• I want-to-know
• I want-to-go
• I want-to-do
• I want-to-buy

Those four moment types and how to reach users have really become the basis for everything Google does with Google Ads today. Look at Discovery Ads and Performance Max. Both of those campaign types are all about reaching users when they are in one of the four moments above.

With that being said, we were skeptical of Google’s push to micro-moments for a long time. It wasn’t until we found an opportunity to capture one of those micro-moments with a client that we became true believers.

We are fortunate to work with a leading eating disorder recovery center with locations in California, Alabama, and Missouri. In 2020, they saw an explosion of raw leads from digital advertising, growing by 1,611%.

Additionally, MQLs grew at an exponential 800%.

The following year, they saw the same type of growth. Raw leads grew by 1,469% and MQLs grew by 185% in 2021. That massive jump in the number of raw leads was caused by the capture of a micro-moment within their website.

THIS TREATMENT CENTER
IMPROVED THEIR ADMITS BY 300%
USING DIGITAL ADS. LEARN HOW.

How We Used This ‘I Want To Do’ Micro Moment To Grow Leads For This Treatment Center

In the search query data we were seeing from Google Search campaigns, we noticed a theme of people searching for things such as “anorexia survey,” “bulimia quiz,” and “how do I know if I have an eating disorder.” This treatment center was quick to capitalize on this data and created an eating disorder survey on their website. The survey was a guide for users to discover on their own if they needed help.

The survey was there for the user in their time of need, meaning they did not leave the site for a competitor. This allowed the treatment center to get the user in their funnel, increasing the chance that they would then get a chance to help the person in need.

That survey was the catalyst for the explosion of growth in raw leads we have generated for them over the last two years. In addition to simply scaling their overall numbers, the leads generated have also been qualified, too. There is a strong correlation between their overall increase in MQL volume as well.

It was also the catalyst to getting me to truly believe in micro-moments as more than another Google buzzword that would go away with time.

As my good buddy Jim said a few months ago, get your micro-moments right, and your website can be an effective, efficient growth machine for your business.

What Pros Like You Need To Know About This Micro Moments Example

Learning from this micro moments example has completely changed the way we view tools such as a survey to draw more users into the funnel. In this example, the leads from the survey are very high funnel, but we found that focusing on lower funnel leads and trying to pull in less survey responses from advertising actually had a major impact on leads moving through the funnel from all sources, not just advertising.

At the end of the day, our job as marketers is to drive leads or sales, but it feels like we can get too focused on the bottom of the funnel, and only pay attention to form fills or sales. These ultimately move the needle, but what can we do to push more volume down the funnel to increase leads or sales?

As much as we would have hated to admit it a few years ago, the answer in a lot of cases is focusing on micro moments. Be there in the moments when your customer needs you, no matter how big or small the moment is, and you’re setting yourself up for success.

Want to get more healthcare marketing insights from our team? Check out one of the following resources or subscribe today to our twice a month digital marketing newsletter.

• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• 12 Marketing Plans For Your Rehab Center To Kickstart Its Growth
• How do People Find Answers to Health Related Questions?
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results
• Major Cosmetic Procedure Review Site Slashes Staff By 14% Following Google Medic Update
• You Are Killing People if You Haven’t Optimized Your Hospital for Local Search!

The post A High Growth Micro Moments Marketing Example For Treatment Centers appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Simply put: it’s not easy to be in charge of kickstarting growth for treatment facilities and rehabilitation centers.

Scammers and third-party lead generators have increased the difficulty for organizations to rank their websites to be found by the 23-million-plus Americans in need of treatment. 

But the biggest Google change challenging SEO efforts for treatment facilities and rehabs isn’t the scammers…

Instead, it’s the government. 

Learn how the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has been impacting your ability to rank at the top of the search results. Then, get a glimpse into 12 of our top ideas to rise above SAMHSA in the search engines so you can get your growth plans off the ground.  

SAMHSA’s Impact on Digital Marketing for Addiction and Mental Health

Back in February 2018, Google rolled out a significant change to how it presents search results in the United States when users look for services and information related to substance abuse and mental health.

That change? The placement of the National Helpline page provided by SAMHSA as one of the top three search results for high volume keywords like:

• “anxiety symptoms” — 77,500 monthly searches*
• “drug addiction” — 22,200 monthly searches*
• “signs of alcoholism” — 18,100 monthly searches*

The rise in the ranking presence of this page was exponential. According to data from SEMrush, its presence in the top 10 of Google results increased by over 1,100% in just the first month.

But that was just the beginning. Today, many of those same searches continue to show the SAMHSA National Helpline, and the number continues to grow.

For instance, as of August 2020, you can now find it listed on the first page of Google for over 89,000 terms. As a result, traffic estimates to the site have also grown by enormous leaps and bounds.

If you are responsible for confidently growing admission applications at a substance abuse or mental health facility, this change has forced you to rethink a few of your tactics. The good news is that rehab facilities like yours can respond and succeed despite this.

Get started with the extensive list we’ve created for you below.

Below, you will find 12 alternative marketing tactics – three using PPC strategies, and 9 using SEO strategies – that you can leverage quickly to compensate for SAMHSA’s ownership over the most clicked-through keyword positions in the search engines.

Our 12 Top Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics

PPC And Digital Advertising Tactics

1. Go ‘Legit’ to Run Search Ads
2. Advertise On The ‘No. 2 Search Engine’
3. Strategically Stay Top Of Mind On The ‘GDN’

SEO And Content Marketing Tactics

1. Get Listed in SAMHSA’s Locator
2. Create Content For Every SERP Feature
3. Market The Map With Local SEO
4. Explore New Markets With Hyperlocal Pages
5. Review Your Past (Optimize It For The Future)
6. Capitalize On Question-Based Searches
7. Expand Upon Your Program Features
8. Blog For Your Decision-Making Audience
9. Barnacle To Top Content Publishers

1. Go ‘Legit’ and Get Approved to Run Ads In Search Engines

For a long time, Google and Bing accepted search engine advertising from rehab and mental health facilities in the same way they accepted ads from other medical service and healthcare providers. But, as the opioid crisis in the United States continued to escalate, the rules for addiction treatment centers started to change. 

Why? Because scammers started taking advantage of those in need.

To help separate the scammers from the legitimate treatment facilities, Google partnered with LegitScript to setup an independent, third-party verification system. Since then, any in-person treatment facility, crisis hotline, or support group has been required to be LegitScript certified to advertise in Google. You can learn more about the LegitScript certification process from our friends at FHE Health, a healthcare institution that delivers quality, medically integrated personalized treatment for those suffering from behavioral health disorders located in Deerfield Beach, FL.

