Gabriel Valdez, owner of Nerdalert Solutions & Web Therapia, has established himself as a leading authority in private and group therapist marketing. In this episode, we discuss:
Gabriel specializes in SEO and online presence that gains results. With his diverse skill set as an entrepreneur, therapist marketing expert, user experience and user interface specialist, business strategy coach, and ADA & HIPAA compliance specialist. Gabriel offers a range of invaluable marketing talents.
Driven by his nit-picky, OCD, and intuitive nature, Gabriel possesses a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of effective marketing strategies. His
knowledge of online technology allows him to precisely target specific audiences, delivering the exposure therapists desire with excellent results. Having served clients from various business backgrounds, Gabriel’s digital marketing services have proven effective in diverse industries.
Gabriel’s guidance empowers therapists to unlock their full potential, navigate the digital landscape effectively, and achieve exceptional success. Whether seeking assistance with SEO optimization, website design, business strategy, or ADA & HIPAA compliance, Gabriel’s expertise positions him as a trusted partner in helping therapists flourish in their practices.
OFFERS & HELPFUL LINKS:
Counseling Community Instagram
Gabriel Valdez, owner of Nerdalert Solutions & Web Therapia, has established himself as a leading authority in private and group therapist marketing. In this episode, we discuss:
Gabriel specializes in SEO and online presence that gains results. With his diverse skill set as an entrepreneur, therapist marketing expert, user experience and user interface specialist, business strategy coach, and ADA & HIPAA compliance specialist. Gabriel offers a range of invaluable marketing talents.
Driven by his nit-picky, OCD, and intuitive nature, Gabriel possesses a keen eye for detail and a deep understanding of effective marketing strategies. His
knowledge of online technology allows him to precisely target specific audiences, delivering the exposure therapists desire with excellent results. Having served clients from various business backgrounds, Gabriel’s digital marketing services have proven effective in diverse industries.
Gabriel’s guidance empowers therapists to unlock their full potential, navigate the digital landscape effectively, and achieve exceptional success. Whether seeking assistance with SEO optimization, website design, business strategy, or ADA & HIPAA compliance, Gabriel’s expertise positions him as a trusted partner in helping therapists flourish in their practices.
OFFERS & HELPFUL LINKS:
Counseling Community Instagram
Jennifer Agee [00:00:04]:
Hello. Hello, and welcome to Sh*t You Wish You Learned in Grad School. I'm your host, Jennifer Agee, licensed clinical professional counselor. And with me today is Gabriel Valdez. He is the owner of Nerdalert Solutions and Web Therapia. I am so glad he's on the podcast today because he's gonna help us with all things web development and SEO. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being on today.
Gabriel Valdez [00:00:29]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me here, Jen. You know, it's a pleasure to be able to share my expertise, a little bit about who I am, and answer any questions to really help, you know, a lot of those that are in the therapy, private practice industry because I meet a lot that have no idea what they're doing, and they're taking a lot of, like they say, you know, take it with a grain of salt. They're trying to do that with whoever they meet with, hoping that whatever they're telling them is valid and true. And a lot of times they meet other people, especially like me, I have a lot of reputation, a lot of people referring out to who I am, and they trust me. So, and they're starting this, and I show data. I show a lot of proof to what I say, and that usually validates and builds that rapport to where they're like, okay, this guy really knows what he's talking about. Sometimes I kinda give them more than they need, but that's what also makes them trust me, so–
Jennifer Agee [00:01:28]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Having somebody that knows what they're talking about is so important because we are phenomenal with other people as therapists, right? Most of us have been phenomenal with other people from the time we were little. That's a part of why we got into this field. But knowing the back end, the accounting parts, the SEO parts, all of these things are usually very foreign concepts to us. And so, we're doing our best as business owners to muddle our way through it, but there's just so much we don't know because these are not conversations we're regularly in. We're regularly in conversations that are therapy-related, and we could talk endlessly about that. You put us in a room and say, talk about SEO. We've probably all heard bits and pieces, and some of it's probably not even accurate or true anymore. So, what are some of the top things that we, you wish people knew that you hear come up time and time again? Some of the common themes.
