2297: Why Your Google Business Profile Is Costing You Patients

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And it all starts with knowing your practice's value. A comprehensive practice valuation is the critical first step. Whether you're expanding your footprint, optimizing your financials, or planning what's next in your career. To get your copy, just email info at professionaltransition.com and ask for the three F's ebook. That's info at professionaltransition.com. Now's the time to take your practice to the next level with the right plan in place. Now introducing your host, Dr. Mark Costas. Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Dentalpreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mark Costas. What is up, my friends? I'm sorry if I sound like I have a cold. It's not a cold. I have some pretty bad allergies. I mean, when you walk around outside here in Prescott, Arizona right now in the springtime, you can actually see the air. There's pollen floating around everywhere. So I'm having a little bit of an allergy attack this morning. But that never stopped me. I'm really, really excited to welcome our guest today. He's a new friend, but he is an expert in a lot of different areas when it comes to local SEO. Let me introduce to you guys, Darren Shah. He's the founder of WhiteSpark, a leading provider of software and services for local SEO since 2005. He's the force behind local search rankings, factor survey, the industry's most cited resource and trusted educator with over 37,000 newsletter readers, 8,900 YouTube subscribers, and 2,000 plus course signups. For 15 plus years, Darren has shared his insights on stages around the world and in hundreds of podcasts and webinars helping businesses and marketers master local search. Welcome to the podcast, Darren. How are you doing today, my friend? Darren Shah Thanks so much for having me. I'm doing great. Doing good today. Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. All right, you're an old pro. You've done tons and tons of podcasts and you've probably heard these very basic kind of questions. I'm going to start with them just because I want our audience to have some context on kind of your origin story, where you came from, how you got into local search in the first place, and then some other more specific questions to dentistry and more specific to the interests of our listeners. So how about origin story first? How'd you get into this in the first place, my friend? Darren Shah Yeah. So I started as a freelance web developer in, well, in the late 90s, I was building websites while I was in university taking computing science. And then once you start building websites for small businesses, you know, right around early 2000s, people were like, hey, what's this Google thing? How do I rank in Google? You made us a website, but I want our website to show up in Google. So then I started getting really interested in that and offering it as an additional service, learning everything I could about search engine optimization. And it just grew from there. In 2010, we built our first SaaS software for local search. This is called the Local Citation Finder, still going strong today. So that helps you identify places to list your business. We built a local rank tracking software. We have a software for managing reviews. We have services where we do the whole SEO agency side of things. We'll do everything for you. We have a service for building listings online. So it's just kind of evolved from there. But yeah, the origin was just making websites for small businesses. That is awesome. Including dentists. Yeah, that's awesome. Including dentists. So I guess when you're looking at local search, what would fall under the umbrella of local search would be like mom and pop services, like, you know, the trades, you know, plumbers and handymen, chiropractors, dentists, those sorts of mom and pop type businesses. Uh, what is kind of, what are some of the things that people are doing right and wrong when it comes to trying to optimize their local search? And a lot, a lot of times, I mean, I know a lot of people that probably wouldn't even understand or have ever heard of the term local search. Sure. Well, okay. So local search is a term that, that means kind of ranking in Google's local results. So that is if someone goes and they type in something like dentists, Phoenix, you're going to get what's called the local pack. And in the local pack, you'll see three businesses plus a map. Then if you click more businesses, you're going to go to the expanded local search. So a local search is all about optimizing for that. And it's now kind of expanding because it's been Google has been the only player in town for a long time. But now people are starting to think like, well, how do I rank in the local results when I type in, you know, help me find a dentist in Phoenix and chat GPT. So local search is expanding to other platforms. Bing has always been around, but it's been such a small player. But local search refers to getting your business visibility in a local search engine. So it's right. It's Google for sure. Bing a little bit. Chat GPT is up and coming. Other AI tools are up and