Work · Healthcare · Ophthalmology
Shane Retina and Venice Retina: What Continuous Improvement Looks Like
Dr. Thomas Shane founded Shane Retina in Sarasota, and Dr. Anita Shane founded Venice Retina, two independent retina practices run by a husband and wife who both trained at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.
I built Venice Retina’s website before the practice opened its doors, then took over the search work for Dr. Thomas Shane’s practice. Since then I have redesigned his site, carried it through a name change with its map rankings, profiles, and reviews intact, and built a comprehensive knowledge graph for the practice, while keeping the profiles, listings, and content current for both practices.
2x
New patient volume since the work began
92%
Of the Sarasota map in Google’s top three, up from 54%
1 to 7
Providers, from one doctor when the search work began
4.9
Stars across more than 1,500 Google reviews
The Shane Retina homepage, with the lead image it has carried since the website redesign.
Client
Shane Retina and Venice Retina
Where
Sarasota and Venice, Florida
Specialty
Retina, vitreoretinal disease and surgery
Working together since
2019
What I do
SEO, both websites, the knowledge graph, Google Business Profiles, directory listings, content, a plain-language update every month
Growth
One doctor to seven providers across three offices
01
The Retina Practices
Two independent retina practices, the best at what they do, founded by a husband and wife who trained together at the top ophthalmology program in the country.
Shane Retina and Venice Retina are two retina practices on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Dr. Thomas Shane founded Shane Retina and Dr. Anita Shane founded Venice Retina. The two trained together at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami. Bascom Palmer is ranked the top ophthalmology program in the country by U.S. News & World Report, and both completed their training in vitreoretinal surgery there. Think of it as the Harvard of ophthalmology. They treat the conditions that threaten sight from the back of the eye: macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, retinal detachment, macular holes and puckers, vein occlusions, floaters and flashes.
Between them, the two practices see patients in three offices: Shane Retina’s two offices in Sarasota, and the Venice office that is home to Venice Retina. Seven providers see patients across the three, and the practices hold 4.9 stars across more than 1,500 Google reviews. The two practices are closely connected, and their websites are sisters: the same eye in the logo, the same shape on the first screen, his and hers.
They are the best in the business at what they do, and it shows across their entire organization. Both are independent in a specialty where corporate groups are buying up their competitors. They have stayed independent and kept growing on the strength of the care they provide, and my job has been to make sure the web presence behind them says so.
Sister sites, his and hers: the Shane Retina homepage and the Venice Retina homepage, built to mirror each other.
02
How the Project Grew
It started with ophthalmology website design for a new practice in 2019, and it has grown from there.
The work began with Venice Retina. Dr. Anita Shane was opening a new practice, and I built its website from scratch: the structure, the pages for each condition and procedure, the provider page that carries the Bascom Palmer credentials, the search foundation a new subspecialty practice needs to be found and trusted.
Shane Retina came next, and search came before design. After seeing his wife’s new website, Dr. Thomas Shane asked me to take on the search work for his own practice, then called Retina Care Consultants. The first job was not to redesign its website but to make it easier to find: the content written page by page, condition by condition, until the site showed the depth of the practice’s expertise.
In the first year of that work, organic search traffic to the site nearly tripled, and within a few years the site was on the first page of Google for hundreds of searches, from a few dozen when the content work began.
In the fall of 2021 came the website redesign, done a few pages at a time. The content was largely kept, because it was already doing its job; the design had not kept up with it.
Then Retina Care Consultants became Shane Retina. A name change is one of the riskiest things a practice can do to its search visibility, and this one was handled so that the practice’s place on the map, its profiles, and its reviews carried over to the new name: the old web addresses sent to the new ones and the Google profiles renamed on launch day, the directory listings renamed by hand in the months after, and the site’s schema updated to the new name. Within a few months the South Sarasota office ranked higher on Google Maps for “retina specialist” than it had before the change.
I also built a comprehensive knowledge graph for the practice. The work continues, and so does the practice’s growth.
03
The Ongoing Work
Ophthalmology SEO is a whole-website job. Traffic that does not convert is worth nothing, so the site itself has to get better every year.
