What's the 20/80 rule in local SEO as it relates to health care organizations
-
Hello all,
I'm in charge of local SEO for a health care system that covers the entire state of Nebraska, with dozens of clinics all over the state, but mainly Omaha and Lincoln.
I'm trying to build a cohesive local strategy for our organization, and a big part of that is figuring out what are the 20% of the actions I could take that will get me 80% of the benefit.
Based on your experience as a local SEO specialist or ideally someone who does local SEO in a health care setting, what are the key things I should focus on?
I'm not new to local SEO (just new to health care). My guess would be to focus in on getting a good local page on our website for every clinic/location etc., and getting a good Google Page listing for each one as well. But I figured I'd seek out advice on this before I plunge ahead.
-
Hi Patrick,
As each of these is genuinely a forward-facing department with its own phone number, then listing each should not be regarded by Google as spam in any way. Many hospitals and colleges have numerous departments. It's true - this will lead to quite a cluster of markers on the map, but if customers zoom in, Google will spread them out. Hope this helps!
-
Thanks Miriam,
I'm just talking about our clinics that are front-facing departments. For example, Our newborn intensive care unit has its own name, phone number etc. and will soon have its own page on our website. But the physical address is officially still the address of the hospital as a whole.
I'm just worried we're going to have so many of these in one of our buildings it might not make sense or look spammy to list them all.
-
Hi Patrick!
I'm so happy you re-discovered this thread and that my answer seems to have been 'just what the doctor ordered'
Regarding your follow-up question, can you please define 'clinics' for me? Do you mean different departments like a dental clinic, a family wellness center, an eye clinic? Or, do you mean clinics like 'on Tuesdays, we hold a weight loss clinic in room B'? Want to be sure you are talking about actual, permanent, forward-facing departments in the hospital rather than something like a class.
I'll check back!
-
Hello Miriam,
For some reason I missed the notification that you responded. Your answer (I'm finally reading now several months later) is superb. I'm extremely thankful you took the time to write it. This is the EXACT advice I was looking for!
One follow up question: At the hospitals we have dozens of clinics, each with unique names and phone numbers (and different locations within the larger buildings) and all of whom we want to market. But will Google consider it spam to have 20 or more markers on a hospital building for example? Or will some simply not show up on the map? Or is that considered a bad user experience?
A belated thanks,
Patrick
-
Hi Patrick!
Great topic and here are the first 10 steps I would focus on:
-
Make a spreadsheet with the NAP+W of every office and every practitioner you are planning to market.
-
Check the spreadsheet to make sure no office or practitioner you are planning to market is sharing a phone number with any other entry on the spreadsheet.
-
Also check the spreadsheet to make sure that each office of practitioner you are planning to market has its own landing page on the website. In other words, the office in Lincoln has a dedicated website page, the office in Omaha has a dedicated website page and Dr. John Jones has his own landing page on the site, too. Be sure that each entry in your spreadsheet has a clear, unique URL associated with it (that's the W in your NAP+W).
-
Now, once you've ensured that there is a unique landing page on the website for each entity you are marketing, be sure that the content on those pages is unique and truly helpful. Major funding and effort should go toward this step, as content quality is going to play a key role in both organic and local rankings. Advise the client that they need to make a big spend here.
-
Now, re-read Google's guidelines, paying very close attention to the guidelines for Chains, Departments & Practitioners. Be sure you are current on Google's policies as they sound like they will be highly applicable to your client. Follow these guidelines to the letter.
-
Now, do a citation audit to discover existing citations, duplicates and any inconsistency problems. Document your findings. Make corrections where necessary.
-
Getting all of the above ducks in a row will get you where you need to be to start building a unique citation set for each entity (office or practitioner), referring to your spreadsheet to be sure you've got the right NAP+W for each. Build citations on all of the major platforms. You might choose to use a service for this step, like Moz Local or Whitespark, Bright Local, Yext, etc. Given the scope of the project, a paid service could end up saving valuable time.
-
Then, follow this up by building citations on healthcare-specific entities. You may find a service that builds healthcare citations, or you may choose to do this step manually.
-
Once you've got the content right and the citations developed, the next focus will be earning reviews. These are very important, given their impact on both rankings and conversions. Be aware of any laws governing Nebraska regarding healthcare advertising/solicitation and then create a viable strategy for earning reviews on the major platforms and medical platforms for each entity you are marketing
-
All of the above represents a normal strategy for most local businesses. You need to do these things, even if they are the same things your client's competitors will be doing. Step 10 is where this gets interesting and it's what I'd call the 'competitive difference maker'. As the marketer, you need to audit how the client's direct competitors are marketing themselves in Nebraska and figure out what they either aren't doing at all or aren't doing well that your client could do to make themselves stand out. This is where you will invest creativity, time and funding once you've got the basics covered.