coming. And so just that's what local search stands for. Got it. Got it. Okay. So what are some of the, I mean, I know you've talked through this maybe thousands of times at this point and you kind of practice it every single day for your clients, but what are some of the things that will optimize our local search results? Yeah, sure. So there's traditional SEO, which is really focused on your website. So, you know, content on your website, putting your keywords in the right place, and then building links to your website. That's traditional SEO. Local SEO is that plus three other things. And the other three things are optimizing your Google business profile itself. There's a lot of areas to work on in your Google business profile. Review strategy, getting reviews on your Google business profile, getting reviews on other sites. That is super key. And then the other factor is citation. So online mentions of your name, address, and phone number on the web. So those are the sort of main areas of optimization. These are the areas that you have to focus on and, you know, we could kind of go down a rabbit hole of each one. We should probably talk about the Google business profile first, though. Darren, this is very, very clear. I love the way you're breaking this down. It's like three things in addition to, you know, traditional SEO. This is, we're not all over the place. We're very kind of pointed. And this is how dentists think. We're very analytic. We're very kind of one thing after the other. So this is scratching the itch for a lot of people that have kind of never dug into this level. So yeah, let's do that. Let's talk about your kind of business profile first. Sure. Yeah. So I think you, you hinted at this earlier. You asked the question. I didn't answer it. What is one of the mistakes? What are the things people are not doing that they should be doing? Yeah. And your Google business profile is such a perfect example of this because a lot of dental practices. Oh yeah. I got a Google business profile. I created it in 2018 when I opened my practice and I haven't touched it since this is the ultimate mistake. It's like, what are you doing? Yeah. So there's so much to do on the Google business profile. And maybe if you go back enough years, it was pretty basic. You just put in your name, address, phone number. I don't know. Yeah. This is my phone number. You add a little description and that's all you could do. But Google has been evolving this platform for years. It is so robust now. So you should be adding photos weekly, new photos, get new photos in your practice all the time, upload them to your Google business profile. You should be optimizing your categories. A lot of businesses just put in one category, dental clinic, and they haven't added additional categories. There's more categories like if you do orthodontics, if you do, I don't know. You got to check the categories in the dental industry and just look if there are additional categories. It's a huge ranking factor getting the primary category to be the one that matches with what you want to rank for first. There's actually dentist and there's dental clinic. And so I actually think it's a mistake to use dental clinic because a lot of people searching Google, they take dentist. They take dentist, Phoenix. Damn. I love Phoenix. I don't know why I keep saying that. But dentist, city name. So if your primary category is dental clinic, change it to dentist. That's an optimization right there. And add any additional categories. There's a whole section for services. Do you offer teeth whitening? Yeah. Do you do crowns? Do you do, you know, retainers? All the different things that you do in your dental practice should be a service with a description. And then another tip is to match those with your website. So most dentists have thought about their website. They've gone to their website. They have a section for services or practice areas. And then under that, they list each one. And ideally, if you're smart, you have a page for every single one of those. Make sure that whatever you have a page for on your website, you also have in your services section of your Google business profile. And so many dentists don't even know that this exists. That's the thing. They set their Google business profile years ago and they forgot about it. So the services is a huge optimization opportunity. There's a section on your Google business profile for questions and answers. So I always recommend that you precede that. You can ask your own questions and answer them right on the profile. So this is like a conversion signal. It doesn't really help you rank like stuffing it with keywords. That's not necessary. But it can compel people to book an appointment with your clinic versus someone else. If you have this really prominent Q&A section, which is my favorite question to ask is. Why are you the best dentist in the city? And you can answer that question. So it's actually this little place on your Google business profile that you can provide this conversion rate optimization to compel people to call you. Tell me about your cleaning service. Well, you can describe it. Why are you great at it? It's like you have