Why LegitScript Certification For Search Ads Became A Need

In case you missed it, here’s a timeline of how the bans and reinstatements of rehab facility advertising in search engines progressed:

• September 2017: Google began restricting ads from showing for searches related to addiction treatment after it noticed that some facilities running ads did not provide a high enough quality of care to help patients recover.
• January 2018: Google followed suit in the UK as well and eventually Google extended the ban globally.
• April 2018: Google announced its partnership with LegitScript. By July, LegitScript planned to verify about 30 facilities and Google would once again reopen advertising to in-person facilities, crisis hotlines, and support groups.
• February 2019: Bing announced it would also require LegitScript certification for all addiction treatment advertisers and would no longer accept third-party lead generators. 

To be fair, there’s no doubt that running PPC campaigns in substance abuse and mental health niches is a costly marketing strategy. In addition to your monthly PPC marketing budget and associated agency fees, LegitScript requires an application fee per facility and an annual fee for verification.

With that said, search engine advertising is likely to be an ROI-positive endeavor if managed correctly. It’s also the only 100% viable option for getting a top page position for a keyword currently occupied by SAMHSA.

Plus, LegitScript certification keeps a lot of the less ethical facilities and scammers from competing for clicks and driving the costs per click higher.

Similar to becoming a listed facility in the Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator from SAMHSA (more on that below), getting your facility listed will take some time, but the process is pretty simple.

If you are a representative of a facility interested in starting a LegitScript application, you can click here to submit one.

2. Advertise On YouTube, The Internet’s ‘No. 2 Search Engine’ 

If you clicked here, you were expecting this to be all about advertising on Bing, weren’t you? Or maybe one of the search engines that’s popular in international markets, like Baidu or Yandex?

Well, it’s not. Instead, you need to take a moment and think about leveraging the search opportunities provided by advertising on YouTube. A site that generates more searches on its platform than Bing, Yahoo!, AOL, and Ask.com… COMBINED.

Added bonus: it’s also widely considered to be the no. 2 social network, making it a great place to boost your social media marketing.

While it’s not a traditional “search engine” in the way you might normally think about them, there are nearly 3 BILLION searches per month done on the site, according to data compiled by Mushroom Networks. 

That breaks down to over 1,100 searches per second. 

Although it was acquired by Google back in 2006, LegitScript certification is not required at this time to advertise on YouTube. Therefore, it can be a more attractive advertising solution for smaller facilities with cost barriers to traditional search marketing on Google and Bing.

4 YouTube Advertising Tips To Maximize The Performance Of Your Videos

While LegitScript certification isn’t required, you’re still going to need to have a commercial or video ad ready to go for a YouTube promotion. Once you have your creative completed, here are a few ideas on how to get the best performance from a YouTube campaign.

• Use the appropriate format. Here’s a quick list of which type of YouTube ad is best for your campaign, based on your goals.
  • Brand recognition: 6-second bumpers.
  • Clicks: 15-20 second pre-roll ads (bonus: they can’t be skipped).
  • Conversions: 15-20 second pre-roll ads
  • Re-purposing a TV commercial: 30-second In-Stream ads.
• Utilize closed captioning. Provide the best user experience for your viewers with accurate, verbatim transcriptions.
• Target smartly. Find your audience using the options for gender, parental status, interests, or target specific channels they are likely to watch.
• Deploy an end card. You’ve made some great content, now reinforce your brand and inspire the viewer to take their next action by directing your viewers to their next destination – a landing page, your website, or your YouTube channel page.

There are definitely some benefits YouTube can bring to your marketing efforts with a dedicated advertising budget.

In addition, leveraging YouTube can also bring benefits to your traffic and visibility through SEO and referral traffic. Interested in learning how it can help you in these areas? Check out one of these helpful links.

• How We Grew YouTube Traffic 6,800% For This Retailer
• Video Hosting: YouTube or Vimeo?
• 6 YouTube Tips To Improve Your Results

3. Strategically Stay Top Of Mind On Google’s Display Network

According to Google, its far-reaching Display Network reaches 90% of Internet users around the world. 

Websites. Blogs. News sites. Even Google-owned properties like Gmail and YouTube.

All of them have an advertising opportunity available to your facility through the Google Display Network.

Depending on the business goals you have for your campaign, Google can also manage the campaign for you on autopilot. Just set your budget, upload your ads, and off you go!

But just because it sounds easy, however, doesn’t mean it’s that simple. Sure, automated bidding is handy, but it’s only as useful as the strategy you put behind it. Similar to YouTube advertising and LegitScript approved PPC advertising, you’re going to want to pay a lot of attention to your targeting if you want a display campaign that will lead to conversions. 

Oh, and you’re going to want to keep your ads fresh. You ever get tired of seeing the same ads from leading brands over and over? If you answered yes, then you can assume your audiences will too. Don’t bore them to death with your creative.

With the Google Display Network, you can proceed with confidence. Just be aware that patience and persistence are going to be key in this channel if you want it to pay off. 

THIS TREATMENT CENTER
IMPROVED THEIR ADMITS BY 300%
USING DIGITAL ADS. LEARN HOW.

4. Getting Listed in SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator

One of my favorite online marketing strategies comes from the adage, “…if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” From some of our research into how Google presents this SERP listing for SAMHSA, the link for the National Helpline will often include a site link to SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator right underneath its meta description.

The fact is that Google favors displaying links from SAMHSA over other possible search results prominently, so getting your original content or sales-driven pages to rank above SAMHSA will be extremely difficult — almost near impossible.

However, SAMHSA has an online treatment finder, and rehab facilities can request to be added to that list of treatment providers.

How To Get Listed In The SAMHSA Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator

Getting listed in the SAMHSA services locator is a great SEO tactic for your campaign. For starters, you’re gaining a backlink from a .gov domain — one of the highest-value links you can obtain.

Need a reason beyond that? The site generates an estimated 60,000+ visits per month in the United States from Google searches alone. The high volume and highly specific type of people visiting the site and then being referred to your facility create a great source of well-qualified traffic for your site.

If you represent a newer facility, or your facility is not currently listed in SAMHSA’s locator, getting listed will take some time. Overall, though, the process is pretty simple. Here’s how it works according to the FAQ on the locator’s website:

1. You request the addition of your facility by completing the I-BHS Facility Application Form.
2. The BHSIS Project Office verifies that your facility is eligible by contacting your local representatives or SAMHSA/CBHSQ. As an alternative, you can also contact your state mental health or substance abuse agency to help with verification.
3. You receive a survey in the mail from I-BHS, complete it, and return.
4. About a month passes, and pending final approval, your facility should be good to go. Just know that they typically add new facilities on a monthly basis.

To maintain your listing, you are required to respond annually to either:

• the National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS), or
• the National Mental Health Services Survey (N-MHSS)

These surveys go out every March, and your facility will be required to provide updated information each year after your facility was added to the list.

5. Create Content For Every SERP Feature

If you have spent time doing searches on Google and Bing for answers to almost any question, or for information on any general topic, then you have probably been served with a featured snippet result in the past.

What’s a featured snippet? According to Google, it’s that special box at the top of the search result before the standard listings. Featured snippets include:

• a quoted block of text from a webpage in paragraph, list, or table format
• a link to the webpage the text was originally quoted from

The content is also frequently read aloud by the Google Assistant if you do a voice search. 

