e.g., clear statements of 20-250 characters, bullet points or schemas) to enable easy extraction and generation of accurate responses.
3. Credibility: Focuses on fostering credibility via interconnections across digital ecosystems, such as integrations with AI datasets, cross-platform references, and adaptive content that evolves with query trends.

This framework positions GEO as an evolution of SEO, tailored for AI’s interpretive capabilities.

Connecting the Dots: 3 C’s of SEO vs. 3 C’s of GEO

While the 3 C’s of SEO form the core of traditional optimization, the 3 C’s of GEO extend these principles into AI-driven realms. Here’s how they align and diverge:

Building on the 3 C’s

Organic SEO optimizes sites for unpaid SERP rankings, leveraging the 3 C’s to attract traffic. It involves keyword-rich content, technical tweaks, and authority-building—ideal for medical topics like “vision care surgery options.”

• GEO applies the New 3 C’s to Generative Engines
• GEO targets inclusion in LLM-generated responses, using Context for depth, Clarity for precision, and Credibility for broad reach. It overlaps with SEO but demands AI-focused testing and reporting.
• GEO leverages the 3 C’s for Direct Answers
• GEO secures spots in featured snippets or AI replies, employing the new 3 C’s for intent-matched, extractable content. It’s distinct, with specialized metrics separate from SEO.

The Urgency – Why Medical Practices Need to Act Now

With AI tools like Search Generative Experience expanding, medical clinics face imminent traffic disruptions. Embracing the 3 C’s across SEO and GEO offers a competitive edge; act today to lead tomorrow.

With AI “answer engines” quickly reshaping online search and referral patterns, organic traffic is already being redirected or reduced. Clinics must optimize not just for Google, but for AI tools that synthesize and summarize answers from across the web, often without a clickable link.

A proactive, dual-layered strategy, combining SEO and GEO will help your clinic:

• Dominate both traditional search and AI-generated answers.
• Build lasting visibility and authority among both patients and decision-makers.
• Stay ahead of disruptive shifts that could undermine classic digital marketing investments.
• “Winning visibility in AI results isn’t something SEO can deliver alone. Every department has a role, from content, comms, product marketing, PR, data to engineering. SEO must expand.”

Essential Steps for Clinics Adapting to AI-Driven Search

• Audit and update content: Make sure materials are both SEO and GEO-friendly—comprehensive, clear, and structured for easy AI extraction.
• Track new metrics: Measure not only traditional clicks and rankings, but also brand mentions in AI-generated answers and external content.
• Publish across platforms: AI engines ingest material from multiple sources—be present on LinkedIn, industry publications, and video platforms beyond your own website.
• Integrate E-E-A-T: Elevate expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness to win citations from both Google and AI engines.

Final GEO Takeaways

Medical clinics looking to thrive in this new landscape must master both the 3 C’s of SEO and GEO; Content/Context, Code/Clarity, and Connections/Credibility; to dominate visibility across search engines and AI platforms. The most effective teams now blend classic technical SEO discipline with fresh GEO tactics to ensure their expertise is trusted, cited, and easily surfaced, regardless of how or where patients ask questions.

By acting now, clinics secure not just clicks, but influence; becoming visible to both humans and machines at the center of tomorrow’s healthcare discovery journey.

I am working on another article which covers additional aspects of SEO, GEO and AI/LLM tools. If you’ve had the patience to read until this point and you still want to learn more, please check back next week for the next article which will be titled “AI is Transforming the SEO Landscape for Medical Clinics”.

ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć is your expert in the 3 C’s Ecosystem

We’re pioneers, from coining SEO’s 3 C’s to innovating for AI. Contact us to optimize your clinic’s presence across all engines, or click here for a Free GEO Audit of your brand and website.

Onur Birsen

Onur is the Co-Founder and CTO of ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć.

Google’s search results continue to evolve beyond the traditional “10 blue links.” Among recent innovations, AI Overview has emerged as a significant development that healthcare website owners need to understand. This isn’t just another algorithm update – it’s likely a fundamental shift in how people interact with search engines and are presented answers to questions. Let’s explore how Google’s AI Overview is revolutionizing the way healthcare practices manage their digital presence in search results.

What are AI Overviews in Google?

Google AI Overview brings another shift in how certain kinds of search results are presented, particularly for those quick-answer style queries. It uses artificial intelligence to generate concise, direct answers to user queries directly within search results. This feature is designed to provide users with quick, relevant information without requiring them to click through to a website. 

Back in Sept 2023, the AI overviews for informational medical queries looked like this:

Today, they look like this:

While the Overviews are still designed to provide quick answers, UI/UX changes (re: link icons next to answers) in today’s version provide optionality for users to click through to listed websites, while prioritizing scannability with highlighted text, boxed key points, and images. This shift aligns with Google’s push to streamline quick-answer queries and deliver immediate, high-quality summaries.

Think about how you search Google. You either need a quick answer (how many ml in an oz?), or you are attempting to do something (things to do in Boston). With AI Overviews, Google has decided to start handling way more of the quick answer style queries themselves. While this arguably improves the search experience for users, it also reshapes how businesses and content creators approach SEO.

Overview pulls from various high-quality sources to create summaries that fulfill user intent quickly. Google handling these style queries is going to result in lower clicks and traffic to your website. However, AI will continue to reference brands and products in its responses, and you’ll want your brand to be among those it mentions.