all of these Q&A that you can actually add to your profile. Most websites have an FAQ section and most businesses have not transferred that over to the Q&A section of their Google business profile. Also left empty. So that's another one. And then we should talk about reviews, but I can take a breath and let you ask me some more questions. No, that's really, really good. That's gold. I would never have thought to be adding photos weekly and to making sure that all your categories are checked off. And, you know, general dentistry in particular, it could range anything from what we call bread and butter dentistry, Darren, which is like basically cleanings, hygiene services, preventative surgeries, crown and bridge, which is very, very basic fillings and maybe basic extractions or whatever. And then it could run the gamut to IV sedation and, you know, all on X surgery, implant placement, all of those different things, orthodontics, endodontics, all of those things. So I can see how that would be very, very important. And I guarantee that people that are listening to this have under optimized their Google business page. Good stuff. Very, very good. Okay. So I did take notes. I'm paying attention. So the next thing that you mentioned is review strategy. I think we all kind of, if we do anything, if we, if we go to an auto repair shop or we're going to our favorite restaurant or the person that does, you know, our girlfriend's lashes everybody is wrangling to make sure that you are leaving a five-star review for them or the best businesses are doing that anyway. I do know that a lot of, you know, dental practices underutilize this strategy first and foremost, like how important is it? Like, does this give you a significant amount of more visibility? If you have more, that's the first thing I'm going to ask with. And then let's go into your strategy. And then I'm going to also ask a follow-up question, which is what to do when you get a one-star review. And do you actually say anything to the people that leave you a nice review as well? So lots of things to talk about as far as review strategy. Okay. Those are amazing questions. I'm so glad you've asked them. So let me dispel a myth right now. It's the myth of number of reviews. This is what people think. They think that the number of reviews is the, the be all and end all having, you got 2000 reviews, your competitors have 500, you're going to win. And there is some truth to that. Number of reviews matter quite a bit. But the thing that I think most people have not become aware of yet is the recency of reviews. Review recency and review frequency is a signal that over the last year or two, we have really seen Google crank the dial on. And I see it all the time with our clients. You have a client that has 2000 reviews, but they haven't got a new one in three months. You'll, you'll see them drop off. They're not getting new reviews. You'll see them slow down. They no longer rank. And then we're like, hey, Joe, you got to get some new reviews. Joe's like, oh yeah, sorry. And then they send out the newsletter to their mailing list. They get the reviews coming in and it's magic. Boom, right back up to the top. And so review recency is one that a lot of people are not aware of, of how important it is. So having lots of reviews, yes, it's important. It's valuable. You want to make sure you always have lots of reviews. But if you haven't got, if you're not getting them on a regular basis, that's a huge miss. You must be having a regular ongoing review strategy. You don't just blast out a review request every six months to your mailing list. You've got to have them coming in on a regular basis. If you want to hold your rankings, Google has really dialed in this factor. And so that's, that's my first really big review tip. Recency. I love it. Okay. Yep. And then with regards to, you got two other ones. What do you do when you get a negative review? That was one of them. And do you actually comment on the five-star people? And how to reply to reviews. And how to reply just in general to those two kind of extremes. Yeah. So review replies, I would say are really critical and not from a ranking perspective. They are from a conversion perspective. So who you're writing that reply for, whether it's negative or positive, is for all the viewers of your Google business profile. Someone's looking for a dentist. They run the search. They're looking at different businesses. They're evaluating the different dental practices in their location. And if they see that there's this business, they've got lots of reviews and people seem to say good things, but it's just crickets. They're never replying. It's not a great sign. And then they look at the next one and the next ones, you can see these really genuine replies. It is your time to shine as the business owner to really show that you care about your patients. You are replying. Someone took the time to write a really nice review about you and you just don't reply. Like replying on your profile is one really valuable for the person who wrote it. When they get a reply, Google will send them an email saying the business replied to you. That is a new interaction with that