The content has been rewritten several times over, and it is still being written. The main conditions and treatments each have their own page, written so a worried patient can understand it and a referring physician can trust it. The FAQ page answers 57 questions patients ask, and the doctor pages answer more.
The articles answer the questions people type before they know they need a retina specialist: what causes floaters, whether you can drive after an eye injection, what recovery after retinal detachment surgery looks like. Those pages bring people from far beyond the map, and the practice’s own pages bring the ones nearby.
Doctor pages and location pages were built as the practice grew. Each of the seven providers has a page with their training and the conditions they treat. Each of the three offices has a page with its hours, its map, and the providers at that address, so a search for a retina specialist near a particular office finds that office.
A location page and a provider page: the South Tamiami office in Sarasota, and Dr. Thomas Shane. Each office and each provider has one.
Behind every page is a knowledge graph. It is structured data that describes the practice, its offices, its providers, and the conditions and treatments it offers, in a form search engines and AI systems can read. Everything in it is linked, so they understand the practice as one connected whole: which doctor trained where and treats what, which office is open when, and which treatment is for which condition. I built it and keep it current, and it matters more every year as Google’s answers move from ten blue links to maps and AI summaries.
The knowledge graph, drawn: the practice connected to its offices, providers, conditions, treatments and answered questions.
The local side is tended by hand. I keep a Google Business Profile for every office and every physician complete and consistent, and I built the practices’ listings on the directories that matter by hand, rather than pushing them through a service. Every month I also check where each office shows up on Google Maps for the searches retina patients make, from dozens of points around each office, because where you rank depends on where the patient is standing.
Over time, you learn the rhythm of the business. A practice on Florida’s Gulf Coast has a season: the winter residents arrive in the fall and leave in the spring, and the phones and the search numbers move with them.
Knowing that rhythm tells you which months to compare with which, which dips are the calendar and which are not, and when the site needs to be ready. That kind of knowledge only comes from working with a practice year after year, and it changes what the work looks like.
Every month, I send Dr. Thomas Shane a plain-language update. It tells him how the practices are doing, what I worked on that month, and what I’m planning next, written so he can read it in a few minutes between patients. I keep an eye on far more data than I send him, so the update can focus on what matters most to the practice.
04
Results
First on the map, more patients finding the practices on Google every year, and a practice that kept growing.
+145%
Non-branded website clicks from Google profiles, summer 2026 against 2024
+29%
Calls from the three office Google listings, year over year
#1
Venice Retina on the map for “retina specialist,” at every point checked around Venice
First on the map. When someone near Venice searches for a retina specialist, Venice Retina comes up first. Around the South Sarasota office, Shane Retina shows in Google’s top three map results at 92 percent of the points I check, up from 54 percent in 2023, the first year I tracked it.
Google Maps from 49 points around each office, August 2026: Venice Retina first at every point for “retina specialist” (left), and the South Sarasota office in the top three at all but one point for “macular degeneration specialist.”
The share of the map around each office where the practice is in Google’s top three, averaged over each year’s checks for “retina specialist” and “macular degeneration specialist.”
More patients reaching the practices from Google. Most new patients search for what they need, like “retina specialist near me,” not for the practice’s name. Clicks to the practices’ websites from their Google listings on those searches have grown every year: up 75 percent from summer 2024 to summer 2025, and up 145 percent by summer 2026. Calls from the three office listings were up 29 percent year over year.
Website clicks from the practices’ Google Business Profiles on searches that don’t name the practice, June to August of each year.
Found in AI answers too. Ask Google for the best retina specialist in Sarasota, and its AI Overview names Dr. Thomas Shane first, with the practice’s two Sarasota offices as the first two map results below it.
Google, “best retina specialist sarasota,” September 2026: the AI Overview names Dr. Thomas Shane first, and the two Sarasota offices are the first two places on the map.
The practice grew on the quality of its care. It has earned 4.9 stars across more than 1,500 Google reviews, one patient at a time. Dr. Thomas Shane was the only doctor at his practice when the search work began; seven providers now see patients across the three offices. Since the work began, the practice’s new patient volume has doubled, and about half of its patients now come through online marketing.