Google’s AI Overview Impact on Click-Through-Rate

Google’s AI Overviews are typically triggered by these types of searches:

• Short Facts
• Consquence
• Comparison
• Reason
• Definition
• Boolean
• Instructional

The impact of AI Overviews varies depending on the type of query. Top-of-funnel informational searches will see reduced click-through rates (CTR) as users find immediate answers in the AI-generated summaries. 

In July 2024, Healthline Media reported 45% of the medical keywords they tracked returned an AI overview. Glacial is currently compiling it’s own tracking report for specific specialties, but our estimates are that almost all medical related keywords that fall into one of the above buckets will be triggering an overview answer.

However, bottom-funnel, high-intent and local related searches, like “eye doctor near me“, remain unaffected, which is critical for medical practices as these lower-funnel, high-intent, “I’m-actively-looking-for-a-service-provider” searches drive the majority of patient leads.

Keep in mind that not all clicks are equal.

If your website is losing clicks, take a moment to evaluate what kind of traffic is being affected. Likely traffic is down because an old blog post used to rank first overall for a niche question, where as now an AI overview appears and becomes a zero click search.

Before stressing about traffic being down month over month, confirm if the drop is tied to lead generating service and location pages, or supporting content.

Google does not provide any AI overview segmented data in their analytics platforms, so marketers will have to do some extra digging (and simulated searches) to hypothesize and find the root source of any decrease or increase.

Adapting your strategy is key. By balancing concise, digestible information with in-depth content, you can maintain visibility, reinforce brand credibility and remain part of the decision-making process, even if users engage differently than before.

Impact of AI Overview on Traditional SEO Metrics

As AI-generated summaries reshape search results, traditional SEO metrics are evolving. Here are some general stats to consider:

• 52% of links featured in AI overviews come from top-10 ranked sites
• Preview links show 80% correlation with top-10 results
• Rankings in AI Overview and traditional search results operate independently
• Results show high volatility due to overviews being AI-driven generation

While these general trends provide context for AI’s broad impact on search, let’s examine how specific areas of search marketing are being affected:

Organic SEO

AI Overviews click-through or impression data does not show in Google Search Console or Google Analytics. This creates a significant blind spot for marketers trying to measure their content’s true reach and performance.

Local SEO

The map packs fall under the navigational and local service-based search intent queries. As of January 2025, we’re not seeing any AI overviews appear for these style searches (i.e. LASIK Seattle). 

These style queries have long been the searches that bring patient leads, so it’s good to see for now that the area is unaffected for practices. When reviewing site traffic metrics, these continue to be the most important to check when looking into any traffic declines. Was it “ophthalmologist Nashville” that dropped, or “what is the bump on my eye?”.

Paid Search 

The introduction of AI Overview has notably influenced how users interact with search results, particularly for healthcare-related queries. Research indicates that when AI Overview appears for health-related searches, advertisements also show up 65% of the time, creating a more complex competitive landscape.

Should I Optimize Content for Visibility in AI-Generated Summaries?

Optimizing for AI-generated summaries involves structuring your content to be easily digestible and directly address user queries. While optimization for AI Overview shouldn’t be your primary focus, certain practices can improve visibility:

For informational content:

• Focus on concise, factual presentation
• Include relevant statistics and structured information
• Minimize computational complexity for crawling
• Prioritize clarity over keyword density

For local visibility:

• Maintain accurate directory listings
• Focus on geographical relevance
• Ensure consistency across local citations

How Do You Rank a Medical Website in Google’s AI Overview?

Google’s AI Overview pulls information from high-quality sources to generate quick, authoritative answers. To increase your chances of being featured, your content must be well-structured, relevant, and aligned with user intent.

Focus on User Intent and Context: Answer questions directly. Provide concise, accurate answers to common user queries.

Creating Efficient, Crawlable Content: Conduct keyword research to identify and incorporate terms users are searching for. Use clear headings, bullet points, and lists to make your content scannable. 

Providing Clear, Factual, Authoritative Information: Focus on E-A-T. Establish Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness in your content.

Maintaining Strong Traditional SEO Fundamentals: Ensure your website follows core SEO best practices, including fast load times, mobile optimization, and structured data. Strong technical SEO, high-quality backlinks, and well-optimized metadata help maintain visibility alongside AI-generated search results.

By combining these strategies, you can increase your chances of being included in AI-generated summaries.

The Technical Aspects of AI Overviews

The output of a Google result page is a combination of multiple different algorithms that come together to deliver a final search result.

For the AI Overviews algorithm, the main factor is content relevance and semantics. Google’s algorithms understand words in mathematics. Each word has a mathematical value plotted in a multi-dimensional space. Using vector embeddings, these algorithms take your query and compare it against passages from indexed website content for the closest relevant mathematical values.

In nerd speak: To appear in AI Overviews, your content should be concise, factual, and structured with simple subject-verb relationships to answer the user’s query as efficiently as possible. Bonus points if you can also provide unique perspectives and first-party data alongside your answers. 

Is it Bad if I Don’t Rank in the Google AI Overview?