Gabriel Valdez [00:02:20]:
Oh, man. There's so many. You're giving me a plethora of stuff here I could talk about. But I would say just off the face value things, like, not even just going into SEO. Right off the get-go, it's understanding online and HIPAA outside of just even intaking you know, content, information, even if it's not private, patient information, just understanding that. The other one is ADA compliance. Because as a public service provider, you have to fall in those guidelines. There's even a thing that's happening right now, what I call it is really just cash grabbing, where there's people that have real disabilities going to a partnership with a lawyer, and then they just go and find these public service providers. It doesn't even matter if you're in the health industry, and they pretty much send you a letter, hoping you don't acknowledge it and fix it, and then next thing you know, you're getting sued in essence. And they know you're going to fail in court because you're not even making the attempt. So, what ends up happening is they want you to settle outside of court. So, just off face value, you know, just from the front end of a design, that's a lot that a lot of therapists, private practices don't even know. On the second side, a little more on the behind-the-scenes, is really having a Google Business profile that is optimized, and it's not too hard to do that. And a bigger thing is getting reviews. I know you can Google this yourself. Just type in therapist near me. You will see majority of the therapists' private practices have almost 0 reviews to, if you're even lucky, over 10 reviews. And that plays a big part in how you rank because Google is gonna look at the keywords that people are utilizing as they write your review. And then sometimes that can go against you because if they see the common denominator as, oh, on time or something constantly, like, they were on time or they were friendly. That's okay. But is someone really googling friendly therapist? Usually, they're like anxiety therapist. So, you need almost reviews that have keywords in there. But a lot of people don't wanna write reviews that say, oh, they helped you with an anxiety. Because they feel like they're you know, the people put their profile photos and stuff like that, and they're cautious of that stuff. And then the third, and last one, I would say, is just really understanding on-page SEO, understanding what works, what doesn't, understanding– One thing I can say, and this isn't a knock, I understand therapists, as private practices, the majority of you, you have a lot of finances, you have a lot of things you're paying for. But sometimes they can be very frugal to the point where they want, it's like I always say, you want the farm, but you don't even wanna purchase the cow, right? I use that as a good example. And I understand that, because as a business owner, I went through phases where it's like, oh, I don't have that to invest. But you also have to be realistic. You can't say, hey, I wanna rank for all of a state, but then your budget is 200 dollars. It's like, come on. Like, it's not realistic. You have to be willing to invest to gain the ground to get where you wanna be, and understand that it's not an overnight success story. It takes time. We don't have a magic pill, a wand to just say do this. It's literally, like, if you wanna lose weight, you still gotta put in the work, gotta put time, but you're gonna see results. And that's the biggest thing, and I always tell my clients is, look, at the end, our data validates. I'll even show you previous clients, and you can see months to month, we're constantly gaining traction. So, those are the biggest three things. It's just having an understanding about SEO, what's required. You know, don't neglect your Google business profile. And then understanding the face value things like ADA compliance and HIPAA. Those are the biggest things I always see that therapists have no understanding even to the sense of even when they're gonna purchase and say, I wanna hire you. So–
Jennifer Agee [00:06:23]:
Okay. So let's go into each of these three a little bit more. I actually had a woman on the podcast a few weeks ago with dyslexia. She was talking about her lived experience as someone with dyslexia. And she said one of the things that therapists can do is to put a video of their informed consent and a video of some of the information that they want shared, not so it's not just in written form on their website. That's one of the things that thinks is very helpful for people with dyslexia and several other learning disabilities. When you're talking about being HIPAA and ADA compliant, what are the most common places that you see websites that you take a look at making mistakes?