While that is the general description of a featured snippet straight from Google, they are just one of many top-position-snatching Google features. Google search engine results page features (SERP features) can take many different forms and shapes. In fact, according to SEMrush, there are over 20 different SERP features to keep in mind if you are using SEO as a growth strategy for your facility. 

While some of the features SEMrush monitors will not have a direct impact on an addiction treatment or mental health campaign, many of them will.

12 Actionable Ideas You Can Use To Put SERP Features To Work

6 Ideas That Are Completely Within Your Control

• Local Pack: verify your GoogleMyBusiness listing and get citations on as many of the major local directories as possible (more on this in tip no. 6) 
• Site Links: add links to your top resources and services pages in the footer of your website.
• Top Stories: Have your blog added to Google News. 
• Knowledge Panel: if your facility has a Wikipedia page, or if one of your executives is a published author, one of these may be available for you to claim. 
• Reviews: deploy schema markup in your site header files with star ratings and review counts from sources like the National Rehabs Directory, the fix, ChooseHelp, or Rehab.com.
• Twitter: publish your most valuable blog content and resources in your Twitter feed using keyword-rich hashtags at the end of each tweet. 

6 Ideas You Can Influence (But Google Controls)

• Featured Snippets: if you have a page that ranks in the top 5 of a search term with a featured snippet at the top, create a subheading that includes the keyword, then publish content that matches the featured snippet type, using the keyword phrase 2-3 times in your text. 
• People Also Ask and FAQ: answer the questions Google showcases in the People Also Ask box in an FAQ section on a top traffic page. 
• Image Pack and Image: optimize the file size and dimensions of your image files and utilize up to 100 characters of your alt tag for keyword-rich descriptions. 
• Featured Videos, Video Carousel, and Video: embed your YouTube videos on pages of your site that also rank well for terms with video carousels. 
• Instant Answer: provide calculations and short, simple to answer questions on your top-performing webpages. 
• Jobs: deploy schema markup in your site header files for the pages featuring any of your open job listings. Note that this only applies if you are hosting your job openings on your site. Platforms like Glassdoor and Indeed already do this for you.

6. Leverage Local SEO To Rank Where SAMHSA Can’t Be Featured

While SAMHSA will continue to dominate organic search results, they technically only have one physical location in Rockville, Maryland. As far as Google is concerned, SAMHSA can’t be featured in local SEO search results because they are not considered to be a provider of local treatment services. SAMHSA will always be your biggest competitor for traffic in the search engines, but one area Google is leaving open for you to own continues to be local SEO.

On desktop searches, a map listing with three facilities is included with nearly every top searched keyword phrase related to substance abuse and mental health services.

On mobile devices, the map takes over all of the SERP real estate above the fold. At a bare minimum, if you have not taken over ownership of your Google My Business listing, or verified your business with the following top local directories, opportunity is leaving you behind:

• Apple Maps
• Bing Local
• SAMHSA
• Yelp

If you already have your business confirmed on all five of the platforms listed above, you are off to a great start with maximizing your online presence in your local area. But you’ll want to take it further with local SEO as there are still as many as 22 other local directories we deem to have a “high” or “very high” citation value.

Because of the presence of the SAMHSA listing at the top of the search results, the fact that you want to reach your target audience on a local or national level will not matter – you’re going to want to leverage every ounce of opportunity local SEO has to offer. Don’t get left behind — local SEO needs to be a critical part of your drug rehab SEO strategy.

7. Go Hyperlocal

There are a lot of well-established websites in the substance abuse and mental health niche that have leveraged hyperlocal keyword searches very effectively over the years for their own addiction treatment marketing.

In fact, many of the most highly trafficked sites in this niche leverage creating a directory of treatment facilities and drug rehab centers as one of their main marketing tools to drive referrals to advertisers. Sites like SoberNation and Rehabs.com have done this for years and become so successful with this as a marketing strategy that they can now get you to pay them for traffic.

Because of how well sites like this perform in the SERPs, these types of directories can be a good source of both relevant referral traffic as well as qualified admissions leads. It can be tough to justify paying to be listed in a directory, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore these opportunities entirely.

Think of it this way — if you can justify paying to be part of your local chamber of commerce, you could probably justify paying to be listed in a directory that can help grow your admissions. Outside of becoming listed in rehab focused directories, you can also apply a hyperlocal approach to your website. If you know zip codes, names of popular suburban areas, or names of specific cities and towns within a dedicated drive radius of your facility, then you can leverage localized content to rank for some highly targeted long-tail keyword searches.

Want to go into more depth on hyperlocal digital marketing? Here’s a few blog posts worth your click. 

• What is Hyperlocal SEO and Why Should I Be Doing it Right Now?
• How You Can Use Hyperlocal Ad Campaigns

8. Revise Your Past (Then Optimize It For Your Future) In Addiction Treatment Marketing

Historical optimization is the practice of updating old content on your site and improving its SEO value for the present and future. Over the past few years, this tactic has become an incredibly valuable SEO play for facilities with a large archive of content.

To briefly summarize this tactic, find a blog post or article on your site that was published at least six months ago. Prioritize pages on your site that either:

1. Generate a lot of traffic, or
2. Convert into admission inquiries

Then refresh the content, improve the on-page SEO, add an author bio, and re-publish it with a more recent “updated” date.

Search engines reward webpages they can rely on being “there” when the crawl the internet. This tactic presents your facility with the opportunity to avoid writing about the same topics over and over again. Instead, it helps your website establish cornerstone pieces of content that will reliably provide your site with traffic from search engines. 

As an added bonus, historical optimization can help you establish your administrators and clinicians as thought leaders in the addiction and behavioral health industry.

Historical optimization in your addiction treatment marketing is a great way to get long term value out of content you published long ago.

9. Take Advantage of Question-Based Queries In Your Addiction Treatment Marketing

According to research compiled by Jumpshot and analyzed by Moz in March 2017, roughly 8% of Google searches are phrased as questions. With voice search only continuing to rise in popularity, the percentage of question-based searches are sure to grow accordingly.

Do you have an FAQ page on your facility’s website?

When you publish blog content, are you writing titles and subheadings in your posts in the form of a question? Take the time to answer both common and uncommon questions. Try to compile questions you may often get from admission prospects and their families about your treatment approaches, facilities, or warning signs that a loved one needs to know. There are two major benefits to taking this approach with your addiction treatment marketing strategy:

1. You will be building trust and helping inform people who need help but are not ready to call.
2. Your site will benefit from a larger number of entry points from keyword searches, lessening the impact that SAMHSA’s top positioning will take away from search traffic to your facility.

What questions are your admissions team, or your clinical staffers, uniquely qualified to answer? Give them a laptop and have them start writing!

