I have been experimenting a lot with “answer engine optimization,” or AEO if you are a nerd like me.
I have mixed feelings about it. A lot of my clients have been asking me about AI. The FOMO is starting to set in for everyone, and healthcare professionals of all kinds feel like they are being left behind.
I get it. It is important to be in the front of the pack, especially when it comes to marketing and sales to grow your healthcare clinic.
This week, let’s talk about AEO and how important it is for your new sales.
What Do You Need To Know About AEO For Growing Your Healthcare Clinic?
There are three things you need to know about AEO.
- The volume is low: Google still absolutely dominates search. Everyone keeps talking about how AI is going to kill SEO, but it is not. In fact, Google search and Google referral search to websites has only gotten more dominant. Google is not going anywhere, at least not any time soon.
- The conversion rate for AEO traffic is extremely high. Let’s say someone goes to ChatGPT or Perplexity and types in “peptide clinic near me,” they will be given an answer and depending on the LLM, given external resources to click on. The clicks that come from AEO are much more likely to convert into a phone call, lead, and new patient. Ahrefs.com did a great case study on this.
- Local search does not have AI snippets yet. Most healthcare clinics market to their local communities because you need your patients to literally walk through the door. Well AI is not clogging up these search results the same way it is other ones. Let’s use “dentists near me” for this example. You will notice that Google still searches the local pack listings without any Gemini snippet.
See? Most healthcare clinics do not have to compete with AI results. It is straight to the Google Business Profiles and the local search.
Here is a video I created yesterday about this topic.
Brand Authority Is Replacing Domain Authority And Forcing Us To Be More Human
For the past 15 years, I have been obsessing about increasing domain authority for my clients’ websites.
Domain authority is a technical term. There are a lot of factors, but for the most part, you can think of domain authority as a ranking score that is determined by how many backlinks you have from other sites to your site.
Backlinks have been Google’s main credibility factor for decades.
That is changing.
Now, your “brand authority” is even more important than domain authority. Your brand authority is a much more contextual and nuanced metric. Your brand authority is determined by:
- what people say about you online
- how much trust and credibility you have
- what other sites say about you
- youtube
- yelp
- bbb
- yellow pages
- how much valuable content you put out into the world
If you are a chiropractor, it is more important than ever that you start creating trust through the content you create about chiropractic services.
The AI models see this content, make a generalization on how much the world “trusts” you, and then use those signals to determine if you are worthy of being found in an LLM search result.
It is ironic that in a way, AI is forcing us to be more human. As healthcare entrepreneurs, we are not used to putting ourselves out there.
Now, it is more important than ever that we do.
I can help you.
The Change Is Slow, But The Time To Start Is Now
Coming back full circle, I do not think that AI is overtaking everything, especially not SEO.
The vast majority of people still find healthcare services by pulling out their phone and searching for local services in Google.
But the tides are shifting. I have been having a lot of success with:
- meta ads
- AEO
- other local listings such as the local databases in perplexity
- short form content
It is important that you stay ahead of this. Although digital has always been fast paced, there have been aspects that have remained consistent over the last 15 years.
I am seeing a fracturing in the “old way of doing things.” It will happen slowly, and then all at once.
I appreciate you. Keep helping others.
Tim