Gabriel Valdez [00:07:15]:
The biggest is just relying on what we call overlays. It's kinda like a widget that comes up, and then you just click it. And those are good. They're good on face value. They do help some. Now there's all these companies that offer ADA compliance, and they offer some type of overlay. Some use AI technology. And there's beneficial to everything, but the one thing want people to understand, just like HIPAA, it's impossible to be a hundred percent HIPAA compliant. It's just impossible. There's so, there even are things in their documentation that's ambiguous. And they do that, because it's like the doctor when you come in with the stomach ache, oh, it's, you know, irritable bowel syndrome. Well, that's like the John Doe of so many things you could have, right? Well, that's the same thing with their documentation because they're trying to cover themselves to make sure that if something happens, they can go after you, or you know, it's not– They try to make it so there's an umbrella that covers a mass. Now ADA compliance is the same way. You're gonna do your best to cover everybody, but there's still gonna be cracks. There's just no way around it. Because what if you get the Helen Keller that enters your, you know, they're not only blind but then they're deaf. That's a huge, I mean, that's very rare, but that's a huge situation towards, like, what do I do? Right? So, what you do is you just do the best you can do, do the best practices. Because if ever you went to a court of law and they went and try to go out for you, The judge is gonna see, did they make the attempt? Did they at least try? Have they been... Okay. They're covering the majority, so they might grace you, and say, hey. You know what? But can you do more here? That's where you go in. And that actually is very rare that even happens. At a client that recently got subpoenaed for blindness. We put in our systems. The system integrates with the main blindness programs, and they had to withdraw that subpoena. So, as long as you do things like that, but when it comes to, like, best practices, it's really just offering the most you can, and a good overlay can do that. A good overlay can handle dyslexia, ADHD, blindness, text-to-speech, color blind... You know, you're covering as much as you can. But the biggest thing, and this is where a lot of therapists drop the ball, is having just a good web design. Because a good web design, regardless, I don't have to have a disability, but if your website is horrible, slow, bad user experience, I mean, it's making me feel like I have a disability because I don't know where to go, I don't know where to find the information, I'm frustrated, and I'm gonna leave. So, another thing too is just take away the lawsuit side of things. Having the compliance actually broadens and opens up the capability now to open up your services to even a broader spectrum. So, now you have more potential leads, more potential clients, more people you can see. So, you gotta look at it at both sides. It's not just about the fear, the fear-mongering of I don't wanna get sued, You have to also look at it as I wanna help those that need assistance and make sure that I can accommodate them so that when they come in, or they come to my site, they know how to, you know, go to the next steps.
Jennifer Agee [00:10:33]:
Okay. So, whenever I do the podcast, I always like to talk to people that are at different levels of business, right? So, in the beginning, like you said, people are a little tighter with money, and sometimes they legitimately don't really have it to give. Whatever free I can do, that's what I can do. And then, you know, as your business grows, you feel a little more expansive, then all of a sudden, like, I can invest in some of these things that are going to really then pay off dividends in my business in the long run. So, can you tell me what it would look like for, like, someone at the beginning? Are they just going to search within their, let's say they're on WordPress or something, or an AI overlay for ADA compliance, or what would somebody look even look at?
Gabriel Valdez [00:11:20]:
Yeah. They can. They can just Google ADA compliance. You're gonna get things, like, excessively was it equaled web? I think it's correct. Equal something, I forget. You have... there's a few plug ins for WordPress. Most of them is just a few lines of script you put in, and it'll add an overlay. Something is better than nothing. It's like SEO. I always talk to my clients, say, well, should I do this or that? I can't afford that. And I say, look, anything is better than nothing. It's like working now. I always use that as an example. It's better to do start off small. You may not be like Arnold getting into the, you know, the gym, but start off small. Everything has a build-up. And eventually, like me, I was at a place where I just was a one-man show. Now I have a staff. I have people that work with me. I didn't start that way. I had to progressively grow into it. So, and then, you know, it's good that... It's funny that you bring up the cost thing. And, you know, I have two businesses, two agencies. You have Nerdalert Solutions. You have Web Therapia. Web Therapia, that is that's Latin, meaning it's web it's therapy for the web, right, in essence? And I'm kind of trying to be the therapist for the therapist but for online. Because I see a lot of them don't have an understanding, but not only that, they don't have the finances. So, Nerd Alert was more like the a la carte, you know? That's the premium restaurant. And then Web Therapia's kinda like, hey, we're gonna be the government assistance. And that's not to knock anybody, but that's kinda, like, because everyone starts. And the biggest things I always saw was I had a lot of private practices willing to invest and say, hey, I want a website. I wanna be professional. I wanna look good, but then they had nothing left to get the SEO. So, Web Therapia allowed a platforms to where I'm getting the same almost quality process, white glove delivery, but at a fraction of the cost. Because I understood what they needed, I built systems around it, and it was able to cut costs dramatically, and get everyone what they need. Even right now, what we either SEO or hosting, they get ADA compliance with us by default. So, it's automatically embedded in that system. We even have data privacy policy because that's another thing that's kinda rolling out. California is the new state right now, just like Europe, they had the GDPR, which is, like, for, you know, what do you do with my data? California has theirs. And when California and Florida typically do something, or New York, it starts to roll to other states. And that if you don't follow those guidelines, there's other things fines. So, we offer things to help negate a lot of that and bring solutions at a fraction of the cost. So, it's kinda like, you figure it out, you deal with that. I just wanna run my business, and that's what we try to do for our clients.