I've seen advertising dollars spent foolishly in the medical field. For example, a one-horse town with just one hospital in it investing in billboards encouraging people to choose that hospital for ER care. If there's only one hospital in town, people don't have a choice and don't need to be convinced to go to the hospital when they break their arm, right? That's a case I've always remembered because it seemed so unnecessary.
By contrast, I saw something that appeared to be an app for an ER in a different region with several hospitals which apparently predicted wait-times for patients, making it easier for them to pick which hospital to go to for fastest service. I didn't look into the details of this fully, but I though the convenience it provided patients was an interesting idea. I wonder how it's working out.
What you need to find is something your client can do that is going to make them more useful, convenient, accessible or beneficial to patients than their competitors are. This step 10 is where your brilliance as an adviser really has a chance to shine!
Hope this helps and good luck with the big project!
-
-
I have worked for the health care hospital based in Florida while I was working for one agency and as far as my experience goes the basic game is pretty much the same. Get your business pages right, keep NAP consistent on all embassies and more.
The only advantage I took was by working with their PR agency. Their PR agency successfully established their brand name displayed on almost all local magazines. I just help the PR team to get the link from their magazines that looks natural (obviously for that I had to build a blog that contain the linkable content).
Links from quality places increase DA and overall authority of the website, right local SEO help me rank for most of the keywords with location pages.
Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Question About Replying to Yelp Reviews and SEO
Hi guys, I was wondering if responding to negative yelp reviews would in turn boost yelps seo ranking for my business name. I'm trying to direct attention away from yelp being that we've had little success having real clients get through the review filter. We unfortunately have nasty competition that seems to be leaving fake negative reviews incessantly.
Local Listings | | Dsv2 -
How to rank local keywords?
Hi guys, I have been enjoying here to be a part of the community. A simple question: I have some local low volume keywords and want to rank on 1 with all. I have set up pages according to the keywords such as "california plumbers" and page is /california-plumbers.html To rank these types of keywords I am doing local listing and adding these particular page instead of "home page". Am I doing right? Would classifieds and local listings are suffice to get these keywords on 1 spot of Google? What else can I do? Can you suggest me some queries to find "deep local directories or classified or other stuff whereby I can target my pages? Thank you in advance for ideas.
Local Listings | | ksmith882 -
Local Business Audit Help.....
Hello Every one, I recently got a big project for cleaning up some old listings (around 120 locations), witch means to claim and delete them, as you guys know most of the directory's don't give the option to delete the listing after you claim that. I am trying to figure out the approach for something like that.......considering time consuming and efficiency! any help will be appreciated!! Cheers
Local Listings | | steve2150 -
Why does Google only display a 3 pack of local business results for some terms?
We have seen a pattern in the Google UK SERPS where only three local listings are triggered for a query although they have a more local results to show but chose to only show three: Anyone else seen this? Anyone know why? Is there a magic number for them to trigger a six pack, does the data set they pull from need to be larger for them to trigger more local listings. "Solicitors Cambridge" = 3 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE "solicitors kent" = 3 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE#q=solicitors+kent "Solicitors Oxford" = 6 listings https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=solicitors+cambridge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=_vCwVc2mHMiAUZ-luZAE Any thoughts?
Local Listings | | highwayfive1 -
Multiple listing directory pages pointing back to the same local business profile
I've been tuning my SEO pages to cover cities, states, and metro areas for local businesses we have. I'm wondering if the same business showing up on multiple pages, because they can actually go out and service that area, has a negative impact on rankings. Does multiple pages on your site, pointing to the same content, hurt or help the ranking of either page?
Local Listings | | All-About-Labor0 -
Google Local Search
I have a customer who is frustrated that Google local search seems to favor businesses that are closer to the center of the city. He wants to be on the local results area on the SERP with his (keyword + city, state). His website is optimized, Google+ is using the keywords, more reviews than his competition and his MOZ local rating is 88.. It seems the only problem is his business is on the edge of town(same zip code). Google fills the local search area with businesses that are "downtown". Is there a way to overcome this?
Local Listings | | seomn0 -
How does one increase a site's Domain Authority?
We see that our Domain Authority is hovering around the same mark for over a year now. I have 2 questions - How important is DA? Does it affect your Google Page Rank? What would ideally be the things that we need to keep in mind if we are to increase our Domain Authority? Thanks
Local Listings | | prsntsnh0 -
How do URL's influence Google Rankings?
Hi There, I have a new client who wishes to rank in Google UK for 'Antique Fireplaces London'. Currently they rank 49th. They do not know their logins for Google Local (where they have 40+ positive reviews). And have very mess social activity (which i am trying to sort out). The domain is around 8 years old - website has just been redone (drupal) where a lot of the former SEO errors were corrected) but they seem to be outranked by much newer websites that have much lower domain authority and less inbound links. My client also has much more recognition in online trade magazines and newspapers than most of their competitors. Would buying some additional domains with the keywords they wish to rank for help? Or will this look dodgy to google? Any other quick tips to give them a boost?
Local Listings | | skehoe0