10. Don’t Forget About Your Program Features In Your Addiction Treatment Marketing

Of the over 89,000+ keyword phrases where Google displays the SAMHSA National Helpline link in the top three results, above you will see just a small sample of the monetary worth of some of the terms, sorted by top monthly search volume estimates.* That’s a very small sampling of the data SEMrush has on rankings for the National Helpline page, but with a pretty quick glance, you will notice some trends across the keywords that Google is using to trigger this result.

• Different forms of addiction
• Someone researching reactions to substance abuse (withdrawal, side effects, etc.)
• Someone is looking to find/get help (AA, NA, rehab, etc.)

Now, in contrast to that, you may have noticed that keywords related to general program features were not in the above example. These days, no substance abuse or mental health facility is the same. Dig in to communicate what makes the approach of your recovery centers unique from other facilities.

3 Questions You Should Think About Answering In Your Content Marketing Plan For Your Rehabilitation Center

• Does your program take a mindfulness approach to relapse prevention?
• Do you leverage the outdoors as a therapy method?
• Does your staff have multiple advanced certifications or education credentials?

Whatever makes your facility stand out from the rest of the facilities out there, now is the time to capitalize on it. Make sure your site has dedicated pages related to those treatment programs and features and support those dedicated pages with press releases or blog post content. Optimize the dedicated pages for maximum search visibility by applying on-page SEO best practices and leverage link building strategies from the supporting content to heighten the importance of the dedicated pages to search engines.

With this addiction treatment marketing tactic, every page on your website can be an entry point to put you in touch with those in need of help.

11. Addiction Treatment Marketing Should Cater Content to Your Audience

In response to these developments in Google search results, a lot of digital marketing agencies are going to suggest you try to leverage content marketing strategies only with the intention of generating interest from top-tier publishers. The idea here is that getting coverage in front of a national audience should generate backlinks and a lot of impressions. The concept can also be referred to as viral marketing — because “going viral” is super easy, right?

To us, this feels like an expensive fool’s errand; unless, of course, the idea of a campaign with a large expense and little to no attributable ROI sounds like something your facility wants to try out.

Addiction treatment marketing shouldn’t be about more awareness of your facility. Instead, it should be about connecting with people who love and care for those who need your help.

5 Content Ideas To Help Establish A Better Connection With Those Who Need Your Help

Going with a “10X content” approach that will have an impact on the attention your brand receives and little else, the more sensible approach is to cater your content directly to your audience. Here are several alternatives to making “viral” content that could be better suited to get your facility highly-relevant traffic:

• Answering questions for the family members of potential admits
• Recapping research conducted in the industry that validates your approach to healing
• Sharing video testimonials from alumni who have dramatically improved their lives after release
• Providing helpful guides on niche topics related to attending a treatment facility, such as a legal term glossary
• Reviewing national and international news topics and explaining how they are directly impacting addiction and mental health treatment

For all types of people, it’s tough dealing with substance abuse and mental health. If you seek to be a resource for people by providing useful information at the right time, they will reach out when they need you the most. Don’t rely on occasional brand mentions in big publications with the hopes that people will remember you when the time is right.

12. Barnacle Your Brand To Top Ranking Content Publishers

Barnacle SEO is not a new strategy, but it can be a highly successful approach when situations like this occur. The term was coined by Will Scott of Search Influence about a decade ago and there was a must-watch Whiteboard Friday about it several years ago, too.

The idea behind Barnacle SEO for rehab centers as an addiction treatment marketing tactic is pretty straightforward – leverage the top rankings of other sites for your gain. Ever since April 2018, ranking for the top keywords in the substance abuse and mental health space became exponentially harder due to the update of SAMHSA’s National Helpline. Now, in addition to competing with other facilities and online publishers for top keyword rankings, getting them is almost impossible because of the injection of SAMHSA.

What can you do? Create content specifically on other sites that rank for your targeted keywords. Five of our favorite target domains to leverage for this strategy include:

• Medium
• Pinterest
• Quora
• Wikipedia
• YouTube

The value of links from these domains to help boost your search rankings is debatable. However, the referral traffic opportunity from all of them is great, and the frequency with which content on these sites ranks on the first page of Google results is high. While getting a Wikipedia page about your facility may be difficult, creating a profile and submitting content to all of these platforms should become a high priority online marketing strategy this year.

Closing Thoughts On Addiction Treatment Marketing Strategies

Many people are turning to Google to find answers to their troubles. With locations in Wheeling, WV, and Pittsburgh, PA, the team at DOM is well aware of the US’s opioid crisis. We are also sensitive to the fact that there is no “one size fits all” fix.

We think it’s a good thing that Google is trying to get people help when they need it from a neutral source. This is also not unfamiliar territory for Google. Back in November 2016, they made a similar change to the top of results for searches related to suicide.

But this change over the last two years does force substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities to shift. They can still use search engine marketing strategies to create opportunities for themselves. 

They just need to get more creative in order to provide care to the nearly 23 million Americans in need.

The top 12 ways we suggest facilities shift their addiction treatment marketing strategies are:

1. Become a LegitScript certified advertiser so your facility can run Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising
2. Extend the reach of your commercials and video content with YouTube advertising
3. Strategically tap into the near-limitless advertising opportunities in the Google Display Network 
4. Get listed in the SAMHSA Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator
5. Find keywords you already rank well for and structure your content for Featured Snippets
6. Maximize visibility in local SEO by completing and verifying any available citations
7. Create content on your site dedicated to hyperlocal communities that are in need of your services
8. Keep top-performing pages up to date by adding more text and updating visual content every three to six months 
9. Invest time in creating a comprehensive FAQ or writing blog posts to answer common questions
10. Optimize pages on your site for rankings around the unique features of your programs
11. Create content tailored to the families and individuals struggling with these issues
12. “Barnacle” content published by your facility to top publishing platforms for better exposure

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas from our Pittsburgh marketing firm to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• How Do People Find Answers To Health Related Questions?
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post 12 Marketing Plans For Your Rehab Center To Kickstart Its Growth (Updated March 2022) appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

The Seattle-based company, RealSelf, allows consumers to search and vet cosmetic surgeons and medical professionals for potential procedures. The company recently received a $40-million-dollar influx of investment cash.

But according to RealSelf CEO, Tom Seery, Google’s now infamous “medic update” allegedly took a toll on the company’s website traffic.

“Like many companies, you grow ahead of your growth and that growth just hasn’t been showing up at the rate we thought it would,” RealSelf CEO Tom Seery told GeekWire.

Seery’s delivery of somber news in the form of layoffs is likely one of his toughest career moments.

RealSelf strives to compete in a hub market that disrupts typical channels of consumer discovery of products and services. This means that the company relies heavily on search traffic.

While Seery isn’t quoted as explicitly mentioning the Google Medic update, he strongly alludes to it when citing his ongoing discussions with Google regarding the matter.

“We understand the underlying factors quite well,” Seery said. “We are having a conversation with Google specifically because we are in the healthcare category and there are underlying issues that are unique to the subject matter.”

So What Happened?

RealSelf.com experienced a massive drop in organic traffic and ranking visibility following the August Medic update.

