A year ago they ranked for almost none of it. They were not a large practice with a head start. They had close to nothing in Google, in a metro with more competition than most, and everything below was built from there.
This is a podiatry and wound care practice in the suburbs northeast of Dallas, Texas. We have worked with them since late 2025, and they now take more than 80 new patients a month from search.
What this practice wanted that most podiatry SEO ignores
Wound care. Specifically diabetic wound care, which is the procedure side of podiatry that actually carries revenue and the side most practices never market, because the agencies they hire write blog posts about how to trim your toenails.
The practice also sits in a cluster of suburbs rather than one city. Eleven towns and small cities are within reach, each one big enough that people search for it by name and small enough that no hospital system owns the term. A patient in any of them searches with their own city attached, and a single page about wound care cannot win eleven cities.
What we built
One landing page per procedure, per city. Not a services page with a city list on it. A dedicated page for diabetic wound care in the home city, another for the suburb next to it, another for the one after that, and the same treatment for the other procedures that matter: plantar fasciitis, heel pain, custom orthotics, PRP, bunions, ingrown toenails, and the practice's Medicare acceptance.
Each page carries the practice's own reviews on it, explains the procedure in plain language, and answers the questions a patient has before they call. That matters for conversion, and it matters for AI, because a model summarizing options needs a source that states clearly what this practice does and where it does it.
Then we kept going outward. The home city first, then the suburbs around it, then the larger city on the horizon, which in this case is Dallas and which is still the hardest one.
What the Google numbers look like now
Across the last 90 days, this site ranked for 922 searches that are not the practice name. Of those, 450 sit in the top 10, 219 in the top 5, and 133 in the top 3. 224 of the top 10 placements are city specific searches, which are the ones that bring a patient through the door.
A few of the individual placements, averaged over 90 days in Google Search Console:
We have taken the city names out of the list below, because naming them would identify the practice. The pattern is what matters.
- "best podiatrist in [largest nearby city]": position 1.5
- "[second suburb] podiatrist": position 1.7
- "podiatrist [third suburb]": position 2.2
- "podiatrist in [home city] texas": position 2.4
- "podiatrist [home city]": position 2.8, from 580 impressions
- "podiatrist [fourth suburb]": position 3.0
- "foot doctor [home city]": position 3.2
- "wound care expert [largest nearby city] tx": position 4.3
- "podiatrist wound care near me": position 4.5, from over 3,000 impressions
- "wound care [fourth suburb]": position 5.0
Those are 90 day averages from Google Search Console, pulled in October 2026.
Impressions more than doubled over twelve months, from about 9,100 a month to about 20,900, and the site's average position across everything improved from 15.2 to 10.6. September was their best month on record for average position.
What that adds up to in new patients
The rankings are the mechanism. The number the practice cares about is new patients, and they are now taking more than 80 a month from search.
That figure is the reason we build city by city instead of chasing one big keyword. No single page in this account delivers 80 patients. Several hundred pages, each ranking for one specific thing a patient actually typed, add up to it.
Why we care about "podiatrist" and "foot doctor" as two separate keywords
They are the same thing to a doctor and two different searches to a patient. Some people type the clinical word, some people type the plain one, and the results pages are not identical. We build for both, in every city.
The same split shows up across conditions. "Diabetic wound care," "wound care," and "wound care expert" each behave differently. Covering the variations is most of why the keyword count climbs into the hundreds instead of stopping at a dozen.
What happened in ChatGPT
We check AI results the same way a patient would. Logged out, no account, no history, plain question.
Asked which podiatrist is best for diabetic wound care in the practice's home city, ChatGPT leads with one of their doctors as its top recommendation, lists the practice by name with its rating, and names two more of the practice's physicians among the handful of options it gives. Three of the names in that answer belong to this one client.
We did not do anything to ChatGPT directly. There is no setting to change. The model is reading the same pages we built for Google, and those pages state plainly which wounds this practice treats and in which cities. That is the whole mechanism, and it is why we treat AI visibility as a byproduct of the page work rather than as a separate service.
What this did to their advertising
Wound care is expensive to buy on Google Ads, which is the usual reason practices stop running it. Ranking for the same searches organically meant the practice could pull spend out of paid and keep the phone ringing. That shift is the part owners feel first, because it shows up on a bill rather than in a report.
What we would do the same for another practice in a suburb cluster
Start with the procedures the owner wants more of, not the ones with the most search volume. Build the home city out completely before moving outward. Add one suburb at a time rather than publishing thin pages for twelve cities at once. Expect the nearest small cities to come fast and the big metro name to take much longer, because distance from the searcher still matters to Google even when your page is better.
How long it takes
New pages in small suburbs can rank within weeks. The larger, more competitive cities take months of sustained publishing plus backlinks. In this account the top three placements accumulated steadily over about a year, and the best average position came in the twelfth month, not the first.
What practices ask us about this account
What does this cost and what do I have to do?
The $97 test covers one keyword and four pages, so you can see the work before you commit to anything. Ongoing work is a monthly retainer starting at $495 and we quote it after we look at your market, because one city costs less than a cluster of them. Your side of it is approving the keyword list and correcting us when we get something clinical wrong. We write the pages, build them and publish them.
How many cities can one practice realistically rank in?
More than most owners expect. This one holds top 10 placements across more than a dozen cities and towns. The limit is usually distance to the searcher and how long you have been publishing, not the number of locations you have.
Does ranking in ChatGPT require something different from ranking in Google?
In our experience, no. The pages that make a practice easy for Google to place are the same ones a model cites when it summarizes options. Specific pages about specific procedures in specific cities do both jobs.
Can you do this for a practice that has zero rankings today?
Yes. That is roughly where this account started.
Which practice is this?
Naming them would hand their competitors the exact eleven cities we are building and the position we hold in each. It is a podiatry and wound care practice in the suburbs northeast of Dallas, Texas.
See what this looks like on your own practice
Pick the procedure you make money on and do not rank for.
- You pick one keyword your practice does not rank for today.
- We build four pages designed to rank for it and publish them.
- Within 10 days you are on page one of Google for that keyword or recommended by ChatGPT for it.
- If we miss, you get your money back plus $500 in SEO credits.
It costs $97. If you would rather see your own gaps first, book a call and we will pull your rankings live and show you which procedures and cities you are missing.