Jennifer Agee [00:14:07]:
Yes. And I think a lot of us, especially when you get to a point where you can trust the flow. Right? You get to a point where you know about what comes in every month. When you get to those places, handing off the things that you really aren't good at or don't like is money well spent. I'll tell you that. Every time I've invested in my business for the things that I really just do not enjoy and are energy drainers for me, it always pays off in spades. So, let's talk a little bit about Google My Business because I love Google My Business. It's free for people to be able to set up and to do. And so many therapists don't have any idea that they can even set that up, and that it costs them literally nothing to set up. So, talk a little bit about that, and I'd also like for you to talk about ethical ways to get those reviews because that is, you already alluded to it, it's a touchy subject for therapists and reviews. So, let's talk Google My Business.
Gabriel Valdez [00:15:09]:
Yeah. So, whenever you Google anything, a plumber, a roofer, a mechanic, you're gonna get what we call the three stack. That means you're gonna get the map, and then there's usually three businesses with reviews, directions, website, right? Sometimes there's four because one is a sponsored ad, right? Those get 50 percent more traction than the number one ranking websites underneath it. So, to have what we call the, we call it GMB or GP or GPM or G-, whatever it is, the Google business profile. But that gets more traction, and it's free. And that's what's so amazing. And what we're seeing right now in the last couple months is Google is prioritizing even more Google business profiles than even websites. So, because right now, what I believe that this happening too is, if you Google, again, any of those businesses, even therapists, you're gonna get directories before you get any other website under those Google business profiles. You'll get Psychology Today. You'll get all these, you know, Yelp, right? And then who really wants to go through a directory? Sometimes you're just like, look, who's in my area? I just wanna find someone. Let me see the reviews. Great. It's like Amazon. Who has the best reviews? They're on the top. I'm gonna check it out. Good price. Let's go. Right? Well, the biggest thing too is that a lot of therapists don't wanna showcase their address because they work from home. They're usually doing telehealth, things like that. So, there's a process to understanding that. Now it's the, you know, it's easy to set up, but it's also there's some kind of magic tree, if I wanna say, to getting that right formula so you also come up. And a big key of that is reviews. So, when it comes to reviews, the secret is—because people say, well, I thought we can't do reviews because we're doc-, you know, we're in the medical, we need that HIPAA, right? If someone is willing to offer themselves, you know, on their own, they're kinda signing up saying, hey, I'm willing to do this review, then that removes yourself from anything in the HIPAA. Because they're willing to say, hey, I wanna. Because if that was the case, Google would say, hey, are you in the medical industry? Check. Okay. They would turn off reviews. Right? But they're not. They're not because it's they're leaving up to the discretion of whoever wants to leave the review, rather negative or positive. So, if I've seen you and I saw you for anxiety, it's if I put there, Jen helped me with my anxiety. She was amazing. Well, that puts, that removes you from any legality issues, and it's all on me because I'm willing to opt into that. So, you can do reviews. Another thing is there's platforms that you can use to offer reviews, rather QR codes. Like, you can say, hey, if you had a great time, you know, if you want to, if you're up to, by all means, leave us a review. You could scan this QR code. Make it real simple. And then on top of that, there's ways to capture. Now, some say this is a, I mean, technically, it's kind of against Google's policies where you can't filter out good and bad reviews. But there's no way that they know about how if you're doing it or not. And what I mean by that is it's a reputation management system that some agencies use. There are softwares out there. We have our own where someone, let's say, gets a link or a QR code, they scan it, they click one star, a form comes up and says, please tell us how we can help resolve whatever the issue is. That goes directly to you. But if they do 4 or 5 stars, guess what? It goes directly to your Yelp, or it goes directly into your GMB, and that's where they could leave that positive review. So, there's definitely ways to do it. You definitely don't wanna do the cheesy things like Starbucks where it's like, hey, leave us a review. We'll give you a free drink, or... Don't try to do those things. Just be honest, because, at the end of the day, I look at it as you're helping someone with their life. You're not serving them food, drinks. You're not fixing a plumbing issue. You're helping someone that, like me. People, a lot of people don't know this about me, but I was real sick at one point. And I had to go and see therapists. I had gone through this whole process. I had a lot of anxiety, a lot of depression, and there was therapists that really helped me, and I left reviews because of that. And I didn't care because I don't, I know there's people that go through things that are seeking help. Right? Me, I believe in god. That was a big part of me, finding my help there as well. And if I'm gonna know the cure cancer, I'm gonna for sure share it. And if someone's helping me in that area, I wanna share it. So, I don't think therapists should be fearful or– Not everyone's gonna wanna leave reviews, but there's some that are like, man, I, if someone would've told me about Jen and her services, and this was, like, five minutes from my house... Man. So, I almost feel like it's good to have testimonies because it tells us who's offering good service, what's nearby, and on top of that, it does help rank you guys, so– But that's the best way of practice of going about it, so–