Not ranking in the AI Overview doesn’t mean your SEO efforts are failing. Traditional rankings still matter, and not all queries trigger AI-generated summaries.  Some users prefer clicking through to full articles rather than relying on summaries, depending on their needs.

It’s also important to consider audience behavior. For instance, some industries or topics may see less reliance on AI summaries, making traditional SEO strategies equally valuable. While appearing in the overview is advantageous, it’s not the sole determinant of success.

For medical practices, the real focus should be on the types of searches that drive patient conversions. While AI Overview visibility can enhance brand awareness, it’s the bottom funnel, service-specific queries that have the biggest impact on appointment bookings. 

Here’s why traditional SEO and high-intent searches remain the most critical for practice growth:

• Most patient leads come from service-specific and location-based queries
• Bottom-funnel searches typically drive actual appointments
• Brand mentions in AI overviews, while valuable, aren’t critical for practice growth

Key Takeaways for Medical Providers

Google AI Overview represents a significant shift in how Google gives users information online. However, it’s not about completely overhauling your SEO strategy—it’s about adopting.

AI Overviews are volatile. They rely on a different algorithm than traditional search results, meaning what appears today may disappear tomorrow as Google fine-tunes its models and indexes new content.

For medical practices, understanding AI Overview’s role within the broader SEO landscape helps maintain perspective on its actual business impact. While it signals an evolution in search, its influence on patient acquisition may be less significant than initially assumed.

As you consider these key insights, it’s important to focus on actionable strategies that will ensure your medical practice adapts effectively. Here are some essential takeaways to guide your SEO efforts in light of the evolving Google AI Overview:

1. AI Overview primarily affects top-of-funnel, informational content that already has a low conversion rate and was already being answered with featured snippets.
2. Focus optimization efforts on service-specific and location-based queries.
3. Maintain high-quality, efficient content that aligns with user intent.
4. Monitor changes, but continue prioritizing traditional SEO fundamentals, especially Local SEO.
5. The intersection of AI Overviews and Paid Ads will be important to watch over the next 12 months.

If you’re looking for ways to refine your digital strategy and maintain your practice’s visibility amidst evolving search trends, reach out to discuss how we can support your practice’s SEO goals and ensure you’re well-positioned in both traditional search and AI-generated results.

Is your practice struggling with patient acquisition, online visibility, or standing out in a competitive healthcare market? High-quality content could be the difference-maker that sets your practice apart and drives practice growth.

Consumer healthcare decision-making has shifted dramatically in recent years, with patients now turning to search engines and social media for medical information before ever stepping foot in a doctor’s office. This digital-first approach to healthcare decisions presents both challenges and opportunities for medical practices looking to grow their patient base. 

Although it’s always been essential to a holistic marketing strategy, high-quality, unique content has become even more critical for driving patient acquisition in this new digitally-focused climate. For a comprehensive content strategy, it’s important for healthcare providers to focus on including or improving two primary types of content on their websites: engaging blog posts and informative web copy for service pages. 

These content types work together to form a comprehensive online presence that attracts, informs, and converts potential patients. Keep reading to learn three key ways unique, high-quality content helps you get more patients!

1. Rank For More Keywords

Creating diverse, informative content through both blog posts and service pages allows healthcare practices to rank for a wider range of keywords in search engine results. This increased visibility is crucial for attracting potential patients who are actively searching for healthcare information and services online.

Long-tail keywords, which are longer and more specific phrases, play a particularly important role in this strategy. While they may have lower search volumes, they often indicate higher intent and can lead to more qualified traffic. 

By targeting these specific phrases in website content, practices can attract patients who are more likely to convert.

Strategy Spotlight:

For example, consider a dental practice that partners with ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć to enhance their online presence. 

First, the content team will create a blog calendar that includes a variety of in-depth blog topics about different topics, including cosmetic dental procedures. Then, to ensure that those blogs perform as well as possible and to establish the practice as an authority in cosmetic dentistry, they also optimize the practice’s service pages with detailed, unique content. 

One blog post, titled “What to Expect During and After Dental Veneer Treatment,” is crafted to rank well for search terms like “dental veneer recovery” and “veneer procedure steps.” Meanwhile, the practice’s veneers service page is optimized to rank for location-specific searches such as “porcelain veneers in [city name].”

The result? A potential patient searching for information about dental veneers finds both the informative blog article and the detailed service page. 

Having comprehensive information in both blogs and on service pages showcases the practice’s expertise and can influence the patient to schedule a consultation for veneers. This way, healthcare providers can expand their online footprint and attract more potential patients through improved search engine rankings.

2. Build Trust and Funnel Customers

High-quality content on blog posts and service pages plays a crucial role in establishing credibility and authority in the healthcare field. This trust-building process is essential in healthcare, where patients are often making important decisions about their well-being.

Content marketing in healthcare follows the concept of the marketing funnel, guiding potential patients through various stages of their decision-making process. At the top of the funnel, informative blog posts can attract individuals who are just starting to research a health concern. 

As they move down the funnel, detailed service pages provide the specific information needed to make an informed decision about choosing a healthcare provider. ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć’s Digital PR team can amplify this content to reach a wider audience, further enhancing its trust-building potential. 

By ensuring your valuable content reaches the right people at the right time, a comprehensive content strategy can help maximize its impact on potential patients.