You can see from the below SEMrush one-year timeline that the drop occurred in early August, right in line with the Google algorithm change.

This downfall was the consequence of a 50% drop in major keyword visibility from July to September.

Why Did It Happen?

As with most Google algorithm updates, there are no exact clarifications from the source itself. In other words, Google isn’t going to tell us anything definite. Rather, they offer up their typical canned responses that encourage site owners to create (or keep creating) great content.

While it might be Google’s stock answer and it might frustrate some site owners, that answer is wholeheartedly right. 

Google Medic is likely a response to specific content verticals that seem to influence important life matters. For example, financial sites give financial advice. If people take poor quality financial advice, they might lose money. People taking rogue health advice could negatively impact their well-being.

Google probably wants to reduce its liability in such matters and also encourage higher-trust content production. 

The case of RealSelf, however, is a complicated beast.

The website hardly proposes any cures. It does not diagnose or prescribe. RealSelf is a bridge from consumer to medical professional, much like Uber is from consumer to driver. 

But potentially, Google didn’t make such a distinction about RealSelf’s business model when it drastically lowered rankings. This is likely a point of contention between Google and Seery in his ongoing communications over the matter.

RealSelf’s board of directors, while impressively featuring Uber’s COO, Barney Harford, and Expedia’s Co-founder, Rich Barton, lacks a sense of medical authority. In other words, there don’t seem to be doctors anywhere on the bio page. 

Is Google really diving that deep?

Possibly. But all the same, given that RealSelf’s business model doesn’t purport to offer advice or cures, one might think a reversal may be in order.

Google Medic – Are You Seeing A Traffic Decline? Here’s What You Can Do.

Last August, Google updated its algorithm in a way that seemed to harshly affect a large swath of health, financial, and fitness websites. Google never denied or confirmed that the update targeted specific verticals, but SEO industry audits seem to confirm the bias.

Google Medic seems to be part of an overall RankBrain philosophy that places intense scrutiny on authorship and content trust/legitimacy, with a particular emphasis on sites that create content that is influential over critical parts of people’s lives. For example, financial websites could steer a person’s investment decisions, so Google might favor content produced by recognizable, respected financial advisors.

The RealSelf layoffs serve as a real-world example of the cold reality for SEOs. Sites are being scrutinized more than ever regarding authorship. It’s important to be aware of the current RankBrain climate.

The future of search results probably resides in trust authorship. Who writes your content is going to matter more than ever, even if your site exists outside health or finance verticals.

To ensure your content marketing creation is on the right path, here’re some digestible pointers:

• Use authors who are experts in the field
• Place author bios on your site
• Include all of your contributors on the author bios page
• Prominently list academic degrees and subject expertise credentials
• Cite sources
• Don’t create lackluster content

In the end, RealSelf CEO Tom Seery was forced to deliver the most somber news of his career when he announced layoffs. But RealSelf, as a business model, is hardly going anywhere. The site is likely to overcome this current SEO adversity and thrive in the future. 

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• 12 Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics To Kickstart Rehab Growth
• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• 30+ ‘Best Month Ever’s’ for an Eating Disorder Treatment Center
• How do People Find Answers to Health Related Questions?
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results

The post Major Cosmetic Procedure Review Site Slashes Staff By 14% Following Google Medic Update appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

For a number of site owners, the medic update is a continuing work in progress as well as a thorn in their sides.

In other words, the Google medic update was and continues to be an algorithmic monster that many site owners and operators continue to battle.

This article will explore what Google Medic is, why it affected the sites it affected (both good and bad), and what a site owner can and should do to both preserve and increase site traffic from a general RankBrain perspective.

Google Medic Update: An ‘Unhealthy’ Explanation

While many websites were affected (both adversely and positively), health sites seemed to take it on the chin the hardest.

Hence, we are calling it the “medic” update.

But what did it all REALLY mean? And is all lost for those websites that seemed to lose most of their traffic? Where are we now?

Let’s get started with the basics.

Google Medic: What You Need To Know To Start

The SEO business is a funny thing (at least, sometimes). Many SEO companies tend to stake their marketing and sales claims in a “reading the Google tea leaves” pitch.

It’s a sales play. But it’s also a bit of an industry infection.

No one (well, almost no one) possesses privileged Google search algorithm information.

So, whenever Google updates its search algorithm robustly or expansively, the first place we should all go is to Google themselves.

Ah, I love the smell of common sense in the morning!

On the same morning that many health sites were in a full-fledged state of panic, Google’s official public liaison Twitter account was, well, “liaisoning” away.

Google’s statement served to verify to the SEO community of what it already suspected or understood. A fresh new Google search algorithmic update was live, and it was a beast; or as Google described it, a “broad core algorithmic update.”

Google also let all site owners know that there is “no fix,” per se, except for a continued (or renewed – I’ll get to that in a bit) effort to create excellent content.

You know when you come down with a bad cold, and the doctor tells you to drink lots of water? That’s Google’s “no fix except create great content” line in a nutshell. It sounds awful to hear when you are down, but it’s probably the truest words you’ll ever hear.

OK, hold up for a second.

Didn’t Google just tell us what the issue is?

Kind of.

Sort of.

OK, not really at all.

Let’s take a breath.

I’m going to clear up the confusion regarding how we approach the Google Medic update shortly.

But first, let’s look at who and what took the brunt of this update’s thrashing.

YMYL – How Google Medic Sought To Protect Us

“Your Money, Your Life”

What matters more to a person than their money and their lives? And what type of content verticals are most conducive to influencing these things?

Google Medic’s main algorithmic purpose was to figure this out and diminish exposure of “less trustworthy” results. It seems they found that health sites and financial sites are critical to our modern well-being. So they prioritized them.

Try to cure your cold by eating raw chicken meat or invest your retirement money into a get rich quick pyramid scheme, and your life will probably turn out worse than before. Google wants to prevent this by eliminating less reliable search results that could detrimentally affect YMYL.

It isn’t all consumer protectionism at play, either.

Google also sought to reduce liability for itself.

“Google told me to eat raw chicken, so I did!”

Yuck. For everyone. Maybe even for Google.

Google expressed in an official statement that “Google Medic” is a broad sweeping update.

It perhaps is.

But yeah, it really isn’t.

Statistically speaking, it is clear and evident that Google Medic harshly affected health sites and some financial sites above and beyond any other niche. In fact, it isn’t even close.

One of the most notable examples of Google Medic’s colossal adverse effects in the health sector is Dr. Axe.

If you’ve ever searched anything related to holistic or alternative health, you’ve surely found Dr. Axe’s URLs in your Google Search results.

Let’s have a closer look via my super fancy graph that will explain everything.

OK, it might be a slight exaggeration to imply through dramatic illustration Dr. Axe is THAT down in the dumps, but it is also difficult to ignore the substantial losses his site experienced after Google Medic wiped nearly 70% of his Google organic traffic in a matter of a month and a half.

And the situation is even worse for Dr. Axe.