patient that shows them that you care and that you appreciate that they left that review. So that's the first thing. The other thing is like everyone reading your reviews, when they see that, they're like, look how nice this business is. They really care about their patients. They're really, you know, you mentioned like, oh, I hope your dog is feeling better in the review reply. Like you personalize it, try to make it demonstrate that personal connection you have with your patients. I think that's a huge thing. Reviews themselves will, a review replies themselves will not impact ranking. So you'll hear these myths like, oh, you got to stuff keywords into your reply when you reply. Don't do that. It's a total waste. You're doing review replies for conversions. So now, what do you do if you get a negative review? Yeah. Negative reviews happen all the time. Every business has to deal with a negative review. The best approach is to take the conversation out of the public sphere. You want to say something along the lines of I'm really sorry that you had this experience. This is not the standard that we hold ourselves to. We really care. And we would love to talk to you and see if we can make this right. And then you can put like the manager's email or the manager's phone number right into the review reply. Be like, please give me a call. We want to try and see if we can get this sorted out. And the reality is, so that looks good. Someone is reading your reply. You're not getting defensive in the reply. You're not saying like, well, actually, it's your insurance company. It wasn't my fault. Whatever they're complaining about, right? So don't get into it in the reply. Just say we want to try and help you and sort this out because we really care. And then make it clear that they can contact you. So that looks good for anyone reading it. But also, so many times when clients of ours take that strategy, they turn that one star into a five star because that is a customer service experience. You want to go above and beyond. You want to try and contact that person and be like, we really tried to sort this thing out with your insurance. We're going to try again. Like you're just demonstrating how much you care and going that extra mile. Often, at the end of that interaction, whatever you've tried to do to make it right with that patient, they usually flip. They flip to like, wow, thanks so much. I understand the situation much better now. I really appreciate all that you've done. And at that point, you could ask, be like, well, if you feel like we've really handled this situation, we'd appreciate it if you edit or update your review. And nine times out of ten, they will if you've handled it well. So but I'll give you one more thing about negative reviews. Sometimes it's a good thing because a five star rating looks suspicious. So many studies have shown this that when they're analyzing the results, if they see a five star, a lot of people in their in their mindset, they're like, well, I don't really believe it. I think they're getting fake reviews. No one has 600 five star reviews. And so it's actually kind of nice to bring your rating down to 4.9 because it just is more believable. That's all I got to say about reviews. That's funny because that was my next question is a 4.7 or 4.8 if you are actually engaging with the people that wrote negative reviews better than a 5.0. So you answer that question. I think that a lot of times people just want to be acknowledged. They want the opportunity to say something about poor service, but they want to be acknowledged. They want to know that you care enough to actually get to the bottom of their poor service or whatever their gripe is. So I couldn't agree more as far as that goes. OK, number three that you mentioned was citations. I'd never heard this term before when it comes to reviews. So let's dig into this one, Darren. OK, so citation is a mention of your name, address and phone number somewhere on the Internet. And so it's different from links. A link is a link from one website to your website. Those benefit your traditional organic SEO, the blue links, and they will help you rank in the local pack as well. OK, OK. Citations are different because they don't actually include a link. They don't have to include a link. It's like Google recognizes that this business will call it Smile Zone Dallas. Smile Zone Dallas has been mentioned on Yellow Pages, Yelp, Manta, Better Business Bureau, Facebook. So those are citations. So it's a it's a mention of your name, address and phone number somewhere on the web. And so I would call this a pretty small ranking factor. It's minor. It's minor in Google, but I actually think it's pretty big in ChatGPT. So that's a separate issue. We can talk about how do you optimize for ChatGPT a bit later. And the citations are actually playing a bigger role than they than they do in Google. Interesting. But I'll give you my basic strategy for citations. You should have your name, address and phone number and website URL correct on the most important sites, usually like 10 of them. They'd be your industry specific sites. They'd be Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Facebook, Better