Strategy Spotlight:

An optometry practice partners with ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć to create a comprehensive blog strategy. One of their posts is titled “3 Simple Ways to Reduce Digital Eye Strain.” 

The content team ensures the information is accurate, practical, and engaging. Alongside this, the team also develops detailed web copy for a service page highlighting the practice’s advanced dry eye treatment options.

Our digital PR team then promotes this content across various platforms, significantly boosting its visibility. A marketing professional who spends long hours staring at screens comes across the blog post during a Google search for eye strain relief. 

They try the tips in the blog, notice some improvement, and begin to trust the optometry practice’s expertise. A few weeks later, when their symptoms persist, they revisit the website. 

This time, they read the in-depth service page about the practice’s specialized dry eye treatments and decide to schedule a comprehensive eye exam. This example demonstrates how well-crafted content can guide a potential patient from initial awareness to becoming an actual patient, all while establishing trust in the eye care provider’s expertise. 

By offering valuable information upfront and then presenting specialized services, the optometry practice effectively nurtures leads through the patient acquisition funnel.

3. Increase Engagement and Social Sharing

Engaging content, particularly in the form of blog posts, encourages readers to interact with your brand and share your content with others. This increased engagement and social sharing can significantly expand your reach, bringing your practice to the attention of potential patients who might not have found you through traditional search methods.

Well-crafted service pages also contribute to this engagement by providing clear, comprehensive information about your services, making it more likely that visitors will spend time on your site and consider your practice for their healthcare needs.

Strategy Spotlight:

For instance, consider a pediatrician’s office that wants to attract more patients using a comprehensive content marketing strategy.  One of the blogs in their calendar is titled “Is Your Home Safe for Your Toddler? Take the Room-by-Room Safety Challenge!”

Our content team crafts an informative, quiz-style blog post that’s both engaging and educational, designed to captivate parents while providing valuable information. After it’s posted, the Digital PR team promotes this content across relevant platforms, specifically on social media. 

The result is widespread sharing of the blog, significantly increasing the practice’s online visibility. Parents find the content both fun and informative, eagerly sharing their results and challenging friends to see whose home is the safest.

This aspect leads to the blog gaining popularity within local parenting circles, exponentially expanding its reach. As a direct result of this engaging, shareable content, the pediatrician’s office experiences a notable boost in website visits and phone inquiries from parents seeking a new pediatrician. 

Attract Patients, Amplify Impact

Unique, high-quality content is a powerful tool for healthcare providers looking to attract more patients. By focusing on creating valuable blog posts and optimizing service pages, practices can improve their search engine rankings, build trust with potential patients, and increase engagement and social sharing.

These strategies work together to create a comprehensive online presence that guides potential patients from initial awareness to becoming loyal patients. There are numerous long-term benefits of investing in high-quality content creation across all areas of your website.

At ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć, our SEO and Digital PR teams work together to create and promote content that resonates with your target audience, helping you stand out in the competitive healthcare landscape.

Are you ready to start attracting more patients through high-quality content? Get in touch with the experts at ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć today to learn how we can help you harness the power of unique, high-quality content to attract more patients and take your practice to the next level!

Listen to Glacial’s Recent Podcast Episode All About Unique High-Quality Content

AI Overviews (previously known as Search Generative Experience or SGE) is an experimental Google Search feature that uses AI to provide a new style of search results.

SGE understands search intent and generates comprehensive, real-time answers by using sourced text, images, and video in tailored results to users the very top of the page.

If you have played with any AI chat tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Bing Chat; SGE is a similar UI.

Though still experimental, many theorize (and some fear while others hope) SGE has the potential to completely change search and SEO as we know it.

While users have seen incremental changes to search engines over the past two decades through the additions of featured snippets, local map packs, and People Also Asked results, the release and forthcoming integration of SGE into search represents a paradigm shift beyond the traditional “10 blue links.”

Does SGE Answer Medical Based Queries?

When someone searches on Google or another search engine, they always have a goal or intention behind that search. Understanding those goals can help you make specific pages on your website easier to find and rank higher.

There are four main types of search goals to know about:

• Informational – The searcher wants to learn or research something. For example, “How much does LASIK Cost?“
• Navigational – The searcher wants to find a specific brand or person. For example, “WebMD” or “Joe Smith D.O.“
• Commercial – The searcher wants to pay for a service. For example, “Chiropractor Austin TX” or “Emergency vet near me.”
• Transactional – The searcher is ready to make a purchase right away. For example, “buy contact lenses.”

Knowing these search goals helps healthcare providers figure out what kind of content to create and the expected actions of users who visit those pages. Each type plays a role in effective medical website design and SEO strategies.

For the purposes of our experiment, we are going to test medical based queries for all four types of search intent.

Informational intent

Search: “Why does my ear keep ringing?”

Search: “How much does LASIK Cost?”

Navigational intent

Search: “Dr. David Chang Ophthalmologist”

Transactional intent

Search: “Sleep apnea treatment Chicago”

^ Sept 2023

Recent updates to AI overviews have changed how SGE displays results for local service based intent searches. The image above shows results in September 2023, while the image below shows updated results as of May 2024.

Results as of May 2023.

Commercial intent

Search: “where to buy eyeglasses in Portland ME”

Search: “urologist dakota dunes south dakota”

How does SGE currently impact Medical Related Searches?

