Preface

In the digital age, all medical practices heavily rely on search results in order to facilitate new patients in discovering the practice and to aid returning patients in making appointments. Showing up in Google Search results is a great way to stimulate growth in both those areas. However, ensuring that the practice shows up presents its own unique challenge. That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) becomes important.

 

Starting Point

Today’s Business first began SEO work on an eye doctor practice a little over one year ago. The challenge Today’s Business was asked to tackle was to attempt to take an already successful multi-physician ophthalmologist and make sure the practice was easily found when users performed searches related to eye care. The hope was that an optimized search presence could help take this practice to the next level.

A big emphasis of the campaign was placed on goal conversions when beginning SEO services for this client. Conversions, in this case, included increasing traffic, appointment requests, and phone calls via organic traffic. All these conversions relate to the overall goal of making more people aware of and seeking out the multi-physician ophthalmologist’s services.

Results

When checking in on these conversions and other metrics one year later, it is obvious the campaign has been a resounding success. The results place numbers from December 2015 and December 2016 side-by-side for a direct, one-year comparison.

Acquisition is the first aspect to be examined. The results are below:

 

Acquisition

  • Sessions – 1,981 Sessions (74.67% of Traffic) compared to 339 (59.16%)
  • Increase of 487.37%
  • New Users- 1,257 (72.28%) compared to 283 (62.00%)
  • Increase of 344.17%
  • Bounce Rate – 33.26% vs. 44.54%
  • -14.10%

As can be seen, there was a huge increase in sessions (487.37%) and new users (344.17%) compared to the previous year. This is hugely important because this directly quantifies the amount of users and new users visiting the ophthalmologist’s site, giving the client more opportunity to convert those visitors into patients. Additionally, a 14.1% reduction in the bounce rate from the site means a lot more users are spending meaningful time on the site.

Next to be discussed is the hugely important category of conversions:

Conversions

  • All Goals Conversion Rate
  • Conversion Rate 20.33% vs. 15.04% (Increase in 35.15%)
  • Total Goals Completion
  • 403 vs. 51 (Increase in 690.20%)
  • Organic Traffic % of Goal completions
  • 86% vs. 59.30% (Increase 28.49%)
  • Number of Organic Goal Completions
  • 403 vs. 51 (Increase 692.16%)
  • Organic Request and Appointment Requests
  • 21 vs. 2 (950% increase)
  • 381 vs. 80 Phone calls from organic traffic
  • Social Media brought 102 phone calls (Not Tracked in 2015)

The above is where the real value in Today’s Business’s services can be observed. The client experienced a 35.15% increase in conversion rate and most impressively, a 692.16(!)% increase in organic goal completions and a 950(!)% increase in organic request and appointment requests! By these measures alone, the campaign is a staggering success! More traffic, more appointment requests, and more phone calls (derived from organic traffic) all directly result in more patients to the practice and, in turn, increased revenue.

 

The analysis can be delved into deeper by examining which landing pages users were sent to and the associated performance. Those stats are below:

 

Landing Page

  • Homepages: 1,931 vs. 656 (Increase in 194%)
  • Unique Page Views: 1,475 vs. 418 (252.87%)
  • About Us: About Us 1,026 vs. 7 (14,557.14%)
  • Unique Page Views: 856 vs. 7 (11,128.57%)
  • Contact Us: 718 vs. 133 (439.85%)
  • Unique Page Views: 592 vs. 105 (463.81%)
  • /procedures: 269 vs. 156 (72.44%)
  • Unique Page Views 228 vs. 126 (80.95%)
  • /blog: 158 of which 148 were new users (No Blog in 2015)
  • /Conditions: 111 vs. 67 (65% increase)
  • Unique Page views 102 vs. 58 (75.86%)

When considering the above, it can be seen that there was an increase in views across the board for all landing pages. Pages that saw some of the most impressive increases were the “Contact Us” page, the “About Us” page, and the homepages. All three of these pages are immensely important to the client’s goals because they involve educating the consumer about the practice, as well as setting up appointments.

Finally, Today’s Business even saw increases in traffic on specific devices. The results are below:

 

Device Traffic Breakdown

  • Desktop: 1,723 vs. 314 (431%)
  • Unique Users: 1,106 vs. 263 (320%)
  • Mobile: 768 vs. 199 (285.93%)
  • Unique Users: 511 vs. 153 (233.99%)
  • Tablet: 164 vs. 50 (228%)
  • Unique Users: 123 vs. 39 (215.38%)

Growth across all devices is obviously very important and encouraging. But, one important aspect involving these increases is that of mobile. More and more people are using mobile devices to search online, with the health field being no exception. As a result, it is very positive to see the gains made on mobile (285.93%) because that means the ophthalmologist is reaching new audiences and that the site is mobile-optimized.

Conclusion

The work Today’s Business performed for this multi-physician ophthalmologist speaks for itself. In just a single year, Today’s Business’s expert SEO strategy enabled the practice to experience excellent growth across the board in sessions, new users, conversions, and views. All of these things are extremely important to growing the patient base and boosting revenue – goals of all medical practices. This multi-physician ophthalmologist is now poised to better capitalize on its market as it begins to progress through the New Year.