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The client is one of  the largest independently owned network of orthopedic specialists in the state of Illinois, offering over 20 different locations and 100 different physicians. At the end of 2017, the group commissioned a new website to replace their old one. Today’s Business has been redesigning elements of the website since, including the /locations/ page in the spring of 2019.

The Challenge

For any multi-location brick and mortar service, the location parent page – or directory – provides a crucial function. Users are commonly looking for the most relevant or nearest location, and then looking how to either: 

• Learn more about that location and its offerings or
• Contact the location to secure services.

In terms of the marketing funnel, location pages represent one of the most actionable opportunities we have for generating leads. For the client, the page for each specific location was performing at a satisfactory level, but the directory page was suffering. At the time of assessment, the /location/ page was performing at a less than 1% conversion rate when serving as a landing page.

The Solution

Upon review of the design and the data, Today’s Business redesigned the location page to excel on mobile first. Since most people who are doing local searches tend to be utilizing a phone, this was deemed paramount. The search function was broken down into core categories, automatic location-finding was added, and a clean search bar was placed front and center. The company’s color scheme was augmented to bring in a more dynamic aesthetic as well. The search results were also overhauled, providing name, address and phone numbers, while emphasizing the core actions of calling or requesting an appointment. All of this combined to be a very high functioning search feature that was equally easy to use via mobile. For SEO and navigation purposes, each location’s name links off to their own specific pages.

The Results From The First 3 Months

167.8%

increase in Goal Completions

150.44%

increase in Conversion Rate

18.29%

increase in Organic Traffic as Landing Page

50.24%

decrease in Pages/Session

While normally we like to see an increase in Pages/Session for engagement, the opposite is true here. The function of the /locations/ page is meant to drive action, so seeing a high Pages/Session meant that the page wasn’t allowing people to find the location they were looking for effectively. By improving usability, people were more likely to convert.

Overall, the results post-launch of the /locations/ page showed the importance of strong and intuitive UX. Are you having trouble converting your users or find it difficult to navigate your site? Let us know and we will be happy to review.

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In developing a website, links are most commonly understood in their most basic function – they allow a user to get from one page to another. Consequently, website developers will include links to pages in the navigation menu, side widgets, footers, and occasionally within the text as well. But many don’t consider the effects internal linking may have on a page’s search ranking performance.

In addition to enabling a user to travel from one page to another, links will also help establish a hierarchy amongst pages, as well as spread link equity – most commonly sourced from the home page – throughout the website. By prioritizing links to one page over a similar page, SEO strategists can help search engines understand which pages are more important, especially when two pages overlap in topic.

Starting Point:

In the summer of 2017, Today’s Business took on a new medical client based in New Jersey. One of the first issues which needed to be addressed was why a core service page was no longer ranking, while a similar page was ranking but rather poorly. The two pages were very similar; page 2 was the service of page one, but with an additional element. Content, therefore, was very similar, as were header tags and title tags. There was no discernible difference in the quality of the content, nor were there other sites specifically linking to either page. Finally, the url structure was exactly the same, with the exception of a single word.

Further investigation of the site’s internal linking structure revealed the issue. Whether intentionally or not, page 2 was being linked to noticeably more.

In the chart above, we can see that through the navigation menu and footer, each page was being linked to on every page once. But only page 2 was being linked to by other methods. If fact, page 2 was one of the most linked-to pages on the website. Because of this, page 2 was being raised in the website hierarchy.

When it came to page rankings, the client was particularly focused on ranking for a specific query: the “service + nj.” But because the search engines were prioritizing page 2 for page 1’s service, these were the ranking results in the state of NJ at the end of September 2017:

Note: The rankings above were calculated by averaging out multiple similar variations of the core query, weighting certain query permutations based on search volume.

This was a big problem, since page 1’s service was one of the client’s most important. Today’s Business immediately went to work to amend the situation. We increased internal linking throughout the site, adding several thousand links. Pages that were linking to page 2 were replaced with links to page 1. We also highlighted eight core services within the side navigation widget. This linked to page 1, but not page 2.

Results:

As a result, the internal linking of the two pages resulted in the following:

As you can see, while both pages gained links, the number of links to page 1 increased significantly. While this did dissolve some of the link equity for the site, it also increased the contextualization search engines could have for the pages, since the anchor text being utilized was unique for each page.