Jennifer Agee [00:20:16]:
Okay. Yeah. Some other things. Think about when you Google, like, anytime you go somewhere to a new town, you're looking for a new taco restaurant, whatever it is. Right? And you Google, and that Google My Business comes up, right, with the little circles that say, call now, directions, website, that's because somebody took the time to put together their Google My Business. Again, it is very step-by-step on the back end. It will literally tell you the things that you're missing on there, things to make sure that you put in, photos, saying, what do you, as a consumer yourself, as a customer yourself, what do you like to see? And make sure you include that in your Google My Business. Take some good pictures of your office so that people have an idea of what to expect when they see you. Make sure there's photos of you up there. And then you can regularly go in, which I know Google likes, when you add new content of, you know, articles, or, hey, this is a new clinician that came on to the team. She's accepting new patients. Like, things like that are going to consistently let Google know—because it's just basically a big giant data machine—it's gonna tell people this is what we are, this is what we're about, we're relevant, and we're active. It lets them know those things too. So, if you're looking for where's a good place to start, if you have not done your Google My Business, start there. Now, the reviews, again, that's I know it's a touchy subject for people. But, you know, Gabriel's idea of putting even a QR code up in the lobby or whatever that says, if you would like to review the business, here it is. You're not necessarily asking for it or soliciting it, but someone can choose to scan that QR code on their own, and then that's completely up to them what information they share or don't share. Alright. Now you mentioned on-page SEO. What the heck? Come on. Help me out.
Gabriel Valdez [00:22:21]:
So on-page SEO is a big why– It is a big beast. I mean, it's, there's a lot there. You have everything from keywords to a page to the how much content you write. Even what we call alt tagging the descriptions of the images. Alt tagging also plays a part with ADA compliance because there's a description, and those tools will pick up. And if you do text-to-speech, it can actually say what the description of that image is. It'll say "image person in a wheelchair" or something like that, right? But those are ways of also ranking. You have things like meta descriptions, which is, like, pretty much a summarization of what that page is. You have another thing called schema markup. That is a whole summary of what the page is. So, there's a lot of technical things, but one of the things I realized is kinda rather than getting in the nitty-gritty of the technical, what I realized is, even as I learned all the technical, I was like, I can't do this. There's no there's no way. Like, I am, like, one person, and this is one site, and I have to do all of this. If I have to be honest, rather it's someone hiring us or someone else, it's just better to hire somebody. Because it's kinda like that time where you go and, like, I'm gonna do that backyard project, and you start, you know, the beginning of it. You're like, what did I sign up for? Like, I watched the YouTube videos. It felt pretty simple, but then as the sun's beating on you, you're like forget all this. I'm tired. It's the weekend. Like, I already work enough. I'm just gonna pay someone. That's honestly what ends up happening a lot of times where there's people—it doesn't matter in any industry—they start the process, then they get frustrated because they're not getting the results. And then on top of that, they're like, dude, this is so much work. Like and it doesn't matter if you use, like, the Google or the ChatGPT, AI stuff, you know, Canva. It doesn't matter what you're doing to kinda simplify it. You're already running one side of your business. Now you're trying to do another. It becomes very hard to balance, and then throw in the factor of on the on this, you know, a husband, a wife. I got kids. I got whatever it is. So, in my opinion, it's just best hire someone that you feel confident in. Let them do that, but let, make sure that they're like us. What we do in our services, we focus, we do Google Business Profile optimization. We do posting for you on your Google Business Profile. We create YouTube videos for you. We do the schema markup, the meta descriptions. We do all the foundational stuff so you don't have to. And we make sure that when we write blogs, you have 1,500 words of content. So, it's