As you can see from the various experiments, SGE results related to healthcare queries will appear around all four search intents when the results can largely be given as suggestions or purely informational.

But are there any types of medical related queries Google does not want SGE to answer?

Take this cheeky search for example. If you ask Google, “can I give myself an enema?“, SGE will provide an AI answer to the question, because your intent is informational.

But if you change that query to “How to give myself an enema?” – Google SGE wants nothing to do with that and won’t even give you the option to manually generate an AI driven response. They’ll let other website handle answering that question.

Understandably so. Google does not want to be even remotely responsible for any medical injuries that could somehow be tied to their AI’s direct instructions.

So while Google may currently allow SGE to present answers for research based queries, it does not present answers for healthcare search terms that would result in SGE providing direct instructions for how to do something.

What are the Main Things We Noticed About Medical SGE Queries?

• As of September 2023, SGE was not displaying ads in medical SGE queries.
  • You’d expect ads to show for Navigational, Commercial, and maybe Transactional related search intent keywords at some point soon. Ads are where Google makes it’s money, and generating answers with an LLM is not cheap.
• Each keyword or question returned a side panel of three websites that acted as a carousel you could scroll sideways on to see more.
  • The first three listed were not necessarily the first three blue links in the organic results. Google is making an effort with SGE to surface hidden gems of websites and make sure it’s answer encompasses a variety of perspectives and angles to the primary question.
• Every answer except the Navigational attempt returned a bullet point list along with the output.
• Google always prompted you at the bottom with multiple follow up question ideas in the form of buttons to click on and ask. Kind of like “People Also Asked” or “Related Searches” sections in the traditional organic results page.
• The commercial intent query results more closely mirrored the Google Map Pack results. Hinting that Local SEO and managing reviews, reputation and citations will continue to be more important.

How can Medical Websites Prepare for Search Generative Experience in the Future?

1. Invest in a holistic SEO approach. That includes on-page and technical optimizations for your website, as well as link building and Local SEO components such as GMB profile management, review generation, accurate citations across the web and reputation management.
2. Provide content on your website that addresses all four of the different search intents. Understand that some content is purely there for educational purposes and will see no conversions driven from it, while other page types will be your patient lead generators.
3. Assume SGE will only become more popular. As younger generations come online, people become used to what they first encounter and for many, SGE will be the first search experience they know and seem like the standard way to interact with search.

It’s also crucial to have a visually appealing web design that is user-friendly and informative. Keep reading to learn twelve key web design elements your bariatric website should have to stand out from the competition and attract more clients!

1. Clean Navigational Menu and Site Structure

When designing a website for your bariatric practice, having a clean and organized navigational menu and site structure is crucial. According to recent studies,  adults state that ease of access is important when interacting with their healthcare provider. 

Having an organized and user-friendly website can help increase patient satisfaction. It also makes it easy for patients to find the information they need and ensures that search engines can easily crawl your website and index your pages.

This can improve your search engine rankings and help potential patients easily find your website. Consider using drop-down menus or sub-menus to organize your content into categories, making it easy for patients to find what they’re looking for.

2. Symptom Checkers

Symptom checkers are a valuable tool, allowing potential patients to quickly and easily determine whether their symptoms may indicate a certain health condition. When designing a bariatric website, including a symptom checker can provide additional patient support.

Including a symptom checker on your bariatric website can provide peace of mind for patients and help them make informed decisions about their health. By providing a user-friendly and accurate tool, you can enhance the patient experience and build trust with your audience.

3. BMI Calculator

Including a BMI calculator on your bariatric website can help patients quickly and easily determine their BMI and understand their weight status. BMI calculators can be easily integrated into your website. 

There are several different options to choose from, including basic calculators that require only height and weight inputs and more advanced calculators that consider additional factors such as age, gender, and body composition. By offering a reliable and easy-to-use tool, you can also position your practice as a trusted resource for bariatric health information and support.

4. Forms With SMS Texting Opti-In

Forms with SMS texting opt-in can be a powerful way to connect with further possible bariatric patients and provide ongoing support and guidance throughout their weight loss journey. By offering patients the option to opt-in to text message updates, you can keep them engaged and motivated while providing helpful reminders and tips.

5. Cost and Financing Information

“How much does bariatric surgery cost?” is one of the most common search terms for those exploring weight loss surgery options. To help these patients make informed decisions, practices must provide clear information and be transparent about the costs involved.

Including a section on your bariatric website that outlines the costs of surgery, as well as financing options and insurance coverage, can help patients plan and budget for the procedure. When designing this section, consider including detailed information on the following:

• The costs of bariatric surgery, including any preoperative testing and post-operative care
• Financing options, such as payment plans or medical financing companies
• Insurance coverage, including which procedures are covered and any out-of-pocket expenses
• Accepted insurance plans, if applicable

Being transparent about costs will create trust between your practice and potential patients while also creating a resourceful guide for those considering bariatric surgery.

6. Self Evaluation Tests

Self-tests can be a valuable resource for those considering weight loss surgery. These tests can help patients determine if they are a good candidate for a specific bariatric procedure and can encourage them to schedule an appointment at your practice.