With no other changes made to the content or title tags of the two pages, this was the following result for the search rankings of each page over the course of the next three months:

Note: The rankings above were calculated by averaging out multiple similar variations of the core query, weighting certain query permutations based on search volume.

By December, both pages were ranking on the first page of search results back-to-back for most locations in New Jersey. Consequently, we saw a projected click rate of 13.5%, rather than the normal ~ 7 percent often seen for a listing ranking at 6 or 7. The inclusion of both pages was a pleasant surprise, but not out of the realm of reality, since the pages were so similar.

Conclusion:

When it comes to having core service pages that experience significant overlap, our case study lends credence to the reality that your internal linking strategy matters. At Today’s Business, we consistently strive to let no detail go unnoticed. In this case, it paid off in spades. In part due to our internal linking strategy, our client saw its impressions finally crest the 100,000 impression mark. In a competitive market such as medicine, every facet of every page needs to be assessed and fine-tuned. It doesn’t happen as quickly as some may expect, but following proper SEO practices forms the foundation of a high performing website.

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In the current state of digital marketing SEO, content is a crucial component for improving a website’s relevance and domain authority within search engines. The challenge, however, is everyone in the know is following suit. This ever-increasing competition makes finding new strategies for higher search rankings a continuous challenge.

Starting Point

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, a stripped-down form of HTML, JavaScript, and caching designed for Google. It’s main purpose, as its name so aptly describes, is to provide a clean, minimal, and fast mobile UX that speeds up load times appreciably. Released early in 2016, the format was initially widely adopted by publisher websites, big and small. Today it has become impossible to search for a news story through Google on mobile without seeing results with the AMP lightning bolt affixed on the result’s left side.

AMP has been slow to catch on outside of the world of publisher websites, but as new plug-ins have begun to appear within content management systems, Today’s Business was intent on experimenting with AMP’s capabilities. Accelerated pages looked to be getting preferred treatment in search results, and the opportunity to provide a client with increased traffic was worth the time to experiment.

Today’s Business chose to implement AMP on the blog posts of a local ophthalmology business, with over two years of monthly posts. Pages would be left untouched, since they would require a full redesign. While location pages were optimized and 404 errors were fixed, nothing was done to blog posts on the website besides the creation of AMP versions. There was also no evidence of drastic change in domain authority between the test period and prior. (note: the website was moved to https at the very beginning of the prior control period)

Results

The AMP experiment was initialized with a soft-implementation at the end of February 2017 and then paused after two days. Once satisfied with the configuration, AMP was officially activated on the ophthalmology website on March 6th. The first thing that was monitored was the speed of post indexing by Google.

Indexing Timeline:
• 1 Week: 30% of posts indexed
• 2 Weeks: 50% of posts indexed
• 3 Weeks: 57.5% of posts indexed
• One Month: 90% of posts indexed

Based on the stats above, Google is not indexing AMP-ed posts for small businesses as rapidly as it would a publisher’s website. This is not unexpected, but notable when planning a strategy. Next, Today’s Business turned to analyzing and quantifying the impact AMP may have on blog posts.

For analysis, a year-old post about indicators for needing a new eyeglass prescription was chosen for comparison. Since its publication, the post had routinely been one of the most popular ever published on the website, and consequently would serve as a good barometer. After one and a half months, the performance of the blog post was as followed.

During the Test Period:
• Approximately 45% of all sessions for the post were the /amp/ version
o 27% of sessions came from desktop
o 19% of sessions came from traditional mobile formatting
o 9% of sessions came from tablets
• Compared to the previous initial period, the /amp/ version of the post:
o Saw 100% increase of sessions over previous time-period
o New Users increased 65.45%
o Bounce Rate, Pages/session, and Avg. Session Duration all had statistically insignificant declines

What was also interesting was only a small minority of sessions came from the local area. Instead, 56 regions of the world had sessions, including (in order of most to least):
• England
• New York Metropolitan
• Manila
• Ontario

Today’s Business also compared the performance of all posts to the equivalent previous period for mobile. Branded search queries and posts that were published after the beginning of the test period were excluded.

• 88% increase in post Sessions overall
• 67.75% more sessions from the /amp/ version of the posts alone

Since the initial comparison, a full two-month period has passed since the majority of posts were indexed as accelerated mobile pages. One last comparison was done to compare the performance of /amp/ blogs vs. traditional blogs, as part of the website as a whole. All traditional versions of the posts were included (mobile, desktop, and tablet).

