According to one recent study, about 98% of consumers used the Internet and search engines like Google to find out more information about local businesses in 2022.
Statistics like these underline why localizing your online presence is critical. You’re not just trying to reach the biggest audience that you can. You need to reach the right audience – meaning those people located in an area that would make them likely to walk into your physical therapy practice in the first place.
While keywords are a big part of how you do this, they aren’t the only part. Visuals play an equally important role in the proceedings.
Optimized images and especially videos are naturally compelling. They’re formats that people can’t get enough of and once you start to use them, customer engagement tends to go through the roof compared to text alone. Together, they help meaningfully impact a business’ ability to attract and retain a local customer base. This is true for a wide range of different reasons, all of which are worth exploring.
Understanding the Role of Visuals in Local SEO
To get a better understanding of the role of visuals in local SEO, you need to first understand a bit about how search engines work to begin with.
Google makes the majority of its money on ad revenue, which will only continue to be true if people turn to it for high quality, relevant, timely results for just about every query they have. To make sure that it is only returning high quality results, Google looks for a number of signals on every page and piece of content it scans.
Are users clicking on results and staying on the site for long periods of time? How long are they staying for? What are they doing there? Are they sharing the content with their friends and loved ones?
These are the types of questions Google uses to prove the value of a search result. Images and videos are simply far more engaging than text alone. High-quality visuals also provide a more positive customer experience.
When that visual content is relevant to a particular geographic area, that’s even better. That is how Google knows to serve your business’ website to someone not when they search for “physical therapy,” but when they get more specific and use terms like “physical therapy near me.”
Visual Local SEO Tactics
One of the most straightforward local SEO tactics in general has to do with keyword optimization. If you’re running a physical therapy practice in Cleveland, you would want terms like “physical therapy [your city], Cleveland” to be used as often as possible throughout the content of your site.
When you’re talking about visual local SEO tactics, however, things get a bit more complicated – and creative. Here, you’ll need to keep a few key things in mind to help make sure your strategy is as sound as it can be.
Website & Blog Optimization Strategies
Your website is a great opportunity to include as many high-resolution, relevant images as possible. They should live not only on your physical therapy home page, but also on your appointment booking page, your “About Us” page, and even on your individual service pages.
Work to create a visually appealing and locally relevant website design. If there are local colors that you can incorporate, you should absolutely do so. The same is true of any images of local landmarks, faces, or even events.
While you’re at it, be sure to integrate that local imagery and video content into your blog posts. Always create visual content around local stories and community events. If there is a recent breaking news item that you could give your unique spin on, don’t be afraid to do so. It’s a great way to get your name out there and establish yourself as a voice of authority.
You should also leverage videos to enhance your storytelling and brand personality. While you do, optimize those file names and meta descriptions with as many location-specific keywords as you can.
Directory Listings
There are many directories on the Internet that are devoted to helping people find physical therapy professionals. When you build out directory listings on those sites, be sure to upload visually engaging images whenever you can.
Always use visuals to show off your services, your customer support, and the quality of your skills. Be consistent with branding in visual elements across all directories. Use the same version of your logo or photo of your physical location, for example.
Google Business Profile
On the subject of directories, no discussion of visual content would be complete without mentioning what is perhaps the most important directory of all: your Google Business Profile.
When someone searches for “physical therapists near me” in Google, the first thing they see won’t be your website. It will be your Google Business Profile. Here, you need to add a variety of high-quality photos showcasing your business to make people feel like they’re headed in the right direction.
Include visuals that represent not only your location and your services, but your friendly team members as well. You should also regularly upload videos featuring your business and any local events that you might participate in.
When customers leave reviews of your physical therapy practice, encourage them to include their own photos as well.
Social Media
Visual content already works well on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and it is especially valuable when you’re talking about it within the context of local SEO.
When you set up Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, lean into the visual storytelling aspects of these platforms. Instagram really lets you convey a lot in images. Facebook can offer a mixture of images and text and YouTube is the most powerful video-sharing platform in the world.
Create visually appealing posts unique to all of these platforms that are tailored to both your business and your local community. You should again encourage your customers and your community to engage by sharing photos and videos about your physical therapy practice.
Online Advertising
Up until this point, we’ve been focused on a lot of the organic ways to use visual content to make a name for your physical therapy practice. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eschew paid online advertising. It can be a powerful tool – you just need to use it properly for maximum effect.
Don’t just create a generic ad for your business. Show off your location by incorporating as much local lingo as possible. Lean on images of landmarks and other things that are specific to your area. Do so with every ad you run, regardless of who will see it.
Run those ads on Google, Facebook, and other platforms that allow you to target precise geographic locations. You can absolutely use modern technology to get your ad in front of people in a specific area. You just need to also make sure that ad is as impactful as possible.
Measure and Track Success
Moving forward, always track your engagement metrics on visual content so that you know what is working and, more critically, what isn’t. Analyze the impact of every piece of visual content that you put out into the world so that you understand why it resonated and what effect it had on customer behavior.
Depending on exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish, don’t be afraid to adjust your visual content strategies based on the performance data you’re seeing. If you’re just trying to raise awareness, you might use different techniques versus a situation where you’re trying to promote a new product or service.
Regardless, always make data-driven decisions about how you’re doing and what you should do next. Don’t guess or follow your “gut instinct” – follow what the numbers are trying to tell you and you can’t go wrong.
How Visual Content Can Take Physical Therapists to the Next Level
In the end, just remember that localizing your online strategy with visual content as a physical therapist isn’t the product of any one “major move.” It’s more about a series of smaller and more strategic ones working together.
It won’t just involve embracing website and blog optimization strategies. You also have to take care of those directory listings. You’ll need to update your Google Business Profile. You’ll need to do all this and more so that you can guarantee your content is actually working for you in all the ways that you need.
At Surefire Local, we pride ourselves on our ability to help small businesses like physical therapists establish their online presence in the best way possible. We do this by creating local signals across various platforms and profiles, many of which were mentioned above.
All this effort helps create the most important benefit of all: making it easier than ever for new customers to find you.As an all-in-one marketing platform, we built Surefire Local to help organizations like yours thrive. To find out more information, or to see what it can do to empower your own efforts, please contact us today or click here to attend a Surefire Local demo in your area.