very, very premium to rank with. Because I have some therapists, they come to me and they have, like, 40 pages. And they're like, so imagine if they're like, oh, I'm gonna learn this. That's 40 pages you have to try to optimize and find time for. Right? So, but, definitely, the key is keywords, good amount of content, have it be informative. And the biggest thing I will tell that—and this is something that happened in the last two months, and I've been seeing this—is Google no longer cares about how fast your web page loads, and they don't care if it's mobile optimized. Now people say, woah. Woah. Woah. Like, why would they not care? Like, that used to be a big thing. Right? The reason why they're saying they don't care is because they're bundling that up into one thing, which was the average time of engagement. Because if your website doesn't have the content someone's looking for, they're gonna leave. If it has bad user experience, they're gonna leave. It loads too slow, they're gonna leave. If it's not mobile optimized, even just desktop optimized, right? You're gonna leave. So, they're just starting to look at what is the average time someone comes to your site and does what they have to do? The sweet spot is two minutes. If you can get in two minutes, you're killing it. The average I see is a minute and thirty. You're still doing really well. But imagine if you're doing 20, 30 seconds. What is that telling you? You're doing something wrong. Your design's bad. They can't find what they're looking for. Your site's not optimized. It's not, it's slow. You know, whatever it is. So, even if you do have things to rank you, there's still the other side, and that's why I tell people, you know, when they come to me, I'm like, man, your website's bad. Like, even if you pay, like, it doesn't matter. Go do Facebook ads. Your design is bad. What good is it to pay for that traffic if someone's gonna leave? So, it's like having a restaurant that serves good food, but it's dirty. People are gonna come. The smell is gonna come, and they're gonna walk in like, oh, like, oh, this is dirty. Like, the floor is dirty. The plates are dirty. Right? You gonna leave. So you gotta think of that in all those areas. So–
Jennifer Agee [00:27:19]:
Okay. Now I have another question. So, if we're talking about the beginning again, and a lot of times, people say, I'm gonna hire him when I get my clinical license, when I'm in my own private practice, but right now, I just gotta get a landing page up and get– I know that making that choice in the beginning can have ramifications later down in terms of what you can and can't do. So, what are some of the better web places that you can start to, you know, even DIY yourself? What are some that you've seen the most problems with in terms of SEO?
Gabriel Valdez [00:27:56]:
The biggest one I see is Squarespace. I do get some on Wix. But I get majority on Squarespace. Squarespace is good to start. The problem is not only are you renting the website, that means you're playing in someone else's play playground. That means they create the rules. But the thing is is this platform is not meant for scalability. It's not meant for you as you grow. A lot of therapists, they, I have some therapists that grow from a single practice to a group practice, and then they want all these bells and whistles and filters. And I want something for just a state. Those cause problems. The other thing that's funny is if you go to Google Page Speed Insights, it's a free tool. If you're on, if you're watching this podcast or listening to it, go to Google Page Speed Insights. Put your URL for your website if you have one, if it's on Squarespace, and watch the speed scores that come up. They're always bad. It's funny. They're always bad. They're like, it's the, oh, rank it out of a hundred, and I see some that mobile is, like, 20 out of a hundred. 10 out of a hundred. I've seen desktops that are like 50 out of a hundred, but Squarespace says, oh, our sites are so fast. Right? But guess what? You come to me and say, hey, can you optimize my site and make that page speed be faster? I'm limited in what I can do. Because I have restrictions that are being imposed on me because it's a platform that I have no control of. Same thing with SEO. There's certain advanced tactics we like to do. We can't do because guess what? It's not open source. There's limitations that we have. So, I see a lot of therapists come to me, and then I hate being like that guy that's like, and I even tell him, look, I'm not trying to sell you a whole other website or even move your design into what I like to use because we build everything on WordPress. WordPress was meant initially for blogging, then it started to revamp and grow into things. But WordPress is amazing because it could, you could build things that are modular. You can add subtract and not have to reinvent the wheel every time. I could build your practice, and then you could say, hey, I want a community system where I can have people join. Okay. We don't have to– Front end will look the same. We'll build on the back end. Hey. I wanna sell ebooks, and I wanna sell courses. Cool. We can add that in. No problem. Hey. I want a booking system. Can you do that? We'll add it in. You could come next month. I don't wanna sell anything. Okay. We'll remove it. So, it's easy for us to add and subtract but it's also very, very