Business Bureau, LinkedIn. You want to make sure that those core sort of really prominent sites have your correct name, address and phone number. And then you should be listed on roughly 50-ish other sites that are prominent-ish in your industry. So there's a lot of these smaller sites like Manta or SuperPages or CitySearch. These are smaller directories. They provide a very small kind of boost, but it's good to get listed on them. And so we have a citation service at Whitespark. We'll just get you built out on the main sites and then it's once and done. You don't have to worry about it anymore. But it's a small thing, but it does play a role in local search altogether. Okay, cool. I cannot wait to dig into chat because anecdotally, I don't use Google that much anymore. I go straight to ChatGPT. I just love the way that it interacts with me as opposed to just kind of the coldness of Google and like the lack of specificity when I'm trying to search for something. But I'm going to put that aside for a second and just kind of ask you just a general question about all of this stuff. These are great, great strategies. And I can only speak for dentists because you work with other industries as well. A dentist is like, all right, Darren, you don't understand. Like I'm doing surgery all day long and I have an office manager and I have 19 employees and I'm trying to make sure that my associate dentists are giving the best clinical care. I'm trying to make sure that the patient experience is a 10 out of 10. I'm also trying to manage my marketing that's going out the door. Now you're talking about all this stuff as far as local search. You're adding more things to my checklist every single day. I'm overwhelmed already. Would you recommend that somebody keep this internal and have somebody that's in charge of it within their dental office? And if that is your recommendation or going with an agency, if that is your recommendation, how do we keep them accountable? Is there some sort of checklist and what are we looking at to make sure that they're not letting things slip and just saying that they're doing all the things that you recommend? Okay. Great questions. I would say if you have the in-house manpower to manage it yourself, and a lot of clinics would, you've got like a manager. The trouble is, is that oftentimes your manager is also has no time, right? They're like, you can't add this to my plate. I'm already fully busy, right? So that's where an agency will come in. If you have a front end staff that has capacity, it is nice to keep it in-house. Have that check in. You're meeting with these people every day. You can, you can hear about things are going and there's amazing resources out there where it's not rocket science, where like your front end staff can learn how to do all this stuff. I have an excellent YouTube channel where I talk about all of these things. So everything I'm saying here, I say it on my YouTube channel. You could follow that. I have an email course. It's a free email course that anyone could sign up for and they would learn everything that I know. And so you could give that to your manager and say, hey, Darren Shaw at WhiteSpark has a free email course where he'll teach you basically everything he knows. So that's pretty good. If you don't have the resources to do it yourself, yes, an agency is great. There's a massive range of pricing and service things that they do for you. How do you keep them in check? How do you know that they're doing stuff? At our agency, we have a mandate to message you every single week, tell you what's happening, what we're doing, what we're working on. We have a monthly report that goes out. This measures your metrics, how many reviews you're getting, how your website is performing, how your Google business profile is performing. So reporting on the metrics. What are the metrics on your Google business profile? There's a whole section for insights and that's like actions. This is our number one thing. It's like we're trying to get more action. So that's more driving directions. It's more phone calls. It's more website visits. Those are the main metrics we're looking for. So if you have hired an SEO agency, you're not hearing from them regularly about what they're up to and they're not giving you a monthly report with all of this data. And they're not suggesting like with their monthly report that they'll get on a call with you and kind of walk you through it. The trouble with dentists, we have a lot of dental clients, is that they don't even have time to get on a call with you. They're like, please just do the work and show me some sense that you're doing it, that I can just trust that it's happening and show me movement. I want to see up and to the right, right? And so that's, we know that everyone's busy. And so that's what we try to do on the agency side. I like it. I like it. So tell me a little bit more about WhiteSpark and what, you know, software as a service is something that I think most people are familiar with, as far as a segment of the type of business and deliverable. But how do you guys have, how do you utilize SaaS or that structure for the type of work that you do? Yeah, it's