/Amp/ blogs, April 6th to June 6th
• 4.03% of total impressions
• 12.09% of total clicks
• 6.4% CTR 199.5% higher CTR than average page on site
• Average Position 11, 44.52% better than average page on site
• 6.17% of total site sessions
• Bounce Rate 80.17% worse than average page on site
• Pages/session 38.79% worse than average page on site

Non /Amp/ blogs, April 6th to June 6th
• 10.83% of total impressions
• 17.75% of total clicks
• 3.5% CTR, 63.98% higher CTR than average page on site
• Average position 44, 128.7% worse than average page on site
• 8.78% of total site sessions
• Bounce Rate 68.07% worse than average page on site
• Pages/session 28.86% worse than average page on site

Conclusion

In keeping as many variables off the table as possible, Today’s Business has been able to glean some pretty interesting data. The initial results since implementing AMP show notable increases in clicks, impressions, and particularly average position. Blogs don’t have quite the same local optimization found on pages of a small business, which explains some of the difference found in traditional blog performance. However, the AMP blog pages are not only ranking better than their traditional counterparts, but better than the average performance of the website.

The remaining crux is engagement. Bounce rate and pages per session of blogs are typically worse than service pages on non-publisher websites, but because of how much less you can traditionally do within AMP formatting, it restricts the ability to create more engaging style elements. Before assuming basic formatting will suffice, be prepared to spend time strategizing additional amp-friendly elements to bring consumers further down the conversion funnel.

How Google decides to incorporate AMP in the future remains to be seen, but for now, the data indicates that AMP will improve visibility and those who can create quality actionable elements within AMP-ed posts will reap the benefits.

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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.

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Learn more about how Today’s Business can help you with SEO alongside our wide range of Digital Advertising services. Contact us today to get started!LET’S TALK ABOUT WORK

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The digital and social needs of clients differ tremendously based on various factors that include, among other considerations, type of industry, goals, and size of company. One of the things that Today’s Business does effectively is demonstrate the ability to optimize both digital and social efficiently for clients, regardless of the clients’ size.

Starting Point

When a local medical client tasked Today’s Business with designing a responsive website, optimizing its social accounts, and engaging in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Search Engine Management (SEM), Today’s Business was up to the challenge of establishing a legitimate digital presence for this local client.

When this local medical client first enlisted the service of Today’s Business, they were operating at a very basic level in a digital sense. The website lacked responsiveness, social posting was sporadic and unfocussed, and SEO and SEM were services that were unfamiliar or foreign. Today’s Business leveraged all of these aspects of digital marketing in order to deliver results in the form of traffic, leads, searches, and new users to the client’s site.

Results

The results for this local medical client came quickly and definitively. The goal of attracting new users and a larger volume of traffic to the client’s site in order to grow the company and increase overall company awareness was clearly achieved by employing the aforementioned digital strategies in concert with each other. Below are the stats that highlight the improvement.

• Increase in overall traffic by 84.63% (4,710 vs. 2,551)
• Increase in over new users by 88% 3,716 vs. 1,967
• Increase in website leads 153%
• Increase Goal conversion rate by 37%
• Increase in social media traffic by 129%
• Increased in social media new users by 104%
• Increased average session duration from social media by 113% (3:26 vs. 1:36)
• Increased paid traffic by 242%
• Increase in paid leads by 50%
• Increased in non-branded search queries by over 400%
• Increased in non-branded search traffic by 308%
• Increased average position ranking by 352%

The above stats present one overarching narrative, while also telling shorter stories about the client’s digital performance. Numbers that stand out are increases in overall traffic (84.63%), website leads (153%), social media traffic (129%), paid traffic (242%), non-branded search queries (400%), non-branded search traffic (308%), and average position ranking (352%). These increases are important to highlight because not only are they substantial increases, but they also encompass critical aspects of digital performance.

One area that saw multiple increases is traffic. Traffic is important because it means the company is driving more and more people to the desired target through whichever channel the client chooses to emphasize. An increase in overall traffic means there is more traffic combined from ALL channels heading to the target (usually a company home page or landing page). An increase in social media traffic means that there was an increase in the people being directed to the page from or as a result of social media. This is a direct consequence of having optimized social. An increase in paid traffic means more people are visiting the desired page as a result of a paid campaign or paid advertisements. This is a positive because it allows the client to gauge its ROI based on the money spent on the campaign. Finally, non-branded search traffic means an increase in the people visiting a target page as a result of searching for keywords related to the service the company provides. This is a hallmark of great SEO when people searching for related services see the client’s page and access it easily.