SEO friendly. It is easily indexable out the door when it comes to things. And the best part is you own it, it's yours, it's open source, and we can build to your heart's content, and even to some sense, you could say, to your wallet's, you know, capabilities, right? But now if you're starting, and I'm not trying to knock people that have started in Squarespace, you know, to each their own, but be prepared. There may be a point in time you're gonna have to leave that platform. And sometimes when you do that, you do have to start from scratch. And the worst part and what I mean by that is starting from scratch is you can still take the same design, but if you migrated to a new system, you will lose a little SEO because you're at a new IP address, and some of the framework is different. So, it can drop for a little bit and then regain back up. And I don't care who, you know, and I'm putting myself out there on blast. I have people that say Squarespace, and these other ones are great. You do stuff for the SEO, but I see it time and time and time again. And I put my money where my mouth is because even my own– Everything I say to people, we practice what we preach. The same SEO we do for our clients, we do for our own agency. The same platforms we build on are the same platforms ours are built on. So, and I think it's, like, 60—it's dropped some because there's a lot more variety out—but it's, like, 60 percent or 70 percent of all websites are built on WordPress. So, it's definitely a platform that a lot are utilizing. There is a bad taste in some people's mouth or because there's a reputation. But I think it's what I was saying is that people try to do it themselves. They add every plugin known to man, and they wonder why their website's slow. It's not working right. There's a potential for hacking. You just have to know what to do, how to do it. And if it's done properly, you won't have any issues. I've been doing this for 13 years, and I've only been in the last 10 of those 13, just built all WordPress. And I've never had a website hacked that I'd built, unless the client put something on their own, not asked us, and then it didn't update, and then it left a vulnerability, and then we fixed it. And then they're like, oh my gosh. I didn't realize that. And I always tell them, look, you wanna do it? You can. Reach out to us. We're more than happy to kinda tell you what, you know, this is a plug-in you're looking for. We'll find you something better that has a better developer system behind it and so forth. And you can get in for a low cost. WordPress, there's ways. That's I mean, Web Therapia, you can see the kinda like the prices on there. We're very reasonable. We're doing all the hand-holding, teaching, training so that way you don't feel you're bound to us we want you to learn how to use your website. We use a drag-and-drop page builder as well, so it's no different than Squarespace and Wix. But it has all the capabilities for a developer like us to do all the bells and whistles, but then it's simplistic enough for someone that's not a developer to edit content, drag and drop some images, edit the page, even duplicate and create pages, and make new service pages. So, we're definitely finding that balance for everybody, and it's worked very well for us as well as our clients.
Jennifer Agee [00:33:47]:
When people start investing in SEO, right– Somebody's listening to this and they think, alright, I gotta do the thing, right? I don't wanna, but it's just time. I wanna grow my business. How long does it usually take to really start seeing results from investment in SEO? Because I do know that some of these things take time and consistency.
Gabriel Valdez [00:34:12]:
When it comes to what we call SERPs, SERPs is on-page SEO. That can take 3-to-6 months. And now that is also dependent on that being local. I'm gonna be clear. That's local SEO. Which is usually within around a 10-mile radius. And that's also dependent if you're, you know, in the city you're in. Somebody that's in New York, you know, New Jersey, LA, San Diego, it can take 6 months just to start to see, 5,6 months, to start seeing that process start to do, move the needle, right? Somebody that's maybe in Boise, Idaho, it might be 3 months. So, you gotta realize population based off competitors play a big part. That's gonna tell us about what we're dealing with. Now if you're trying to do national, national SEO can be the whole United States or also consider what we say a state. Because the same process is the same. Because it's not local. Because San- like, look. Let's look at California. California has big cities, San Jose, Sacramento, LA, San Diego. This goes on. Right? So, but you wanna cover an umbrella. So, that is considered more national because we're not using a physical address to try to rank you. We're trying to cover a whole spectrum, and that can take 6 months to a year It's just dependent on the state, and it costs more because it is more work. And I've seen some therapists where they take a year and they start doing multiple states. But the secret to kind of getting fast results goes right back into Google Business Profiles. Google Business Profiles, I've seen Google Business Profiles rank on the top of, you know, for certain keywords, within a month. I've seen them get in the three stack within the first month, like, 30 days. It's dependent, but I