interesting. Actually, we are, we have software as a service. It's mostly used by agencies. They use our rank tracking software. They use our Google business profile management software. They will use our listing software, our review software, and they do that. They use our software to support their client work. On the services side, we still use all the same software, but the software doesn't really do it for you. You need humans to actually execute it. The software just gives you... suggestions and advice and data and information so that you can execute on it. And so on the services side, then you have to do it all yourself. I don't know if I answered your question. No, no, that was a totally appropriate answer. OK, so I put it aside long enough, and this is the main reason that I wanted to talk to you because of your expertise on chat and AI. It is changing local businesses. It really has kind of infiltrated into dentistry in a significant way. AI has kind of in the imaging software, they're able to find pathology now for us that the human eye and even oftentimes even radiologists don't see. So that's really cool as far as that goes. Yeah, it's cool. And all of the human dependent admin things are slowly getting taken over by bits and pieces by AI, like even scheduling and revenue cycle management, basic paperwork, bots that can answer FAQs on a website. Even now to the point where they're kind of experimenting with receptionists that actually have physical conversations with potential patients and existing patients that call in. So lots of really cool things happening with AI. We're still in gen one, and there's a lot of improvements that need to take place. But man, I mean, if you have an open mind, you can see where this is going in a very short period of time. So let's talk about chat and how you and I off air, we're talking about some of my frustrations on chat, and I have no idea how you optimize how chat sees you. Maybe we can talk through some of your strategies for that. Sure. So yeah, and all the AI is taking over so many aspects of business. In my world, it's about visibility. I'm all about getting visibility and driving more leads for our clients. And so that's typically been the world of Google for a really long time. But now more and more you're hearing, like if you start asking everyone that books any new patient that comes into your practice, you should always ask them, how did you hear about us? And so if you're asking that question, you're going to see still the majority is either referral like, yeah, my cousin goes to see you, or it's Google. Those are the big, big ones. And then the third one, which is starting to come up is chat GPT. And we see it in our business to a white spark. It's like we ask people, how did you hear about us? It's like, oh, I asked chat GPT for local, local SEO companies. And so it's happening all the time. And so this is actually happening in dentistry as well. And so you have to think, okay, well, now how do I get visible there? The good news is everything, if you have been doing it for Google, mostly provides the same visibility benefits for chat GPT. But not always, you definitely see a huge difference in results, like the top 10 ranking businesses in Google will be different than the top 10 ranking businesses if you run that search in chat GPT. And in the world, the concept of ranking doesn't really exist in chat GPT, because different people phrase things differently. And the way that you phrase the prompt will change what you get in the results, because you might be looking for very specific things. And so the good news is that it's mostly the same. But I'm going to say a couple things that I would advise you to do if you want to get ahead of AI search. And that would be when you run a query for dentists, you know, can you can you recommend some dentists in my city? You're going to get a list. Then you can say, why did you pick those specific dentists? And chat GPT will tell you. I know. That's what I love about it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's fantastic. Chat GPT will tell you. It's these key things. They are mentioned on the best of lists within the city. This is a massive chat strategy. So it's like if you know that there's a best of list in your city, best dentist, whatever you need to get on those lists. That is super powerful. Chat really pulls from those. Those would be considered citations. That's a citation. Those best of lists are really valuable. And chat GPT will tell you exactly which ones, too. So that's a huge strategy, making sure you're listed on those. So and then just doing broader citation building. This idea that, well, this dentist is only mentioned on like 30 of the sites that I'm aware of. This dentist is mentioned on 50 of the sites that I'm aware of. They must be a little more prominent. And then the other big, big one is reviews. And I would say that a mistake that a lot of businesses are making right now is they're only working on reviews on Google. OK, well, chat GPT as one of the searches, it doesn't really look at Google. It's looking at Facebook because it uses Bing as its core search engine behind it. And so it's looking at