Case Study: Seattle based Hormone Doctor
Help New Patients Find You with SEO for Doctors
Meet a Seattle-area doctor who partnered with Fingerprint Marketing to increase her patient load by 1700% in 15 month using strategic SEO tactics. By aligning the doctor’s website with Google’s prioritization goals, we helped this doctor rank on the 1st page for 20 high-intent keywords across a dozen services, an achievement that drove qualified prospective patients to her website and dramatically increased her business’s profitability.
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SEO Outcomes for Doctors
Did you know that 78% of area-specific (local) Google searches result in a successful conversion? For doctors, that means that more Google search results get more patients into your office.
Google uses complex algorithms to show the most relevant, highest quality content for its search results in order to make it as easy as possible for users to find what they need. So, ranking with Google is a matter of (surprise, surprise) having high-quality content that’s as relevant as possible to the folks you want to be calling you for new appointments.
What does this mean for SEO?
No matter what it sounds like when the talking heads get going, SEO is not as confusing or as overwhelming as it’s made out to me. It’s just a matter of strategy and rock-solid execution.
95% of the doctor’s rankings come from 5 SEO activities.
- Keyword Research
- On-Page Optimization
- Content
- Site Structure
- Backlinks
Keyword Research for Doctors
Understanding the variety of ways that patients will use Google to search for healthcare is key to driving traffic. Some patients use generic searches for healthcare services, some patients will search for their symptoms, and some patients will deep-dive the DIY research and try to treat themselves.
To maximize a doctor’s visibility on Google and increase their qualified leads (more patients! More profit!), Fingerprint Marketing targets all of the variations a qualified patient might search.
There are 3 main ways that patients search for local doctors. While not comprehensive, the following categories generally cover most ailments and treatments you can think of:
Generic Doctor and Healthcare Searches
- Men’s health clinic Seattle
- Women’s health clinic Seattle
- Functional medicine Seattle
- Naturopath Seattle
- Optometrist Seattle
- Gastroenterology Seattle
Symptom-Based Searches
- Erectile dysfunction Seattle
- Weight loss Seattle
- Menopause Seattle
- Anti-aging Seattle
- Hormone therapy Seattle
- Hair restoration Seattle
- Thyroid doctor Seattle
Searches for Specific Treatments
- Gainswave Seattle
- TRT Seattle
- HGH Seattle
On-Page Optimization
It’s important to rank for each type of search a patient makes — which means a dedicated page for each ailment you treat and every treatment you provide. And once you have your dedicated pages, it’s time to optimize them. This is how you communicate your relevance to Google and rank more easily.
So where does Google look to determine your relevance?
- URL
- Meta Title
- Meta Description
- H1 tags
- H2 tags
Let’s take a deep dive into how this works.
First, Google “TRT Seattle.”
Notice how almost every website on the 1st page mentions the word “testosterone” and “Seattle”?
Now, check out how often we made the keyword we want the doctor to rank for more often across her URL, Meta Title, and Meta Description. Google has determined that the Seattle based Hormone Doctor’s page on testosterone replacement therapy in Seattle is the most relevant page available for the given search terms. This is SEO execution at its finest.
It’s also why you need a dedicated page for each treatment — we won’t be able to get this page to rank for any other treatment.
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Here’s another example:
Google “Functional Medicine Seattle.” the doctor ranks higher than her competition across the URL, Meta Title, and Meta Description for these common search terms.
Website Content for Doctors
Thanks to Fingerprint Marketing’s strategic SEO tactics, the doctor is rocking her profitability with relevant land pages. But she’s not done. To beat out her competition in Google she also needed to have better content than the other guy.
Why? Because Google wants to bring its users to the best resources and will prioritize its pages accordingly.
To determine the quality of content, Google relies on user engagement signals. Pages with more of these signals do better with Google’s user engagement metrics:
- Time spent on site
- Bounce rate
- Pages visited
- Overall engagement with the site
So, how do you signal good, quality content to score well with these metrics?
- Content that is longer than the competition generally has better user engagement metrics because more time is spent on the site!
- Content that includes structured data (lists, bullet points, tables, tables of contents, pictures, and embedded videos) generally has better user engagement metrics because users will be absorbing more, spending more time, and are less likely to bounce.
Let’s look at one of the doctor’s landing pages:
- 2393 Words
- 8 Embedded videos
- 5 Sets of bullet points
- 1 list
- 6 Quotes
- 16 Outbound citations
This page has almost every kind of structured data and is more like to keep users on the site longer and more actively than pages without this sort of content.
Site Structure
This one’s easy. Ready? Simply link to each landing page in the header and footer navigation menus.
What does this easy SEO tactic achieve?
- It transfers the power from your homepage (which is the most powerful page on any site) to your landing pages and ensures that Google is able to find and index your landing pages.
- It tells Google that these are the most relevant pages of your business.
- It makes it easier for your website’s visitors to navigate to where they want to get to on your site.
Backlinks for Doctors
Backlinks are the least important activity for ranking. Do they make a difference? Yes! Absolutely. But it’s important to optimize each of the other SEO actions before building backlinks. Why? Building backlinks to pages that aren’t optimized or that don’t have enough content to increase your user engagement metrics will not be likely to give you a return on your investment in SEO marketing.
So, let’s do the research, build out and optimize your landing pages, and then build backlinks. When we’re ready, here’s what we’ll do:
Social Backlinks
Social backlinks are backlinks from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram. We’ll make sure you have registered accounts on all of the social profiles we can think of, and then link back to your website.
Directory Sites
Directory sites are places like Yelp and GlassDoor, as well as niche, industry-specific sites such as HealthGrade.com. With registered accounts, we can backlink to your site from every relevant directory.
HealthGrade.com
Podcast and Blogger Outreach
When it’s go time, we’ll reach out to publications and podcasts in your niche. Then we’ll pitch your expert knowledge and reputable brand. But only when we’re ready to go with beautiful, relevant, optimized landing pages for your website — because that’s the first place people will go to learn more about you!
Bulletproof.com