feel more confident to say, hey, we could get you in 2-to-3 months there than on-page SEO. I'm not saying—and I wanna be clear—this doesn't mean don't do on-page SEO; just do Google Business Profile stuff. They do go hand in hand. They hold hands. They correlate. A lot of the post that you could do in your Google Business Profile you can do to your website. Definitely wanna have both. But I do see faster results, and we're even starting to transition a little bit of our SEO packages to a little bit more emphasis, a little more aggressiveness towards the GMBs than the on-page SEO stuff. But that's typically the time frame. And it doesn't matter who you hire, be prepared, even if they say, hey, we do month-to-month, be prepared to do at least 3 months. Three-to-six months is the average, but you're gonna need at least 3 months. And that doesn't still mean they're gonna rank you on the first. And even if they do, that might be for 1 keyword. You know? If you have certain modalities, you have certain services, you know, you might have grief counseling. Okay. You might rank for that, but you don't rank for couples counseling. So, there so, and some, and then just to answer this, because I feel like this thought came to my mind. Some people say, okay, what if I do that in a rank, well, how long do I have to keep doing that? That's really up to you. If you wanna continue, you can do that. If you wanna pause for a while and then come back, you can. But, honestly, SEO is an ongoing thing. Because you– But the benefit over marketing, like Facebook ads, TikTok ads, Twitter ads is you're getting already warm hot leads. Because someone's typing in something to find you. They're saying, I need that plumber near me. I need a therapist for anxiety near me. So, they're obviously looking for that service. You come up. The probability– And this is what's cool—I've done the research—is therapists have a higher conversion rate for closing even to get them into a consultation than any industry I've ever worked with. Their close rate is, like, 60 percent. So, if somebody types it, and you come up, and they click on you, there's a 60 percent chance they're going to literally book a consultation call for, if not work with you, for 1 session. So, there's definitely a a good way to get a return an investment in anything you do. And we even offer, like, on our Web Therapia, we show you a conversion calculator to show you, like, if we got you this much traffic, you know, realistically, is it possible to say you could get 10 new clients? Well, this is the average. You know, obviously, we understand you have private pay, insurance pays, and all that, but it gives you an idea, like, oh, wow. Like, you know what? This might be worth to invest. So–
Jennifer Agee [00:38:54]:
Alright y'all. Take this in. Maybe listen to this twice because for us, because this is not our primary language that we speak. Right? This is absorbing through a fire hose. A lot of information that is good information, but you might need to listen to this twice so that you can get it all. Big takeaways here, if you were just starting out and you were looking at starting a website, WordPress, that's gonna give you better options in the future. I want you to go on and complete your Google My Business. Create a QR code so that you can start collecting reviews and increase your SEO within the Google—because that's the number one search engine of people. It just is. Right?—So that you can just start converting people there that get to see that you have, you're bringing quality services to the community. And then also maybe take a look at either create, getting an overlay for ADA compliance or having someone do that on the back end for you. And, again, this is not our primary language. When you get to the point where you can hire this shit out, just hire and pay somebody to do it. Because you are a phenomenal therapist. Most of us are never gonna be SEO experts. And I know just from TikTok that a lot of this stuff changes. Right? Like, Instagram, you used to want, like, tons and tons of hashtags. Now they're prioritizing only 3-to-4, at the max, hashtags. Those get ranked higher. So, this stuff is ever-growing and changing. We can't keep with all of our CEUs plus the SEO ones. Let someone else do that for you. Thank you so much, Gabriel, for being on the podcast today. How can people connect with you?
Gabriel Valdez [00:40:34]:
Thank you for having me. And to connect with me, the best way is you can go to nerdalert.solutions. There's no dot com. That's just nerdalert.solutions. Or you can go to which is our new agency side, which is webtherapia.com. And that specializes in, like, private practices, you know, holistic practices, acupuncture, things like that. So, we specialize more for that area, which I think will really reflect for the people listening to this podcast.
Jennifer Agee [00:41:03]:
Perfect. And I will put those links below as well for people who are listening to the podcast or watching. Either way, the links are gonna be below for you. If you'd like to connect more with me, counselingcommunity.com. You can also find me on all the socials. Click, click, and you'll find me. I do have spots for the South Africa retreat in February. So, if you're interested in that, take a look at the website. Let me know if you have any questions. And get out there, everyone. Live your best dang life.