The damage continued into January of this year. SEMRush stats show Axe’s site now at 1.8 million in monthly organic sessions.

It is possible that Google Medic hasn’t shown its bottom, yet.

I’m going to discuss why Dr. Axe is still feeling the Google Medic side effects a bit below; however, for now, let’s stay on course with the caveat that we understand the Google Medic Update to be a continuing algorithmic enhancement to Google Search.

More Than Axe Got Ax’d

Google Medic’s lashing of health sites didn’t stop at Dr. Axe’s website. Websites such as Mercola, LiveStrong.com, SeriousEats.com, Pillsbury.com (yep, seriously), and MensHealth all experienced similar catastrophic drops in Google organic traffic.

This doesn’t account for all the smaller alternative health websites that lost most of their traffic. It is easier, for our purposes, to focus on larger properties.

Some Financial Sites Went Google Bankrupt, Also

Although the brunt of Google Medic’s hammering bruised and battered the health industry, the financial sector also took its share of hard hits.

Much like your health, your finances most certainly affect your life.

Century21, one of the longest-standing real estate agencies in the world, saw half of its traffic vanish since August 1st. Much in the same way as Dr. Axe’s fall from Google grace, Century21 took an initial hard hit and then continued a steady decline after that.

Not every health site and indeed not every financial site are cast into dystopian SERPS following Google Medic.

In fact, some are thriving in a post-Medic world. And it’s important to understand why this is the case.

The Strange Case Of Healthline.com

If you’ve ever searched any health-related topics, then you’ve most likely seen HealthLine.com appear in your search results.

Founded by Dr. James Norman in 1999, HealthLine is now one of the web’s most visible, successful online properties.

HealthLine owns Livestrong (mentioned earlier as a site harshly affected by Google Medic) and Drugs.com (somewhat positively affected).

HealthLine is as YMYL as any website online today.

But for some reason, HealthLine thrived where others held on for dear life.

So why did HealthLine experience a boost in SEO while Dr. Axe suffered a collapse?

The answer is alive and well inside Google’s perception of trust authority.

As Google gets better and better at determining content trustworthiness and legitimacy, a dramatic reshuffle in the SERPs is an ultimate consequence.

For Google, they not only want to put the most legitimate content at the top of the rankings but they also likely want to lower their corporate liability.

Dr. Axe, while extremely popular, is not a medical doctor.

He is, by his own website admission, a certified doctor of natural medicine, doctor of chiropractic and clinical nutritionist. While that’s impressive in its own right, it isn’t the same as having a valid medical degree.

Additionally, Dr. Axe, over the years, gained a reputation in an alternative health space that has often been at odds with Google and Facebook (more on that below).

In 2018, Facebook took aim at “fake news” websites when it deleted a series of large-sized Pages in the alternative health sector.

Google’s Medic update is potentially a similar, though softer, culling of websites the company doesn’t feel are of the highest trustworthiness.

HealthLine is a repository of health articles authored by medical doctors and certified nutritionists. Dr. Axe is a health site authored by a chiropractor.

I’m not saying it’s right, nor that it benefits the consumer (more on that later); I’m simply conveying my interpretation of the facts.

So what does the strange case of HealthLine.com show us?

Authorship Legitimacy Matters…Probably a Whole Lot

The disparity in between Dr. Axe’s Medic results and HealthLine.com’s Medic results show us that Google is especially concerned with health content being validated by verifiable, credentialed authors.

Dr. Axe’s content is well-written, well-sourced, and beautifully laid out on both the desktop and mobile browsers. Probably more so than HealthLine’s content.

Additionally, Dr. Axe’s site boasts a slew of powerful, authority-driven website backlinks, such as HuffPo.

But the authorship on Axe’s site may leave some to be desired.

But what’s more?

(And there is more)

The Marketing Voice

Dr. Axe is successful because he markets a number of products under his valuable brand. In fact, Axe runs an entire store full with natural illness cure solutions.

Here’s one I found in rotation of a recent post.

Upon refresh of the same article page, the “essential oils training” seminar is replaced by an “advanced strategies to heal leaky gut” webinar.

And, according to the ad, “space is limited.”

In contrast, HealthLine’s articles possess Google AdSense ads but do not attempt to funnel the consumer to any products.

So what do we make of this?

Let’s start with a more scientific and less-anecdotal approach.

We need to answer the question – how does Google feel about natural cures or product marketing?

We can’t do this in the organic realm for the obvious reasons, but we can do it with Google’s AdSense platform which has iron-clad policies in place.

Adsense has an entire policy page for healthcare and medicines. Pharmaceutical companies are one of AdSense’s biggest buyers. As well, they are one of AdSense’s most heavily policed.

Pharmaceutical companies must abide by strict advertising restrictions.

When we go further down the line, we note the Adsense policy subsection “Unapproved substances.”

And there, we get a deeper insight into how Google, from a general standpoint, may approach natural medicines.

Five lines from that section stand out:

Herbal and dietary supplements with active pharmaceutical or dangerous ingredients

False or misleading health claims, including claims implying that a product is as effective as prescription drugs or controlled substances

Non-government approved products that are marketed in a way that implies that they’re safe or effective for use in preventing, curing, or treating a particular disease or ailment

Products that have been subject to any government or regulatory action or warning

Products with names that are confusingly similar to an unapproved pharmaceutical or supplement or controlled substance

Every one of those points could pertain to Axe’s store in some facet.

Axe does run some AdSense ads, but it is likely his ad campaigns are scrutinized deeply before acceptance.

If we consider all of this, we might determine that Axe’s store, which he displays throughout his content, influenced his organic downswing.

And this same logic flies when it comes to financial sites. In March of 2018, AdSense banned cryptocurrency advertisers.

This maintains our assumed hypothesis that Google, as a company, is concerned with preventing people from being fleeced financially.

For the record, cryptocurrency websites have experienced a downswing, but that’s likely due to a growing public disinterest.

So What’s The Big Difference Between Axe and Healthline?

Healthline articles do not push a product. Axe’s articles heavily push products.

Healthline feels like a resource that is legitimately attempting to help us. Axe’s content feels like a marketing funnel.

If Google looked at Axe’s site, which is likely, then his site’s optics were indeed to his detriment.

In this way, we determine that Google’s Rankbrain potentially attempts to establish legitimacy based on the deployment of affiliate links.

So what now?

I’m glad you asked.

Google Medic And The Great Content Fire

For the past decade, site owners and SEO pundits have observed an obvious realization in Google’s pursuit to advance its search engine quality.

It wants spectacular content.

In February of 2011, the Google Panda update infamously changed the way site owners and SEO experts approach SEO. Yes, technical, on-page SEO remained extremely imperative to success, but thin, lackluster content would be penalized.

Panda changed the way we look at “keyword stuffing” and duplicated content.

It created “content awareness.”

Google’s Hummingbird update in 2013 drove the “if your content is crud, you won’t be seen” point home.

