Service:
SEO promotion
Project:
Clinic of cosmetology, dermatovenereology and urology.
Period:
August 2019 – present time
Goal:
Provide a growth of search traffic and an increase of incoming requests
Results
- Organic search traffic was increased by more than 54 times:
- The number of keywords by which the website is ranked increased from 469 to 5660
- The number of requests for consultations increased by 82 times.
Initial data on the project:
Client: Medical Center.
Target audience: Adult men and women who need the services of a cosmetologist, dermatologist or urologist.
The website had a complete lack of organic traffic.
Before our cooperation the search traffic from Google looked like this:
Сlients who are trying to promote themselves on the Internet usually face a common problem: they have a website with one request per month and no profit.
Nevertheless, the solid age of the domain (13 years 7 months 18 days) is a positive factor.
Project issues
A new medical center requested us for website promotion. Its advantages were high-class modern equipment and experienced staff. And its disadvantage was that the clinic was a new player in the market of medical and cosmetic services. The client’s interest was not only a promotion of the clinic’s services, but also a brand development.
SEO for a medical website on Google and other search engines is a quite complex process. The niche is specific and has a specialized terminology and high competition. You have to compete for top positions in search results not only with other clinics, but also with medical portals, aggregators, and personal pages of doctors. In this particular case, the client’s competitors are also beauty parlor and private cosmetology cabinets. Another point that complicates a promotion is the high cost of injection and hardware cosmetology, while such services are little known to a wide range of users.
At the beginning of our work, we also faced a typical problem of medical websites, that informational, mixed and commercial semantics wasn’t clearly divided.
Project stages
Step 1: Website Technical Analysis
Analyzing the website, we found many typical technical errors that should be fixed first of all. But we know by experience that these errors are only the part of the complete absence of organic traffic on the site.
In addition, we found several other critical issues:
- the content of pages consisted of keywords with specialized terminology and looked more like Wikipedia texts;
- the metadata was optimized using the names of drugs or devices for procedures;
- the structure of the services pages did not draw the eye (the USP wasn’t showed off well,and there was no call to action);
- the site did not contain useful information for users;
- the region for promotion was selected incorrectly. It was explained by the fact that the client planned to attract customers for complex beauty procedures from other regions. But in spite of this, the website is better to promote locally (Local SEO) in the first turn. And only after the clinic gets positive reputation, we can start the promotion of the website to other regions;
- there were no customer reviews, while it is a decisive element in this sphere.
An example of incorrect optimization of h1 heading tag:
Working with medical projects, we often run into a situation when a client insists that information on the website should be given only in the format they want, and the provided services should be called strictly as they indicated. When a SEO specialist tries to explain that information should be presented in a format that is convenient and understandable for potential customers, clients often refuse to do it. Usually they argue that it is unprofessional in the context of medical ethics.
This project was no exception. We managed to solve this problem by comparing the frequency of keywords that the client insisted on with keywords that users are looking for clinic services.
As a result, we reached a compromise by creation of an additional field under the h1 heading tag,when the official (professional) title was implemented as a well visible text without h1.
There is the result we obtained:
Step 2: Competitor Analysis
We found all the possible competitors in the search results and analyzed their promotion strategies. Competitive analysis was performed for each speciality of the clinic separately. Based on the results of the analysis, we found several points that we should take into account when optimizing the site:
- The promoted website is a local private clinic. The main clients are residents of the region and the city. And that means that keywords are geo targeting and focused on a consumer interest. When people search for regional keywords (using a toponym), they are probably already interested in coming to the clinic somewhere nearby and paying for medical services. They look through various websites and try to choose the best one. In medical projects, regional keywords are more efficiently converted into leads!
- An appointment is most often made by phone or through the form on the website. This means that contact forms should be logical and clear, without extra fields. Clients who already know about the services that the clinic provides, it is more comfortable not to go to the website, but to make a call. Although the first contact was online, through organic search or advertisement. We always recommend clients to encourage customers to sign up through the website, by implementing a bonus program or offering discounts.
