Orthopedic Spine Surgeon
SEO & PPC Case Study

Strategy

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SEO & PPC

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Website Development

Its important for a healthcare practice  to demonstrate your unique identity through online presence.

SEO & PPC Case Study

The client is an orthopedic spine surgery specialist based out of New York City. Their goal with their digital marketing campaign was to improve new patient acquisition to grow their practice, gain traffic to their site, and improve market share in a competitive space in one of the most competitive locations in the world.

Calls to the client’s office from Google My Business have more than doubled in February 2019 vs 2018:

SEO Strategy

At the beginning of the campaign, we assessed which areas needed to improve and which strategies would best fit their site and location. We started out auditing the site for any major errors such as duplicate content, 404 errors, and any signs of black hat strategies that can harm their site.

We conducted a competitor analysis to gain an understanding of the strategies competitors in the area are using and how, if they are, performing better. We assessed competitor’s content strategy, citation profile and keyword focus. After thorough keyword research, we established core keywords for search and conversion value in the area. These keywords were first implemented in the title tags and meta descriptions to tell Google and users of the priority focus of the site and its pages.

Throughout the campaign, the service pages were reviewed and further optimized for their respective target keywords. We ensured the content on the page contains the main keyword and supportive keywords in the text and header tags organized on-page.

We also reviewed the site and each page with a conversion optimization lens. The page was reviewed and optimized so that a user has a clear path to take action. Through A/B testing of copy, placement, and visual components, we were able to increase conversions and the paths for users to call the office directly or fill out an online form.

To help improve local visibility we also conducted regular citation audits to gather insight into their local profile. We want to ensure that the Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) were consistent and correct on authoritative directories The campaign involved cleaning citations that needed correct information or the closing of a duplicate and building new citations by submitting the client into authoritative directories and niche directories that link back to their site.

Every month the strategy was reviewed to ensure progress. While the client’s location was based in New York, it was more challenging to rank for Manhattan targeted keywords. We created a strategy to also gain presence in Manhattan as it is not the client’s listed city in their physical address which only tells Google they serve New York, NY. We utilized our content efforts by creating blog posts as well as optimized title tags on service pages to target Manhattan focused keywords. These efforts helped increase keyword rankings for spine surgery keywords in Manhattan.

Increasing visibility in New York and Manhattan increased organic traffic to the site and greatly increased the number of actions from their Google My Business (GMB) listing.

Advertising for Healthcare Providers

In the healthcare field, you know you have plenty of competition no matter what your specialty may be.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Pay-Per-Click advertising utilizes paid promotions which appear in front of those people who are looking for your services.

Google Ads

With Google ads, you’ll have plenty of visibility in the search results, be able to track your ROI

Grow Your Practice

The more active your medical practice is on Google, the better off your overall digital marketing campaign will be.

Baseline Metrics

April 2017

Organic Traffic – 234 users, 267 Sessions

Page 1 Keywords Rankings – 3 Keywords 

 

April 2018

Organic Traffic – 426 users, 537 Sessions

Page 1 Keyword Rankings – 13 Keywords

GMB 2018 Totals

Google My Business has seen dramatic improvement. Clicks to the site have increased in 2019 vs 2018:
Calls to the client’s office from Google My Business have more than doubled in February 2019 vs 2018:
In February of 2018, we had a total of 237 actions:
  • 113 visits to the site
  • 46 requests for directions
  • 78 calls to the office

Fast forward to a year later – February 2019: by improving their local profile with citation building and cleaning and increasing local keyword rankings, we had an incredible surge in growth from Google My Business alone:

  • 154 visits to the site (36% increase YoY)
  • 42 requests for directions
  • 151 calls to the office (More than 100% increase YoY)

Rankings

Jan 2018 (Before New Site)
August 2018 (After site launch)

PPC

This was a fresh account built without any previous historical data, so we will jump straight into the initial strategy as a baseline.

PPC Strategy

The medical office did not previously run PPC campaigns, meaning there wasn’t any actionable historical data that we were able to use to build off of. We structured the account in a SKAGs format (single keyword ad group) to provide a clean campaign environment with clear, actionable data to work with. Our campaign strategy put a focus on broad match keywords (with the phrase and exact match having coverage) to quickly determine which terms are successful converting and to provide a steady stream of search queries that allowed us to improve accounts with new keyword sets to test.

Our strategy focused on continuous optimization for mobile to drive phone call activity to the offices from the campaigns (their main conversion action). Optimizing for mobile allowed us to strike a balance between cost per conversion and performance, driving further value to the account.

With regular A/B testing of ad creative copy and careful monitoring of the Quality Score metrics, we were able to dramatically increase account performance while improving ROI overall on the client’s PPC campaigns.

The Results

PPC saw a dramatic lift with a 57.80% increase in new users and 27.36% increase in sessions over 2017

We also saw a 30% lift in click activity over 2017

Which amounted to a healthy conversion rate bump over 2017

Conclusion

Despite facing challenges in a competitive market placed in an even more competitive geographic area and coping with all of the usual struggles that SEO faces with a new site launch, we were successful in driving significantly improved conversion activity and ultimately ROI for this client. Competitor analysis in this space was absolutely crucial as a gap analysis to truly understand how to drive value for the client in such a crowded, competitive space.

Driving users to pages that supported the client’s core competencies was a vital key to our success with this client’s SEO strategy, as was a clear citation strategy to support local visibility. The trifecta of technical SEO, optimized content and accurate NAP citations created a scenario where we saw significant conversion activity improve at an accelerated rate when held in comparison to traditional SEO programs/strategies.

As for PPC, driving success to this client’s campaign was completely dependent on clean account structure. Something that may seem small and insignificant in an overall strategy, but it truly set our team up for success with this campaign. Utilizing single keyword ad groups allowed our team to quickly spot ad sets that were not driving quality traffic that converted to the client’s site. It gave the team the opportunity to quickly spot keywords that were wasting spend and weren’t converting. And it allowed us to have clean historical data to spot keywords that should command more of the ad spend due to their success.

The second action item that clearly defined our success was also dependent on account structure; our ability to test efficiently was only supported by a clean account structure. Typical AdWords structures muddy the data, making it much more difficult to A/B test ad copy and determine which ad set and keyword combinations led to quality conversions for the client. Expediting our ability to clearly see data correlations, the account structure ultimately led to our success with this client by creating efficiencies at scale as far as testing different campaign variables was concerned.

In conclusion, we drove significant value to the account with multi-pronged strategies with both campaigns, leading to over 100% improvement in call conversions for SEO and a 54% improvement YoY in call conversions for PPC.

What to expect when you
work with us

Medical Practice Website Design

The website development team at Practice Ramp will work with you to create a custom website that speaks to your professionalism, expertise, achievements in the medical realm, and your personality. The most important keyword - custom.

Secure Online Forms

There may be extremely sensitive information being exchanged between you and your patients. To ensure that this information is not susceptible or fall into the wrong hands, we will make sure that all online form submissions are done in the most secure way possible so that you and your patients can rest easy knowing the information is safe and secure.

Mobile Responsiveness

It is necessary to ensure that websites are able to conform to the restrictions and parameters of the mobile screen. In this case, size definitely matters! Websites which are only designed to be viewed on a computer screen will certainly make an individual using their phone to access your website.

Links to Social Media

Staying in touch with your clients and having an active and engaged online social media presence is also factored into the search engine algorithms. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media outlets allow you to connect with clients.