So What Does Any Of This Have To Do With Google Medic?

Two things, most notably.

1. Poor content will continually be ushered out with every Google update.
2. Um, we might not know what “poor content” is.

Wait, what?

In traditional terms, site owners achieving “great content” resulted in the following process:

1. Determine important/profitable keywords.
2. Create a content idea based on this keyword.
3. Deploy headers featuring longer tail strings from that keyword.
4. Determine the best articles that rank for this term, calculate word length.
5. Beat that word length.

What does ALL OF THAT come down to?

Longer articles.

This prompted a slew of sites to begin “extending content.” It also prompted loads of new content that breached word counts of competitive articles.

The longer articles most definitely helped ramp up some content quality (enter the sound of Google patting itself on the back now). However, it is clear that just being longer isn’t always being better (men everywhere cheer loudly).

Just increasing length of articles won’t cut it in the Rankbrain world.

Rankbrain is Google’s artificial intelligence that seeks to boost SERP quality by determining the quality of content through a number of reliable statistical factors. Google Medic is Rankbrain’s aficionado in the most critical matters (health, finances).

In other words, Google Medic is an extra layer of intelligence that’s seeking to help Google lower corporate liability and increase consumer safety in their SERPs.

”But I’m Not a Holistic, Alternative Health, Coconut Oil Loving Site…”

There is little doubt that financial and health sites are at the heart of Google Medic’s scrutiny. We’ve proven this statistically. We’ve created a relationship between AdSense policy and potential Google philosophy. We’ve looked at real web examples that support our claims.

So we’ve proven that non-health and non-financial websites are in the clear.

No, really, we haven’t at all.

Google Medic Could Expand Its Reach…

No one from Google is saying that Google Medic sought to temper the reach of health sites. We’ve extracted that conclusion from the data.

In the same respect, no one from Google is going to confirm that certain niches are more protected by RankBrain’s algorithm than others.

A movie review website isn’t life or death stuff. If you end up seeing another Nicolas Cage movie because a review site gave it five pretty pickles, well, that’s on you. While your eyes may burn and singe during the movie experience, you’ll live.

That doesn’t mean, however, that RankBrain won’t expand its concept of what niches are important to the livelihood of web surfers. It also does not mean that RankBrain won’t start deploying similar quality checks to all niches just to improve its SERPs.

That said, let’s tie all we’ve learned together.

RankBrain And Medic Guide To Survive

This is where we tie RankBrain as a core capacity to its internal update, Google Medic, the enforcer (think Swayze from Roadhouse – The Roadhouse is RankBrain, Medic is Dalton).

Stop Thinking Long, Start Thinking Time

The knee-jerk reaction to “increase content length” based on our competitors’ content length needs to take a pause. Content length is only one metric to consider.

The important factor is “time on site.” Google Analytics’ Time On Site metric can tell us if people are spending good time on our site.

Improving time on site can be done via the following (notice, it isn’t just content length):

1. Content length (clearly, it can help)
2. Hooks: strategically placing hooks in your text that alert the reader of more exciting content ahead. I will talk more about this later! Do you see what I did there?
3. Video content: watching videos takes time.
4. Page breaks: Indent, don’t slaughter a page with super long paragraphs.
5. Use images to break up concepts, ideas.

Get Legit With Your Authors

Wait, doesn’t this ONLY apply to health sites?

Not in the slightest.

Your content’s authorship matters now more than ever. It is possible that it matters MORE to health sites, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t critical to all sites.

In 2014, Google ended their Google Authorship program. The Google Authorship program allowed web authors to relate and interlink all of their work around the web. You signed up for the program and then used an authorship tag wherever you wrote. You could build a reputation as an author. Your author profile image and description could be parsed into rich snippets.

The authorship program only lasted for three years. Some naturally assumed that Google gave up on caring about web authors.

But that isn’t likely true.

Google’s John Mueller publicly stated that Google was somewhat displeased with the way authorship displayed on mobile and desktop search results.

Google also noted that the snippets did not inspire more clicks.

But those two criticisms hardly amount to an aborted philosophy, which is all we in the SEO space should care about in the end.

Google Authorship was created to deploy an algorithm that observed trust in authors and ranked more trusted authors’ content creations higher.

Google did not abandon the philosophy, just the way they achieve it.

The Google Authorship program proves that Google has long been concerned with author validity. The RankBrain AI search algorithm helps to eliminate a need for authorship tags in determining trusted authors. Google Medic is RankBrain’s internal update that makes sure that all the web’s most critical content has an extra layer of trusted author protection.

But today, there is no need for Google to attempt to validate content authors laboriously. Many writers use LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

You can create a nifty author box that features the author’s bio, social accounts, and image.

Market With Caution

Sites which market affiliate programs or offers of any sort almost always profit more than sites which utilize ads as their main source of income.

That’s not any secret.

This isn’t the place I tell site owners to dump their offers.

No way, no how.

But, if possible, there might be ways to soften the marketing of affiliate links in general.

In places where it is possible, it never hurts to try lead generation plus onboarding process on your content pages.

Relax, I will explain.

Rather than have a big offer that clearly Google’s AI can detect, maybe try capturing the email or phone number of the surfer and then utilizing a triggered email response.

This gets the offer into the surfer’s inbox, which converts higher than on-page affiliate offers most of the time.

It gets the affiliate offer off the page and lowers chances Google may consider your content biased. Depending on the affiliate offer or type of product, many newsletter software services offer amazing automation capacity. You can run entire newsletter onboarding events with both.

Understandably, this isn’t always a possibility. But it never hurts to consider other potential ways to sell products and reduce SEO risks.

Could Google Medic Collapse?

I told you I’d get here. Now, here we are.

Is it possible that Google Medic will reverse its trend?

It is possible because Medic could prompt a number of users to dig deeper in the search results for content that is more in line with how they live.

Some people love Dr. Axe and other holistic driven sites. They may not find establishment content to their liking.

Most likely, Google’s RankBrain will simply adjust cases that were hit hard through its natural AI structure.

Medic is probably here to stay, but RankBrain is constantly learning and correcting and imposing.

The Final Thought

Google’s Medic update targeted health and financial sites. YMYL, or “your money, your life,” seems to be the driving determiner of which sites are affected the most.

A site’s content could be improved by utilizing trusted authors with real Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook accounts. Reeling in heavy marketing of product offers might help remove the appearance of bias in the content; thereby, increasing trust.

If your site creates content in the financial or health sectors, you need to be extremely careful with ensuring trust throughout your entire site.

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• 12 Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics To Kickstart Rehab Growth
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• 30+ ‘Best Month Ever’s’ for an Eating Disorder Treatment Center
• How do People Find Answers to Health Related Questions?
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

The post Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

OK, so I may be over exaggerating a bit, but now that I have your attention let me explain why it is imperative that you have optimized your hospital or health care facility for local search.

