We ordered an SEO procedure for the clinic. And what is the result? Overcrowded KPIs by 768%
The pharmaceutical segment and healthcare in general is a big bite even for an experienced marketer. Customers and visitors to web portals place a great deal of trust in the information they receive. This is especially true in the case of the largest network of outpatient clinics in the country. However, its name will remain anonymous for the purposes of this case study.
The goal of our cooperation or SEO diagnosis
The primary goal was to increase the brand's visibility in organic search and also to increase traffic to the main network website. During the six months of cooperation we had to increase organic traffic by the already mentioned 30%. We cannot be specific, but it is in the order of tens of thousands of visits per month.
As a secondary goal, together with the UX team, we wanted to maximize the conversion rate for one of the following three goals:
- making an appointment with a doctor at one of the clinics,
- an online appointment via video call from the comfort of home,
- click through to the pharmacy's e-store to the relevant category or straight to a specific medication.
In the pharmaceutical segment, the well-known Czech proverb "measure twice, cut once" applies. Since August 2018, when Google updated its algorithm and ranking criteria, the utmost care and expertise is required when making any major changes to the website. This is because the so-called Medic Update, and therefore the aforementioned Google update, can knock a website to the bottom of the search engine rankings if you make the wrong decisions and lose valuable traffic.
Basic pillars of SEO strategy. How to get relevant traffic?
The collaboration was preceded by a series of audits, analyses and debriefs with the marketing and development team. It was a big investment in data and strategy, but it paid off very quickly. What did we figure out?
- We uncovered a number of problems and opportunities for improvement within technical SEO.
- We made the maximum out of the link profile by redistributing links and optimizing anchor text.
- We identified key opportunities in different areas and quantified their potential.
- We obtained the right data for further decision-making, strategy development and, above all, for the executive team itself, including a specific publishing plan.
To achieve the primary goal (i.e. a 30% increase in organic traffic), we chose two main tactics:
- to address treatment areas in terms of their location and to focus on the most sought-after ones. In practice, this meant optimizing the site for local queries such as "dental emergency plzeň", "mammography brno", etc. See the visualization below.
- Target the most searched diseases, where at the same time there is not much competition in SEO, i.e. create expert and comprehensive articles in the content section.
Illustrative example of approximate monthly searches (Google and List at the same time) for specific fields of treatment in different cities of the country
Local queries for treatment fields
The search pattern with local queries has less potential in terms of search volume in the Czech Republic, but the conversion rate for these queries is one of the highest. Meanwhile, our client had a perfect starting position for this search pattern. In the words of the marketer, it was such a "low-hanging fruit". 🙉
We ensured that the site didn't create duplicates and pages that would cannibalize on each other over time. Together with the client, we established a process for creating content for the clinics' disciplines (supporting SEO and PR at the same time), their headlines and metadata. With linkbuilder, we sourced links from local magazines, city websites and other sources.
By taking effective steps, we more than tripled our average weekly traffic and the upward trend is still holding.
Expert, trustworthy and quality articles on disease treatment
Building content with a solid SEO foundation is truly a long run... Results are definitely not seen immediately. In our case, it preceded detailed analysis, prioritization with the client, and careful data-driven copywriting.
Through keyword analysis, we nominated a total of 5,701 relevant keywords with at least 20+ monthly searches (on Google and Seznam at the same time). Among other things, we classified these terms according to the specific disease or health problem that the client is competent to address. According to the coarsest sieve, we found more than 600 of them.
> TIP: In our team, we often follow the so-called Pareto 80/20 rule. This principle also works well in the case of the analysis mentioned above. Approximately 80% of the estimated traffic can come from just 20% of the topics (specifically 135 disease articles). And of course we focused on these. ☝️
Together with the experts, we have classified these diseases according to specialisations in the form of treatment fields. In consultation with the client, we have recorded 35 specialties (from general medicine to dermatology to surgery) and have nominated suitable medical authors for each.
Based on the various inputs, we thus defined:
- traffic potential and current positions for diseases,
- the competitiveness of the queries (= difficulty),
- business priority for the client,
- capacity of experts,
- trendiness.
Based on this data, we created the perfect publishing plan. A precise "schedule" for the broader marketing team as well as the doctors themselves. We know when potential patients are most likely to be concerned about what issues, and we create useful content for them that we communicate through various online marketing channels - not just through SEO.
But now let's get back to our primary goal. That was "to get free traffic from search engines" and subsequent customer acquisition, in this case through expert and comprehensive articles from doctors. And what was the result?
Traffic to the content section increased by an average of 2000% per week and we are literally playing in the top league in the main fields when compared to our competitors. We've caught up with the biggest magazines, competing clinics and professional forums. We're getting featured snippets (i.e., zero positions, most often in the form of a box, to increase brand visibility and CTR) and our articles are reaping great success.
> TIP: Featured snippets are a frequently mentioned and sought after topic. However, for queries related to treatment, prevention or symptoms, null positions appear relatively frequently. We knew about this opportunity in the early days and focused on it. Out of the original 22 featured snippets, we and our client got a whopping 502!
This is because people spontaneously share articles on social media and in various corners of the internet. In addition to traffic, we get natural backlinks. More than 50% of users spend more than a minute on an article and the bounce rate is only 8.7%. Secondary goals (doctor's appointments, online examinations or clicks through to the pharmacy's e-shop) are performing well above expectations.
The recipe for success is not a prescription. It is freely available!
Clichés like "content is king" aside. But the truth remains that success is primarily driven by perfectly prepared content supported by linkbuilding. In the case of articles, we put maximum emphasis on EAT (English acronym for Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness), by which Google focuses especially on pages promoting products or services that affect users' health, finances and safety, among other things (from insurance companies to banking to just clinics).
Only the most authoritative people commented on diseases. The authors of the articles are doctors and experts on the subject. They naturally try to give their best advice and share as much of their knowledge as possible. All of this with quality input from SEO consultants and subsequent revision by our copywriters creates exactly the type of content that not only Google, but especially the target audience will appreciate. The various technical tweaks to the site, the aforementioned linkbuilding and PR activities also play a big part in its success.
Thanks to close cooperation, the client's ambitions and the great commitment of the people involved in the project, we certainly exceeded all expectations. Because, as mentioned in the title of this article, we exceeded the original KPI, i.e. to increase organic traffic by 30% thanks to SEO, by 768%!
Did covid-19 help us in traffic?
Yes, it helped partially. However, the collaboration started after the first wave of the pandemic and KPIs were built with the next expected waves in mind. In addition to the above techniques, we were most helpful to the clinic in the covid-19 disease segment.
We optimized landing pages and their text to truly serve as a quality source of information for people. Again, without our help, the client had no chance to perform, as prior to our collaboration during the first wave of the pandemic (March-May 2020), the client had virtually zero "covid traffic". With our help, he has tapped into this potential virtually 100%.
In order to be as fair as possible to the client, we report on the development of "covid traffic" and its share of the total on a regular basis, in addition to various views, figures and graphs. Fortunately, the proportion of "covid traffic" is still declining (the pandemic is, at least at the time of writing this case study, in a recessionary phase), but total organic clinic traffic is rising dramatically upwards. Currently, covid makes up only a few percent of attendance. And we're actually glad for that.
>I am glad that I could be a part of such a success story together with other colleagues. We are far from finished - in the drawer, among other things thanks to the initial investment in analysis, we have a number of bags and ideas that we are planning to release for production soon. And we're going to spice up that growth. But more on that in the next case study. Finally, I would like to thank our team - especially SEO consultant Mark, Terka and Verča from the copy team and two linkbuilders Anet and Sabča for their great cooperation and demonstrable results!