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Category: Healthcare Marketing

How A Little Nip And Tuck Can Improve Your SEO

Makeovers aren’t just for mommies looking to restore and improve their post-pregnancy appearance through multiple, personalized plastic surgery procedures. Makeovers can also work wonders for websites in the cosmetic medicine industry. If your website isn’t bringing you a consistent stream of new patients, it may be time to give your site a much-needed SEO facelift. Learn how adding graphics to your website can help you get results!

Quick—what do professional skin care, breast augmentations, and braces all have in common?

Give up? Well, first of all, if you want any of these things, you’ll need to seek the help of an accredited medical professional—a dermatologist, cosmetic surgeon, or orthodontist, respectively. More importantly, however (at least for the sake of this blog post), is the fact that you can actually see the end results of these types of medicine. So how can medical professionals incorporate these visible results into their SEO strategy?

If your medical specialty provides some sort of aesthetic benefit, there is a good chance you could (and should) be doing more to improve your rankings in organic search results. “More” in this context doesn’t mean “more keyword-rich text” or “more high-quality links to your site.” Instead, it means taking advantage of industry-specific SEO opportunities. Optimizing and adding images, educational infographics, or patient testimonial videos can have a significant impact on your site’s search visibility.

Optimize Existing Images

Optimizing image file names, alt text, and title text will give search engines information about the image and the content on your site. Any images can be optimized with keywords, but before and after images of your patients are an excellent industry-specific opportunity to naturally incorporate relevant keywords into your site’s content.

One of our clients, a plastic surgeon, has a before and after image gallery on his site. We optimized each of the images in the gallery and saw some interesting results. Links to the gallery outperform the corresponding page on his site for the majority of his targeted keywords. The same client even has images that rank in organic search results!

Add Relevant Images

It’s important to note that Google can’t read or understand images without alt text or title text. But a page with relevant images that have no alt text or title text will most likely still rank better than a page without images! Why? The answer is simple—the ranking algorithm also pays attention to user behavior. If your site’s visitors are happy with what they see, search engines will recognize a pattern and reward your website for providing quality content.

Another one of our clients, a plastic surgeon in New York, didn’t have a before and after image on his BOTOX® page. As an authorized physician, our client was allowed to use some images provided by Allergan, the manufacturer of BOTOX® Cosmetic. We chose this relevant image and placed it on his site:

In the 30 days after we implemented this image, the average visitor spent 13% more time on the page compared to the previous 30 days. When visitors landed on the page from organic search, the bounce rate improved by 24%. Both of these stats demonstrate to Google that users are not only finding the information that they’re looking for on this page, but that it’s also engaging enough to keep them on the site.

Create Custom Graphics

Another behavioral signal that has become increasingly more important is social behavior. Adding custom graphics to your site is a great way to promote social media sharing and demonstrate positive social signals to search engines. And, like other images, custom graphics also give you the opportunity to create keyword-rich file names, alt text, and title text.

The infographic above was shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook. The month it was published, the site saw a 25% increase in referral traffic compared to the previous year. It’s relevant, informative, and interesting for viewers. In other words, it’s exactly the kind of content that helps with SEO.

Upload Testimonial Videos

There are other options if you don’t want to use before and after images or infographics. Another one of our clients in the field of plastic surgery uploads patient testimonial videos to his site. Generating nearly 9,000 page views in 2014, these testimonials have certainly had a positive impact on his site’s search rankings. The fact that these patients were so happy with their results has also helped to bring in new business.

*Note the keywords in the video titles.

Get Results

In the end, people considering a cosmetic procedure want to know that they’ll be satisfied with the results. Search engines want to see that your site is providing quality results for the people who are searching. Using images, graphics, and videos can help kill both of these birds with one stone. You’ll be rewarded with better organic rankings, website traffic — and, ultimately, more business.

March 17, 2015
Let’s Get Medical: How To Manage Healthcare Listings On G+

When it comes to adding healthcare listings in Google My Business (now the one-stop shop that includes Google Plus business management), there are many things to consider when managing multiple entities within one location. While building out multiple listings unnecessarily is not ideal, some instances may call for multiple listings in order to distinguish between unique departmental differences.

If there are multiple departments within your hospital or practice that have unique information (for example, a different phone number from the main hospital or practice) and operate differently from the primary location (for example, unique hours are typically considered an operational difference), then it is best to build out separate location pages for each of the departments to provide this information to customers more clearly.

Let us delve into an explicit example of this. If your general hospital houses a hospital pharmacy and an emergency department, then these departments serve different purposes and might have separate hours and phone numbers.

IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE PROCEEDING: The following examples are ENTIRELY FICTIONAL BUSINESSES.

Creating Pages:

Let’s say the aforementioned example is called NOLA Health Hospital. NOLA Health Hospital, in this instance, should have three Local (Storefront) Google Plus Pages. Note that these pages, while most likely using the same address, should have unique phone numbers. They should also have unique names; for example, “NOLA Health Hospital,” “NOLA Health Hospital Emergency Room,” and “NOLA Health Hospital Pharmacy” would be the proper names. These pages should also list their hours of operation according to their department-specific hours. If these pages were properly set up in the Google My Business dashboard, they would look like the following screenshot.

Setting Categories:

Now that you have created the pages, it is important to use the categories to distinguish the differences between them. Google’s guidelines for businesses explicitly state that “For each department, the category that is the most representative of that department must be different from that of the main business and that of other departments.” This means that the primary category for each page should be different. In this example, NOLA Health Hospital Emergency Room will have the primary category “Emergency Room,” NOLA Health Hospital Pharmacy will have the primary category “Pharmacy,” and the general hospital of NOLA Health Hospital will have the primary category “Hospital.”

While these settings are typically arranged during the page creation process, they can also be edited after the page is created. Click on “Manage this page” from the Pages dashboard, then click “Edit” in the top right-hand corner, and finally click into the “Category” section of the editing page to adjust the category. This is also where you can build out supplemental categories for the page. However, it may be wiser to use a few specific categories, as Google’s guidelines advise that it is best to “choose the fewest number of categories it takes to describe your overall core business.”

As always, if you’re ever confused about how to proceed with your page, you can find the Google My Business “Guidelines for representing your business on Google” on the support site.

February 5, 2015
SEO vs. PPC: What’s The Difference Anyway?

A while back, SEO guru David McBee wrote a post in his awesome blog about how he differentiates SEO tactics from PPC strategies. In David’s mind, it can all be related to the difference between dieting and plastic surgery. SEO is a diet, and PPC is plastic surgery.

To illustrate his point, David created this awesome infographic which I think spells things out pretty well. In many ways, this categorization really gets to the root of the differences between what you would do to increase your site’s profile online using SEO tactics versus the much more immediate PPC strategies we all employ.

The SEO Diet

It is very true that SEO is like a diet for your online presence. You need to be in it for the long haul, and you really need to establish clearly defined goals before you start. In exactly the same way that a crash diet will not yield the long term results you are looking for, link baiting or deploying tons of spammy content will not help you reach your idea SEO weight.

I really like the comparison of PPC to plastic surgery because I feel like you should be putting the same kind of thought to the planning stages of a PPC campaign that you would before a procedure like a face lift or tummy tuck.

The PPC Procedure

You need to figure out exactly what you want to focus on and a lot of thought has to go into what you want to look like on the other side. Nothing is worse than not being prepared for an onslaught of traffic hitting your site on the heels of a successful PPC campaign.

What do you think of David McBee’s comparison? What would you say the SEO/PPC dichotomy resembles in your experience? Let us know in the comments! We would love to hear from you, even if you are on a juice cleanse SEO diet.

Link for infographic: http://davidmcbee.com/seo-is-a-diet-ppc-is-plastic-surgery-infographic/

January 13, 2014
Penguin 2.0 May Not Be Done Just Yet

We’ve been watching Penguin 2.0 and its effects, and as a team we have noticed some fluctuating data that suggests the algorithm has not quite settled in yet. In another blog post, I put it out there that rankings are not everything, and they are not the primary measure of success. Ranking reports have known flaws, but they can be used as a weather vane. When we look at the ranking weather for a few clients, we see some ups and downs, clearly with some effect from the most recent Penguin, but it appears that the players on Google page 1 are still moving around more than a month after the rollout.

When we look at a few examples, we see the musical chairs being played on page 1 with nobody being safe and comfortable for very long. We’re watching rankings for a plastic surgeon in New Jersey for the term “rhinoplasty New Jersey.”

Here’s a summary of his rankings hopping all over. His biggest drop was on June 18th:

The same client for “breast augmentation New Jersey” had more subtle changes, but they are meaningful.

So it looks like he got a little hit from Penguin 2.0, but may be rebounding. We have done nothing out of the ordinary for this surgeon to move his site from 10^th to 3^rd in just nine days, so we make an assumption that Penguin is still adjusting.

Another example in ranking fluctuations for “Columbus allergist” is in a doctor’s rankings seen below. His biggest decrease was on June 3^rd vs the guy above who got the hit on June 18th:

Rankings Aren’t Everything!