Google will create listings not only for the main hospital or medical facility but also for each doctor and department within the facility that has its own contact information. All too many times we have seen listings for doctors or departments that don’t even exist anymore. There are many patients who are simply trying to reach the switchboard to get to someone who can help them and quickly connect them to the party they need.  If optimized correctly, your main facility and contact number should appear on the top of the list.

There are several factors in how potential patients search that affect the results, including:

• Search engine (e.g. Google, Bing)
• Privacy settings (e.g. incognito while they are logged into the search engine)
• Actual search queries (e.g. “cancer doctors” vs. “emergency room”)
• Device Type (e.g. desktop, tablet, or phone)

Google My Business

Let’s take a look at just a few possible Google searches for ‘hospitals’ below. First I searched from my desktop while logged into my Google account with my location set as Wheeling, WV 26003:

I then did the same search from my mobile phone:

The mobile version also shows seven listings.  However with a much smaller screen, it requires some scrolling.  No big deal, right? Wrong! People don’t scroll!  (Especially if they are in urgent need of attention!) You want to be on the top of the list. Luckily for East Ohio Regional Hospital, they do rank in the top position in both of my keyword searches.

In many ways, you are in control of what information is listed in the local search results for your business. These results come from Google Maps, which is now linked to your Google+ page through Google My Business (previously Google Places).  When you claim your listing you can ensure that your information is updated and correct.  Hospitals or medical facilities should always use the main switchboard number for this listing. You will also have the opportunity to add your website, description, hours of operation and pictures.  With the mobile results, Google has made it easy for the patient by allowing them to call your facility or visit your website with a quick touch of the screen.

If you get nothing else from this blog post, at least get this: Claim and optimize your Google+ page to at least be “put you on the map”.

Helpful tips for Local Search Optimization

Local search optimization is a lengthy process which does not have to cost you a dime as long as you have the time and knowledge.  While Google My Business is a good place to start, it’s just the beginning of local search optimization.  To help you along, here are a few more suggestions to aide you in this process:

• Complete a spreadsheet with your NAP & details
  • In this scenario, NAP doesn’t refer to an afternoon siesta.  What it does refer to is your company’s name, address, and phone number.
  • Best practices include using your local telephone number- not your toll-free number – as well as your official business name.  Adding keywords to the business name does not help your cause; it only makes it harder for your patients to find you.

• Research the top Medical directories and citation sites
  • A good place to start would be Moz’s Top Citation Sources for Medical Services.
  • The more mentions of your site, the more value it will have in Google’s eyes and the more places your patients can find you.

• Keep a record of the sites where you have added and optimized your business and include:
  • The name of citation or directory site
  • Log in information
  • Date submitted
  • URL of your company’s listing
  • Any notes for things to be followed up on
• Always follow up to ensure accuracy
• Check your listing every few months to ensure your NAP is current.
• Make updates as needed for new services, any relocations, phone number changes, or website changes.

Now that you are no longer ‘killing people’ and know the steps you need to take to help your patients contact you, you probably feel much better!

We would love to hear if these steps have assisted you in your local search optimization and look forward to your comments. Should you find that you have further questions on best practices or just don’t have the time to complete this on our own, it’s one of our specialties!

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• 12 Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics To Kickstart Rehab Growth
• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• 30+ ‘Best Month Ever’s’ for an Eating Disorder Treatment Center
• How do People Find Answers to Health Related Questions?
• Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results

The post You Are Killing People if You Haven’t Optimized Your Hospital for Local Search! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Either way, the results of the survey and the actual data from HI after the jump.

Most Popular Online Resources for Healthcare – DOM Survey

Here’s how you voted:

1. Health encyclopedia Website – 52%
2. Search engine – 28%
3. General health-related Website – 7%
4. Website for a health-related organization – 7%
5. Website for a specific drug – 7%
6. Other – 4%*

* One industrious commenter who likes to color outside the lines voted for a split among (in order): Twitter,  Google’s main page / Hakia.com, and Google Alerts.

Most Popular Online Resources for Healthcare – HI Research

1. General health-related Website – 56%
2. Search engine – 55%
3. Health encyclopedia Website – 18%
4. Website for a health-related organization – 15%
5. Website for a specific drug – 11%
6. Other – 27%

Well, of course, you knew search engines had to be at or near the top if I were going to blog about it. This really stunned me, though, when I saw it.  I wouldn’t have thought search engines would have been so close a #2 and probably would have guessed they’d be third below health encyclopedia sites.  And I’m still shocked people on average will go online for answers to their health care questions more often than they’ll consult a health professional.   Ease of access and cost (free) certainly are two parts of that answer, though it’s probably a lot richer than that.

Your Takeaways

If you’re a healthcare provider or anyone in a related field, you must realize that people are primarily looking online for solutions to their health problems.  Your site had better be plenty visible, especially with our friends at Google, Yahoo!, and Live.com (MSN).

Consider utilizing both a seo strategy and a paid search (or pay per click) program; each has its benefits and they’ll work better in tandem than separately: think 1+1=3.

Also, keep in mind that paid search campaigns can be customized on a geographical level all the way down to the city.  Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter allow you to select the geographic location of searchers by country, state, or metro area.  Google also lets you pick a point on a map and draw a radius of your choosing.

That way, if you’re a top-flight cancer center in Pittsburgh, you can choose to treat people from all over the world or nation.  And a dentist in a small town in Ohio can choose just to show up in her city/county/service area so you don’t have to worry about paying for clicks from a searcher in Los Angeles.

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• 12 Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics To Kickstart Rehab Growth
• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• 30+ ‘Best Month Ever’s’ for an Eating Disorder Treatment Center
• How do People Find Answers to Health Related Questions?

The post Healthcare Marketing Research & Survey Results appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Recently, we came across some really interesting research regarding how consumers look for answers to their healthcare related questions and issues.  The answers may surprise you.  They did me.

Healthcare Marketing Finding #1

People turn to the internet for answers to their health care questions even more than to a healthcare professional.  [Update: this research provided by Harris Interactive.] Seriously.  65% to 62%.  I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but to use the most tired phrase of the last couple years, it is what it is.  If you’re a hospital, doctor, cancer center, fertility clinic, drug maker, or are involved in healthcare in any other way, you need to know this.

It reminds me of a Scrubs episode where Dr. Kelso deals with a snotty know-it-all patient who was looking up information about her health problems in the hospital bed while he was trying to treat her.

Healthcare Marketing Finding #2

So of the online places one can find answers to their healthcare questions, which do you think is the most popular?  Vote in our poll below and find out the answer next week:

[polldaddy poll=1061825]

Oh and one last thing: Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!!!  Let us know what you think of the new design and whether we should keep it permanently.

Want to check out more of our actionable ideas to grow confidently online in the medical and health industry? Check out some of these blog posts below.

• 12 Addiction Treatment Marketing Tactics To Kickstart Rehab Growth
• Google Medic: How to SEO Proof Your Site in the Trust Authority Era
• How To Optimize Your Hospital for Local Search
• 30+ ‘Best Month Ever’s’ for an Eating Disorder Treatment Center
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