When designing self-evaluation tests for your bariatric website, consider including tests for any procedures your practice offers. You may include self-evaluation tests for procedures like:

• Gastric-sleeve
• Gastric-bypass
• Gastric-band
• Revisional gastric surgery
• Gastric balloon

The self-evaluation tests for these procedures could evaluate the patient’s previous weight loss surgery, BMI, dietary habits, and medical history to determine if they are a good candidate for revisional surgery. These tests can also help increase patient leads.

7. Pillar Pages for Every Service

Pillar pages are a great way to organize content on your bariatric website and provide in-depth information about specific procedures. When creating pillar pages for your services, consider including the following elements:

What the Procedure Is

Provide a clear and concise explanation of the procedure, including the expected outcomes and potential risks.

Who is a Likely Candidate

Describe the characteristics of patients who are good candidates for the procedure, including BMI, medical history, and lifestyle habits.

Links to Doctor Pages Who Perform Related Procedures

Include links to the profiles of the healthcare providers who perform the procedure and information on related procedures offered.

By creating pillar pages for every service, your bariatric website can provide detailed information on each procedure, making it easier for patients to understand their options. 

8. Trust Signals

Trust signals are an essential element of any healthcare website, as they can help build trust with potential patients and demonstrate your practice’s commitment to providing high-quality care. Displaying reviews on your website and Google My Business (GMB) profile can help build trust with potential patients. 

Consider including a feed of recent reviews on your homepage and encouraging satisfied patients to leave reviews on your GMB profile. Including testimonials from actual patients can also be a powerful way to build trust with potential patients. 

Also, consider featuring testimonials from patients who have undergone different procedures, and make sure to include the testimonial date to demonstrate recency.

9. Up to Date Location and Provider Information

Providing up-to-date location and provider information is essential for a successful bariatric practice’s website. Patients searching for weight loss surgery options want to know where your practice is located, who the providers are, and what services you offer.

To ensure your website meets these needs, include detailed information about your location, providers, and services. Include detailed provider profiles for your bariatric surgeons, highlighting their education, experience, and specialties. 

This will give potential patients a better understanding of your practice’s expertise and experience and help patients understand what to expect when choosing your practice for their weight loss surgery needs.

10. Subscription to Newsletter 

One of the most effective ways to build a relationship with potential bariatric patients is through a newsletter. A newsletter allows you to stay in touch with subscribers regularly, providing them with helpful information, updates about your practice, and special offers.

Once you’ve built your subscriber list, send regular newsletters with valuable information about weight loss surgery, healthy lifestyle habits, and updates about your practice. Remember, always work on building your email list by actively promoting your newsletter on your website, social media channels, and other marketing channels. 

11. Engagement With Social Media

Social media is an essential tool for engaging with potential bariatric patients and building brand awareness for your practice. By creating a strong social media presence, you can reach a wider audience, build trust with potential patients, and ultimately drive more business to your practice.

In addition to posting updates, engage with your audience by responding to comments, answering questions, and sharing user-generated content. This will help build trust and establish your practice as a knowledgeable and approachable resource for potential patients.

12. Informative Blogs 

Maintaining an active blog on your bariatric practice’s website effectively provides valuable information to potential patients and establishes your practice as a trusted resource. Regularly publishing informative and educational blog posts can attract more visitors to your website, engage with potential patients, and ultimately drive more business to your practice.

According to recent studies,  who leverage blogging as a marketing strategy say it’s effective. When creating blog content, focus on topics relevant to your target audience and address common questions and concerns related to bariatric surgery. 

An informative blog can also help with search engine optimization (SEO), which is the process of optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages. 

Putting All 12 Design Elements Together

Adding these 12 essential web design elements for bariatric websites to your site can create an engaging and user-friendly web experience that’ll attract new patients, keep your current ones, and help you stand out from the competition. Contact ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć to take your bariatric digital marketing to the next level!

1. Keyword Research

The first step in any SEO campaign is to conduct thorough keyword research. This involves identifying the keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for and incorporating them into your website’s content and metadata. For medical practices, some of the most important keywords include the name of your practice, the services you offer, and the location of your practice.

2. Metadata Optimization

Once you’ve identified your target keywords, it’s time to optimize your website’s on-page elements. This includes the meta tags (title, description, and header tags), schema, the semantic content structure, and the URLs of your pages. Make sure to include your target keywords in these elements in a natural and organic way.

3. Content Creation

Creating high-quality, relevant content is one of the most important aspects of medical SEO. By providing valuable information to your target audience, you’ll not only improve your search rankings but also establish your practice as a trusted authority in your field. Some tips for creating great content include:

• Utilizing subheadings, tables, and lists to make your content easy to read.
• Including images and videos to break up text and make your content more visually appealing and interactive.
• Using internal and external links to guide users to complementary articles across your website, and help crawlers find valuable content for displaying in results pages.
• Limit the use of AI content creation tools. The content generated may be factually incorrect, and search engines have been known to punish purely AI generated content for SEO purposes.

4. Technical SEO

In addition to on-page optimization and content creation, it’s also important to address any technical issues on your website that could be hindering your search rankings. This includes things like broken links, slow load times, lost pages, incorrect metadata, and mobile responsiveness. By fixing these issues, you’ll improve the user experience for your visitors and most importantly, make it easier for search engine crawlers to navigate and index your site.