This is what happens when a very good medical practice teams up with someone on the web side who knows what they are doing: the practice keeps getting better at what it does, the web presence keeps getting better at showing it, and each makes the other worth more. Dr. Thomas Shane runs his practice like someone who wants it to be the best, and I try to bring the same thing to my side of it.
“The results speak for themselves. Since we began working together, our new patient volume has doubled, and approximately half of our patients now come through online marketing.”
Dr. Thomas Shane · Ophthalmologist & Founder, Shane Retina
05
The Practices Today
Still every month, across both practices.
The work continues every month. I keep the content, the knowledge graph, the listings, and the profiles current, and I build whatever the sites need as the practices grow. The goal is constant improvement.
Google search is changing fast. Phones show fewer map results, and AI answers now sit at the top of the page. I plan the work around how AI is changing the way patients find a practice.
If you want to see what steady web and search work can do for a medical practice over several years, this is my best example. See the rest of the work.
Services on this project
Healthcare SEO
Search work, measured every month.
Local SEO
Every office and physician profile, and the map checked monthly.
Schema and knowledge graphs
A knowledge graph behind every page.
Website redesign
A redesign and a name change, with the search positions carried through.
In their words, his and hers
What the work has looked like from the practice’s side.
“We have worked with Josh for seven years, and I can say without hesitation that he has been one of the most valuable partners in growing our medical practice. His work extends far beyond building and maintaining an attractive, professional website. He understands that the ultimate goal is to attract new patients, and he approaches every aspect of our online presence with that objective in mind.
The results speak for themselves. Since we began working together, our new patient volume has doubled, and approximately half of our patients now come through online marketing. Josh has played a major role in that growth, helping us consistently outperform local competitors in online patient acquisition, including practices much larger than ours. The return on our investment in his services has been exceptional.
What distinguishes Josh is his combination of technical expertise, initiative, responsiveness, and genuine engagement in our success. He doesn’t simply wait for us to identify problems or request improvements. He continuously monitors our online presence, identifies opportunities, and implements strategies to improve website performance, search engine visibility, patient engagement, and conversions. He stays current with evolving SEO practices, digital marketing techniques, and emerging technologies, including AI, and finds practical ways to incorporate them into our marketing strategy.
Josh also understands that a successful online marketing program requires coordination across multiple platforms. He works closely with our digital advertising team to ensure that our website, SEO, Google Business Profiles, and paid advertising efforts complement and reinforce one another. That integration has been enormously valuable to our growth.
Equally important is what Josh is like to work with. He is exceptionally responsive, often answering communications immediately and completing requested changes remarkably quickly. He provides clear, regular updates about what he has accomplished, what he is monitoring, and what he plans to improve next. He welcomes feedback, incorporates our suggestions promptly, and is consistently professional, intelligent, and easy to work with. We trust him completely, which allows us to give him the access and autonomy necessary to manage our online presence efficiently.
As physicians and practice owners, our expertise is in taking care of patients, not navigating the complexities of websites, search algorithms, and digital marketing platforms. Josh allows us to focus on practicing medicine while knowing that an essential component of our business growth is in capable hands.
To any physician or practice owner considering hiring Josh, I would say that his value far exceeds the cost of his services. He brings the expertise, initiative, integrity, and commitment of someone who genuinely cares about the success of your practice. He has helped us compete effectively against much larger organizations, and our seven-year partnership has been one of the best investments we have made in our business.”
Dr. Thomas Shane · Ophthalmologist & Founder, Shane Retina
“When I was looking for someone to develop our practice’s website, I researched many different developers before finding Josh. His approach to website design stood out to me for both its aesthetics and functionality. From our very first conversation, he was responsive, easy to communicate with, and genuinely interested in understanding our practice and its needs. He immediately demonstrated an ability to appreciate our business from multiple perspectives and translate that understanding into a beautiful, highly functional website.
Seven years later, Josh continues to be just as responsive, reliable, and attentive to our evolving needs as he was at the beginning. I’ve since referred him to at least three other large medical practices, all of whom have been equally thrilled with his work and have developed the same long-standing relationship with him that we have enjoyed. That, to me, is the strongest testament to the quality of his work and the trust he earns from his clients. I recommend him without hesitation.”
Dr. Anita Shane · Ophthalmologist & Founder, Venice Retina
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