Facebook for reviews. That's where they're getting pulled in. It's looking at Yelp. It's looking at these dental specific sites. And so if your review request strategy is only focused on, hey, could you leave this review on Google? That's one change you might start making, where it's like, hey, can you leave this review on Google? You ask that for three Googles and then you're like Facebook, three more Googles. And then DentistInMyCity.com, like you're going to diversify your review requests to hit other sites because that is sort of the broader reputation. What is the reputation of this specific dentist in your city? You want to build that reputation off of Google exclusively. So trying to build reputation, more citations, more mentions on, especially try to hit those best of lists. If you can get on those, you're golden. That's the chat GPT strategy. Du jour. It may change. We're still learning. It's a whole new thing, but it's an exciting time to be an SEO actually, because there's a new player. We're like, oh, and now we've got to figure out something new. We're bored of Google. Yeah. It's interesting because, I mean, it goes Google and then a lot of people use YouTube as their search engine, right? I mean, it's the number two or I don't know if that's old data now, but I feel like, like I said, anecdotally, but a lot of people I know are just like, oh, I prefer chat over Google now. So they'll just ask chat, you know, a question on their audio and it'll spit out what it spits out, but it's very, very informative and educational to hear where it's getting that information. So that's very, very helpful. Yeah. Listen, Darren, I don't know enough to ask advanced questions here that the basic stuff that you talked about is advanced as far as I'm concerned, because this is a new topic for me. Is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't, or maybe some, I didn't give you the opportunity to share any advanced strategies that you didn't cover so far? Yep. Yeah. So I think there is, it's a great question. I'm glad you asked that. So I think photos is an area that a lot of businesses, including dentists, aren't really thinking of as their photo and video strategy. So on the Google business profile itself, a lot of people haven't uploaded a new photo to their Google business profile for ages. So I did mention how important it is to upload photos on a weekly basis. But the reason for that is that, you know, have you ever done this? It's kind of amazing. You take a photo and you upload it to chat GPT and you say, describe this photo. You can take a really like, there's a, there's a procedure happening. Someone's getting new crowns put in or a filling put in, you see a dentist and it's just a shot of that activity happening. The descriptiveness that chat GPT can explain what's happening in that photo is phenomenal. That's cool. That's all kind of keywords. It's information about your business. And so it'll, Google can definitely do the same thing. Google could do it long before chat GPT could do it. So all the photos that you're uploading to your Google business profile is kind of like this idea of keyword stuffing your Google business profile. So now take it one step further. Video is even more information that Google can use. And so adding those to your Google business profile, adding them to your website, it's a strategy that a lot of people are sleeping on. They're not, they don't have a photographer coming in on a regular basis, like quarterly, just do a new photo shoot. I want some photos of, of this, this thing happening on our lobby. We got so many photos of our lobby, but take some different angles. But really the, the action shots is what you're looking for. Or even shots of products sometimes. Like, so if you're, if you're taking pictures of your electric toothbrushes, right? Like all these things play into what is this business about? And I think there's a photo strategy that is missing and that most businesses are not doing. So I think photos is a, a slept on strategy that I would highly recommend. I got rid of my last four dental practices. I sold them, uh, April of 2023 and admittedly I had, I don't think I ever changed the photos in any way ever, ever. What a great tiny bit of tactical advice that is. I mean, that's worth the whole 37 minutes that we've been talking. It's such a missed opportunity for most businesses. Yeah. And there's another section on your Google business called Google posts while Google updates. And that's kind of like doing a social post. And I see this happening all the time too. You'll have these dental practice and the, you know, the front end manager or the front end reception staff, it's their job to make Google make posts on Instagram. They're pumping out these posts on Instagram every single week, sometimes every single day. And the visibility on those posts is next to zero. It's like hardly anyone's following a dental practice on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. And so those posts get such low visibility. Consider your Google business profile, which is getting like 10,000 views per month. People are visiting your Google business profile. And also consider this. Most