Using On-Page SEO for Medical Websites

SEO is an ongoing process that requires careful planning, execution and monitoring. Search engines are continually updating their algorithms and your competitors are constantly updating their websites as well. By understanding these four buckets of on-page SEO, you’ll be well on your way to improving your search rankings and reaching more potential patients. Remember that SEO is a long term game. The longer you invest in your website’s SEO, the more you’ll reap the benefits in terms of traffic and lead to patient conversions.

However, many marketers are misusing the term artificial intelligence (AI) and confusing it for what are in truth machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) technologies¹. 

There are essentially two categories of artificial intelligence and machine learning within search engine optimization (SEO). The first is the search engines themselves and how they incorporate AI/ML into their algorithms, and the second is the application of AI/ML models into SEO-focused tools. 

These are automation tools that are excellent at collecting, extracting, and analyzing large amounts of data. Such tasks are extremely useful for SEO and can be leveraged to improve the search engine rankings of your website.

What Is AI, And How Is It Being Used For Medical SEO?

Google and other search engines are becoming . Over the past decade, algorithm updates have moved beyond just links and keywords to utilizing AI and ML to evaluate the authority (E-A-T), context, meaning, and relationships among the words on a page and across a website. 

The more recent of  incorporate advanced Natural Language Processing² (NLP) that enables algorithms to recognize keywords and actually understand the content on a page. 

These NLP models focus on Entities. An Entity is essentially a precisely definable thing â€“ such as a person, organization, locations, medical codes, dates, currencies, etc. The NLP models recognize Entities and understand how all topics related to an Entity are correlated to each other and even other Entities.

While tactics such as backlinks and technical SEO still matter, it’s more important now than ever to have high-quality, relevant, factual content that satisfies a user’s intent, and not content merely stuffed with keywords and fluff.

How Can AI Be Used To Improve Search Rankings And Organic Traffic?

Various tools are emerging that incorporate AL/ML data models to aid in SEO-based tasks. 

Some attempt to reverse engineer search engines or competitors to uncover potential opportunities. Others utilize data models for finding keywords and  (GPT-3). And there is also a class of tools that help writers and SEO professionals analyze their content through an NLP lens.

These tools identify and extract Entities³, helping users gain insights into how a semantic search engine (AI) might understand the content. Using these tools helps teams create or refine content optimized around their target Entities and build out topical content clusters for related topics – helping build more meaning and overall valuable depth into content on pages.

Which Specific Aspects of Medical SEO Can be Improved with the Help of AI Technology?

Over the past few years, Glacial has tested nearly every SEO tool on the market, looking for software that can benefit our clients and keep them at the top of the search results. 

We’ve even gone a step further and built our own custom internal machine learning tools to utilize for our clients. 

So far, these are the different functions we’ve found AI/ML assisted technology to be helpful when implementing an SEO strategy:

• Keyword research
• Competitive analysis
• Content analysis
• Sentiment analysis
• Internal/external linking opportunities
• Search algorithm analysis and reverse engineering

What Are Potential Risks To Using AI In Medical SEO Campaigns?

The most significant risks with utilizing AI tools in your SEO and content strategies come from over-relying on computer-generated content and taking every recommendation at face value. Just because the software program said it does not mean it’s right.

Incorrect AI-Generated Medical Content

The medical content on your website cannot be wrong. Your patients and other internet users are relying on the information on your website to be 100% factually correct. Not only to build their trust but to genuinely become more informed about medical conditions and potential treatment options for their healthcare needs. 

If you rely on computer-generated content, you run the grave risk of producing factually incorrect medical information. Foremost this puts patients in danger, and with search engines increasing their weight of authoritative and trustworthy content, you risk patients and search engines determining your website is unworthy of their attention. 

Incorrect AI-Based Recommendations

SEO tools that utilize “AI” are great for gathering and synthesizing large amounts of data and increasing the efficiency of these tasks. Yet, AI tools have not figured out nuance and have not figured out how to perfectly replicate Google’s search engine ranking algorithm. 

Google claims there are over 200 individual ranking factors, and algorithm updates are now rolled out multiple times a year. 

So while AI recommendations may genuinely be helpful and try to reflect some of the known ranking factors, they are generally based on analyzing a competitor’s page compared to a page on your website and running the pages through an extensive checklist, highlighting the differences between them.

Some surfaced items may be valid issues to address. Still, it assumes SEO comes down to a known checklist and lacks an understanding of experimentation, nuance, and advanced tactics that come with an SEO specialist working on your site. 

Thinking you can just run your site through an AI-powered site checker and come out with the winning playbook is a recipe for page two results.

Are You Interested In Utilizing AI With Your Medical Marketing?

Glacial is always at the forefront of technological advancements in the medical marketing and web development industries. It’s one of the most significant competitive advantages for our clients.

If you’re interested in learning more about this emerging technology or implementing it for your benefit, contact Glacial today.

**UPDATE: 4/23/21 Google has moved the release date of Core Web Vitals back to the middle of June. This gives you more time to audit your website to ensure that you are up to date and your rankings will not be hurt. Take advantage of Google’s delay and be ahead of this critical algorithm update.**

Have you heard that there’s a critical Google update coming that could hurt your rankings? On the heels of Google officially completing its shift to a mobile-only ranking and indexing system, starting in June of 2021 Google’s search algorithm will begin incorporating the speed of your website as a ranking signal for organic search results. This algorithm update is referred to as Core Web Vitals.