- There are several factors the patients consider while choosing a clinic. First of all, it is the design and content of the web page that the visitor goes to. Reviews, previous consumer experience, the reputation of the clinic and individual specialists are also important. But the most important thing for the patient is to be able to imagine what the result will be after the procedure. That’s why we immediately recommended our client to implement a “before and after” block on the service pages:
For the semantic core we have collected the most specific and targeted keywords. For example:
- to make an appointment with a doctor + activity area;
- to make an appointment for + service name;
- to do + service name;
- clinic of cosmetology;
- clinic of injection cosmetology.
Long-tail keywords included such words as price, cost, toponym (city), appointment, consultation, inexpensive.
For SEO promotion of medical services, it is necessary to use conversion keywords and get rid of informational ones. It is rational to use the informational keywords only in blog articles if you plan to drive information traffic. You can also implement the “knowledge graph” section as a reference book of medical terms.
An example of the incorrect building of semantic core:
We started our work with optimization of the cosmetology and injection services as they were a client’s priority. Some non-priority services, for example, urology and venereology, were optimized according to the template. At the moment, these areas have not yet been fully worked out. Optimization of these areas is in our plans for the near future.
Step 3: Register with Google My Business
We registered the website in Google My Business, because entering certain keywords, search engines will probably show a map. So we don’t want to give this traffic a miss.
We worked through reviews, patients’ questions with administration’s answers in the company’s cards, and also added photos of the clinic:
Step 4: Internal optimization
The next step was to optimize the service pages with useful selling content that meets the intent of the user. Each page was provided with blocks that may build the patient’s confidence, such as
- video materials(if any);
- photo before and after;
- specialist card.
In order to form an extended snippet in the search results, we implemented the FAQ block with micro-markup.
Here is the results:
Also we added some block with the benefits of the cosmetology procedure and its result:
When all blocks focused on increasing the user’s interest are optimized, the next step will be to implement a price block. The task of a SEO specialist is to optimize it for keywords with a “price, cost” tail:
Thanks to the text optimization of the categories, at the beginning of March the website’s ranking was improved for a number of keywords. And by the middle of April a lot of keywords (whole or part) took TOP 1-3 positions in search engines.
TIPS: medical content is expensive, because it can’t be created by a regular copywriter. The required number of characters does not meet a standard of 1500–2500 characters. But it is professional and authoritative content along with commercial elements that can drive organic traffic to the site. Therefore, text and visual content for a medical site is not something to save money on.
The result is an increase in requests due to high-quality content and optimization:
Results
Results achieved to date:
The website visibility was improved:
The number of keywords by which the website is ranked increased from 469 to 5660!
Free search traffic increased:
Google Analytics data (analyzed period is from 01 May, 2019 till 31 October, 2020)
Targeted traffic to the site increased by more than 16 times per month:
From 191 to 3 180 visitors!
Update from 02 September, 2021:
Organic search traffic was increased by more than 54 times:
From 191 to 10 501 visitors
The website gets more organic traffic from search engines rather than from contextual search ads:
The number of completed goals for sending the “Book a consultation” form increased by more than 21 times:
Update from 02 September, 2021:
The number of completed goals for sending the “Book a consultation” form increased by more than 82 times:
Conclusions:
For the entire period of work we have achieved an excellent result:
- the private clinic became one of the leaders in the region;
- keywords on the priority areas of the clinic are well ranked and converted:
- there has been a positive dynamics of search traffic volume throughout the entire period of cooperation. There was a slight drop from March to May of 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the traffic was quickly stabilized thanks to constant work on improving the website:
Recommendations:
What should be considered when promoting cosmetology and medical services:
1. There is seasonality. Many procedures and operations are not recommended to do during the summer period (except the stomatological services) and patients know this. This has a negative effect on traffic.
You can see this on the chart:
So you can see that summer is a good time for active promotion of such websites. If all the work is done correctly and professionally, you will be able to successfully compete with other market players in the high season.
2. The site of cosmetology services needs high-quality and customized images.
3. It is necessary to prove an expertise by writing articles in specialized media and telling about the participation of the clinic and its employees in specialized events:
4. Provide exhaustive information about the specialists of the clinic:
5. Use reviews and certificates, because it is a convincing and often decisive argument for potential customers:
Attention to detail on the website and the implementation of all commercial factors will help to significantly increase conversions, visibility in search engines and the number of feedbacks. Constant and continuous improvement of the website always gives worthwhile long-lasting results.
I know this for sure, as an SEO specialist with more than 5 years of experience and successful promotion of 9 medical projects..
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