Other important areas that improved dramatically are leads, search queries, and position ranking. An increase in leads means more opportunities to convert these users to being potential customers in the future as well as more brand exposure. Increases in non-branded search queries and average position ranking again denote deployment of a successful SEO strategy. More appearances and better position in search are obviously a contributing factor to the increase in traffic and leads.

Conclusion

Overall, Today’s Business successfully implemented a revamp of this local medical client’s website, social, SEO, and SEM strategies. These small stories of success communicated by the stats ultimately combine for the larger narrative of successfully helping this small, local medical client compete in the digital age. This client is now reaping the rewards of Today’s Business’s optimized digital strategy, helping them take their business to the next level.

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It is always the goal, especially for a physician enterprise group, to maximize appointments made and continually bring in new patients. This strategy, carried out digitally, was slower to catch on in the healthcare industry, but now is integral to attaining profitable growth as a practice.

Starting Point

There are many digital tools that can be utilized to buttress the ROI of a physician enterprise group, as it relates to driving appointments and converting those initial appointments into repeat patients. One of the most effective ways to do this is to engage in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is one of the single most important services a physician enterprise group can engage in. This is true because of the large number of pages dedicated to the countless different services, doctors, and locations in a physician enterprise group.

In 2015, Today’s Business developed a comprehensive plan to increase traffic to a physician enterprise group’s location pages throughout the website by implementing a backlinking campaign to not only correct current backlinks, but also to develop new backlinks that have increased the site’s Authority, which also provided new avenues for leads. This plan encompassed a large aspect of the SEO strategy that Today’s Business employed.

Results

The below table shows the traffic to different location pages of the physician group:

As can be seen, both the sessions and new users spiked starkly as time progressed. Additionally, over 8 months, there were 256 appointment forms submitted, an extremely positive development. This increase to location pages was a result of a concerted effort to send people to these specific pages, which is important because the user is then on the exact page they want to be, as opposed to just a more general page.

Another aspect of the offsite strategy was being able to locate and correct all business listings and citations that were directed to an individual properties’ website and redirect them to point to individual location pages. This is important because it presents the user with more relevant results and increases the odds of an appointment and potential conversion. By developing that unified offsite strategy, Today’s Business has been able to increase traffic and impressions to the newly formed physician enterprise group’s locations website.

Below is a chart demonstrating that increase in organic traffic:

By committing to this offsite strategy, the physician enterprise group saw their organic traffic increase pretty impressively. The primary reason for this being that the group’s pages would appear more frequently and more favorably in search results on a site like Google. With more access to users via search results, it is not surprising organic traffic steadily increased.

The last aspect of this offsite, SEO strategy is focusing on keywords. By being sure that pertinent keywords are included on and linked to on various offsite pages, this guarantees more results for these pages when a user searches Google using any one of those keywords. Put a different way, anyone searching on Google for a physician or practice in a certain area will almost certainly get the appropriate location from this physician enterprise group because Today’s Business ensured the proper keywords were used on the proper pages.

Below is one final chart highlighting the improvement in keyword rankings:

As can be seen, more and more keywords were drawing results in the top positions. This is undeniably important in driving more traffic and, ultimately, more conversions because users search on Google will normally not look past the first page of results. As of mid-November, there were 54 different keywords that would draw a #1 position on a Google search of a page from the physician group. In addition, there are 116 keywords that rank on the first page. And, maybe most importantly, keywords ranked #1 pertain to the physician enterprise group’s practice, brand name, and doctors – which all met the clients’ goals of what they wanted to primarily be ranked for.

Conclusion

With all this considered, Today’s Business completely revamped this physician enterprise group’s offsite business listings through an effective SEO strategy, focused on backlinking and keywords. Through more robust search results of relevant location pages, organic traffic has seen a large uptick and, in turn, more appointments have been made. This portends more accessibility and an overall increase in revenue for the physician enterprise group. By allowing Today’s Business to optimize their digital presence, this medical group is well positioned to succeed in the future.

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