To understand potential impacts and to find out if your site is prepared for these algorithm updates, keep reading to learn more about what this means!

Request a Free Web Vitals Site Audit

What are Core Web Vitals?

Historically, a fast website was nice to have, but you didn’t need to have one. While you’ve long heard the merits of speed as related to e-commerce conversions and sales, you were never punished by a platform if your site was slow.

This is changing. The landscape continues to become more competitive, web technologies evolve, and the use of mobile continues to grow. Google is continuing to take the performance and usability of your website into account when determining organic positioning.

With the incorporation of Core Web Vitals, web usability factors such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads will now be part of page experience in the Google search ranking algorithm.

The three main “Vitals” Google has come up with to represent these web usability and performance indicators are LCP, FID, and CLS. 

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The LCP vital is how long it takes the largest element to fully load in the viewport (screen). This is a proxy for how long it takes the website to load important assets on a page. 

The largest element typically ends up being an image or video. It can usually be picked out by a big empty space on a screen during page load.

From Google:

is a Core Web Vitals metric and measures when the largest content element in the viewport becomes visible. It can be used to determine when the main content of the page has finished rendering on the screen.

How can you improve your LCP scores?

• Utilize a high-quality web host
• Limit third-party scripts
• Move large media assets to a CDN (content delivery network)
• Compress and lazy load media elements
• Minify files
• Page caching

First Input Delay (FID)

The FID vital is how long it takes to be able to interact with elements on the page. This is a score for the time when a user first interacts with the page while it’s loading (clicks a form field while the page is loading), to the time when the browser is able to respond to that interaction. 

Interaction examples include actions such as clicking a button, selecting a form field, or opening an accordion module on mobile during the page load.

From Google:

the time from when a user first interacts with a page (like when they click a link, tap on a button, or use a custom, JavaScript-powered control) to the time when the browser is actually able to begin processing event handlers in response to that interaction.

How can you improve your FID scores?

• Minify and/or defer scripts
• Limit the number of third-party scripts
• Page caching
• Limit the number of social media embeds on a page

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

The CLS vital is the movement of elements from their start position, during loading. Have you ever been about to click on a button or link as the page is loading and right before you tap the screen, it jumps down a few pixels and you miss? 

That’s a content layout shift. If elements on your page move around as the web page loads, that will lead to a high CLS score.

From Google:

of all individual layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifespan of the page.

A layout shift occurs any time a visible element changes its position from one rendered frame to the next.

How can you improve CLS scores?

• Set height and width dimensions on media and embedded elements
• Avoid, or accommodate for dynamically injected content
• Adjust font use and loading priorities
• Remove excessive animations

Are Core Web Vitals the only thing that matters for organic search rankings?

No. Web vitals are not becoming the end all be all for search rankings. They are the latest additions to an already complex and multifaceted ranking system. 

The Three C’s: Code, Content, and Connectivity are still the foundation of SEO.  

, Web Vitals will join the hundreds of other signals that they consider when generating Search results:

“Once the changes mentioned in our roadmap are rolled out, web vitals will join the hundreds of signals that Google considers when generating Search results.

While overall page experience is important, Google still seeks to rank pages with the best information overall, even if the page experience is subpar. Great page experience doesn’t override having great page content. However, in cases where there are many pages that may be similar in relevance, page experience can be much more important for visibility in Search.”

Core Web Vitals are simply the newest pieces of page experience in Google’s algorithm. This includes factors like security (https), mobile-friendliness, and intrusive interstitial guidelines (pop-ups). 

What are good Core Web Vital scores?

Google has provided this easy-to-understand visual guideline. You can use this to have a better understanding of your Core Web Vital scores.

Why aren’t all my metrics green?

There could be a number of reasons why Core Web Vital scores may not be the level you hope. Be aware of potential nuances, implications, and trade-offs with current website designs or tools utilized.

For example, in the world of marketing, one of the unfortunate trade-offs is the required use of third-party scripts for things like analytics, retargeting, and heat mapping. While these tools give marketers advanced insights and advertising abilities, these third-party scripts need the loading of large amounts of render-blocking, un-cached code onto a website. 

Depending on the number of third-party tools used, there may be cases where some metrics are a mix of green and yellow. Depending on the vendor and the quality of their software, some may be even potentially worse.

Beyond that, for each of the three vitals, there are many subfactors that collectively can influence the individual scoring of different metrics. It will be important to work with your medical web design and SEO partners to find the best solutions available. 

Field Data is the average scores of your site that Google has collected over the past 28 days. Lab Data is the scores from the test you just ran.

How do I test my site?

For Core Web Vitals specifically, we suggest using or contacting Glacial for your scores. We’ve been preparing for this rollout since it was announced last year and are ready to help all our clients be in the best possible position come June.

If you have not had any search engine optimization work done on your site within the last few months, consider having Glacial conduct a free website audit, or use our custom in-house SEO audit tool. This will give you a preliminary idea of where your website stands in regards to the upcoming Google algorithm update.  

Don’t know where to start on your website when it comes to the new Google update? Contact ĆŢÓŃĆĆ˝â°ć if you’re looking for a hand with your practice’s digital marketing needs!