WHY Keywords Matter - Using "Additional Skills" to connect with the clients who are looking for YOU

If you're not getting AT LEAST 2-3 client contacts a month referencing GNA's free Advocacy Support Center, your profile likely needs serious help in the keywords area.

Let's do a quick pulse check. Are you regularly answering the phone to hear a prospective client say:

«I got your information from AnnMarie or Sangeeta or Dalia at GNA...» OR «I just got off the phone with GNA's Advocacy Support Center and they gave me your name...»

If you are, congratulations! Your profile has solid keyword density. But if your phone has been quiet, you are likely missing out on a massive pool of matching clients.

While many clients find you by self-searching categories, zip codes, or credentials, a massive wave of families don't find you on their own at all. Instead, they reach out to GNA’s free Advocacy Support Center (ASC). Our team takes their highly complex, raw life stories and translates them into precise search strings to curate a tight list of perfect-match advocates. NOTE: We do not make recommendations or referrals. We provide clients choice. But if we cannot find YOU, we cannot include you.

If your profile doesn't contain critical keyword clinical and administrative «nouns» they are searching for, you remain hidden in the database.

Here is how to help make your profile hyper-visible to our ASC search team and searching clients alike.

The Strategy: Understand the Left vs. Right Column

Your entire profile is searchable, but human eyes and search algorithms read your page differently. You need to optimize for both.

• The Left Column (How I Can Help / Why I Became an Advocate): This is for humans. Clients read this column to connect with your story, feel your empathy, and understand your philosophy. Keep this narrative, compelling, and warm.

• The Right Column (Additional Skills / Affiliations): This is for the algorithms and the ASC search team. Clients rarely read these — so it is fine for it to be dense, long lists—but our search tools scrape them constantly. This section should be heavily bulleted and packed with hyper-specific keywords.

The Specificity Golden Rule: If one advocate’s profile simply says «Endocrinology,» and another advocate’s profile lists «Type 1 Diabetes, T1D, insulin pumps, diabetic neuropathy, and comorbid complications,» the second advocate will win the match when a complex metabolic case comes through our center.

What Belongs in Your «Additional Skills» Field?

If it didn't fit naturally into your narrative «How I Can Help» section, it belongs as a bullet point in your Additional Skills column. Think small, deep, and hyper-targeted.

HINT: If you have experience in MANY areas, consider listing out the specialties you've worked in, then deep dive in those conditions that are your ideal client.

Here are four distinct categories to consider, to upgrade your profile today:

1. Specialized Populations with Important Insurance  / Financial Nuances

Spell out the exact systems you know how to navigate:

• Experience with complex Medicaid applications and state spend-downs.

• Deep understanding of Tricare Select or navigating care within the VA (Veterans Administration / Veterans Affairs).

• Uninsured or underinsured population navigation.

• Medical Tourism.

2. Condition, Symptom, & Social Clusters

List the precise medical and lifestyle realities you handle comfortably. Here are a few examples:

• Neurodivergent populations (explicitly list the diagnoses, sensory symptoms, or complex medication mixes).

• Dementia & Memory Loss (include behavioral expressions and cognitive decline).

• Mental & Behavioral Health (specific diagnoses, medication types, partial hospitalization, acute crises).

• LGBTQ+ culturally respectful advocacy, whether or not the client is seeking culturally-specific, competent care.

• Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) (actively managing housing instability, food insecurity, or utility barriers blocking medical care).

3. Narrow, Specialized Clinical Knowledge

Showcase the highly specific clinical arguments or diagnostic tests you understand inside and out:

• Extremely Complex Care: ICU, NICU, transplants, ER, flight nursing.
• Specific conditions/families: specific autoimmune conditions, connective tissue disorders, cardiac concerns, etc — be specific with condition names as well as classifications (see examples).

• Unusual Testing specifics: Knowledge of the specific two-tiered serologic tests for Lyme disease.

• The clinical ability to argue why a patient does not need to endure a tilt table test to properly diagnose most dysautonomias or POTS.

4. Specific Facility Types & Transitions

List the exact settings you have experience coordinating with specific facility needs such as:

• Finding and vetting locked memory care centers.

• Navigating admissions for Partial Hospitalization Programs (PHP) or Intensive Outpatient Programs (IOP).

🌟 Profiles in Excellence: Real Examples to Follow

Want to see who is already executing this strategy perfectly? Log into the directory and look up these beautifully optimized profiles to copy their keyword structure:

1. 1. Dr Linda Bluestein, very narrow/specialized conditions focus

   2. Stacy Rolfe, varied insurances and also rare conditions
   3. Anne Wienke, RN with very broad range of experiences

   4. Blaire Flamand, CCRN — incredibly broad ICU experience

Your Action Item Today

Take 15 minutes to log into your GNA dashboard. Review your Right Column and your Additional Skills section. Strip out the generic fluff («compassionate navigation,» «expert care support») and replace it with the hard, clinical, and administrative nouns of the cases you actually want to take.

Our ASC triage team wants to send you clients—help us find you!