people are ignoring the Google posts section. They are not posting to that section. And so when you do do it, it's a little bit buried on the profiles, kind of at the bottom. But even though it's buried, it's getting more visibility. And so my recommendation for the Google posts slash update section is to really feature specials, deals, reasons to call your clinic. There's another huge difference between that audience and a Facebook slash Instagram social audience, the social audience. It's your friends. It's your family. It's people that already love your practice on your Google business profile. It's all your possible new patients. It's like the audience you would love to reach is right there in your Google business profile. And most businesses are sleeping on that free advertising space right on their own Google business profile. So that's another one that I would say. Stop putting so much time into your social strategy. Well, don't stop. Keep doing that. But also start pumping posts onto your Google business profile. But think about those posts in more of a conversion. Like you don't want to tell them that Sally brought her dog into work today. That's that's not a great post for your Google business profile. Google's profile should be talking about this service, why you're awesome at this, why patients love you. Highlight your testimonials and your reviews in your on your Google business profile post section. It's an empty section for most businesses. Gold, gold, Darren, what a great interview that was. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you regarding WhiteSpark or anything else that you guys do? I am very, very interested in following kind of your YouTube channel and all the other things, the free trainings that you have available. Yeah, so just WhiteSpark.ca. If you hit there, you'll be able to jump off to all the other areas you can find me. I'm very active on all the socials. I'm posting on LinkedIn all the time. I have a Facebook. I have an Instagram. I'm on TikTok. I'm on YouTube. So you can just look for Darren Shaw WhiteSpark on any platform. You'll probably find me. I'm in there giving out this kind of advice every single day. That is awesome. You can tell you're extremely well-versed. I appreciate your time, Darren. What a great, what a great introduction it was for you to me. I'm grateful that we were able to spend 40 minutes together today. I know how busy you are and and how sought after you are as a speaker and a podcast guest. So I really appreciate it. Well, I appreciate it too. I love dentists and I'm glad to offer this. Dentist is probably the number one, number two local search industry. Lawyers and dentists, they really care about local search. So I love to speak to dentists. Very, very important. Two still very mom and pop kind of cottage industries. And local search is the best for those types of businesses. Well, anyway, Darren, thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, the founder of WhiteSpark, Darren Shah. Hey, Doc. I get it. You're juggling patients, managing your practice and barely finding time for yourself. I've been there too. And that's why hiring my first personal assistant was a game changer. Today, that assistant, Ashley Hirschfeld, is now COO of the Dental Success Network and the founder of GSD Queen, where she is helping others find the perfect assistant to balance the endless to-do lists and get shit done. With Ashley's program, she'll work with you one-on-one to figure out exactly what kind of assistant will fit your practice and life. Whether it's a personal assistant to manage your nonstop schedule or an executive assistant to help you run your business while you focus on creating smiles. She doesn't just throw resumes at you. She creates the ideal assistant avatar that works best for your needs. Next, she takes care of the job posting, the skills tests, even the interviews. Once you have found the right person, you and your new assistant will get access to weekly training and support from her to maximize this new role for success. Having an assistant isn't a luxury. It's an essential tool for success. If you're serious about leveling up, hire a PA. It's one of the smartest moves I've made and will transform how you work and live. Just reach out to Ashley inside DSN or at 928-910-3599. That's 928-910-3599. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to today's podcast. As you know, the fundamentals of a good business are universal. A solid flow of new customers, systemization, human resources, and cash flow. That's exactly what I cover in my first book, Pillars of Dental Success. If you'd like a free downloadable copy and other valuable practice building resources, just go to DentalSuccessNetwork.com forward slash pillars. That's DentalSuccessNetwork.com forward slash pillars. We'll see you at the next episode. And that wraps it up for another episode of the Dentalpreneur Podcast. Look forward to reconnecting on the next episode. Thank you so much for joining us today on the Dentalpreneur Podcast. Check out TrueDentalSuccess.com for full recaps of every show, a schedule of our live events, free video tutorials, and a whole host of practice building resources.