Rankings are not the only measure by which we watch successes and failures. Organic traffic is another layer of data, and in some organic traffic trends, we see noticeable changes around June 3^rd then again around June 18^th.

The client represented in the chart below is a cocktail bar in the South. They saw a dip in organic traffic after May 22, but they enjoyed an unexpected bump in early June (the traffic dropped off again after that early June peak, but what I want to know is what’s behind that weird little bump up earlier on?):

The next example is a traffic bump around June 18^th. This client is a completely different business on the west coast. We see a little effect from Penguin, then a weird spike:

And Then There Are Other Data Too

It gets a little fuzzier when you start looking at Bounce rates and Time on Page and these data in Analytics. Who’s to say that these increases or decreases are a direct effect from Penguin? You could argue your site is having better or worse quality traffic because of ranking and where your site now shows up vs where it showed before Penguin. You could argue lots. All I know is that 3 of the 4 clients mentioned above saw an improvement in Bounce rate after Penguin.

So … what?

I’m not convinced that Penguin 2.0 was a one time algorithm update, it did its thing on May 22^nd, and we’re experiencing the good or the bad or the indifferent. I think it’s still shaking out, and we may still see a few odd spikes or odd drops in ranking or traffic or some other data. We may have a few more weeks before websites settle into a relatively comfortable placement on page 1, and it is only then that we can claim some clear understanding of the full effect of Penguin.

And because Penguin 2.0 is still reconfiguring, it may not be time for drastic action. If your site is experiencing some definite ups and downs, then yes, you should look at your backlinks quality, the anchor text quality, internal links, etc. All of this stuff is covered in many other blog posts. You should have been long ago working on authoritative backlinks and building up your social cred. But it’s not time to throw up your hands, and just Disavow everything. It’s not time to scrap your website and start with a brand new domain and design. Take some time to digest what’s going on before bulldozing ahead.

What I would really like to know is if anyone else noticed definite odd fluctuations around June 3^rd and June 18^th. Or if you noticed unusual changes at anytime after May 22^nd. Leave a comment, and let us know.

June 28, 2013
Plastic Surgery SEO – The Lighter Side: “Big Tits”
A friend and colleague forwarded me this wonderful little ditty. She does some of the best plastic surgery websites at the helm of her design and development company, and she knows what appeals to the viewer.

We do a fair amount of Plastic Surgery SEO around here and she knows better than anyone the trials of this industry.

So it’s no wonder we’re amused by a song entitled “Big Tits.”

Big Tits – Not to be confused with the "Great Tit"

No doubt you’ll be humming the refrain. Do be careful to keep it to yourself 🙂

My personal favorite line is:

“self esteem goes off the charts when you enhance your private parts”

Big Tits by Gordon Lustig

This song is copyright Gordon Lustig and is referenced here by permission. Please contact Mr. Lustig should you wish to license or use his work in any form.

Admittedly, plastic surgery SEO – particularly that done for cosmetic surgery – does seem gratuitous at times. So it’s nice to take one’s mind off of “one more article about boobs” as a former writer said and enjoy a little folk tune all about big tits.

You can enjoy more of Mr. Lustig’s work at his website or on his YouTube channel.

If you’re legitimately interested in Plastic Surgery SEO, you may be interested in some of our other articles:
Plastic Surgery SEO Results

And just because my sense of humor occasionally runs too juvenile for one my age, more pictures tagged “Big Tits” on Flickr:

Rearranged letters on Veterinary Sign – Big Tits

Erotic Restaurant Private Show – Big Tits

Images courtesy of:
August 23, 2010
For Plastic Surgery Marketing, Content Really is King
As anyone who knows me, or one of our team, or even who has read this blog a few times knows, we do a fair amount of work in online Plastic Surgery Marketing.

Paul Parker M.D. – New Jersey Plastic Surgeon

As with any business we have some customers who just go along – who are happy to get our monthly reports, see their return on investment analysis and make the occasional comment or request. While we try, we can’t get all of our plastic surgeon clients on the phone monthly or even quarterly and ultimately, when it’s their business and their paycheck they are the ones who have a vested interest in their marketing effectiveness.

Then there are the practices, in plastic surgery, marketing like crazy and very involved both in the process and the outcomes. The doctors who spend their weekends and evenings documenting procedures, researching the industry and engaging with prospective patients online using their web sites as a tool for plastic surgery marketing and eduction.

One such doctor is Paul Parker. Dr. Parker has spent countless hours writing and working with artists and designers to assure the information he presents is spot-on what his patients want.

Parker Center for Plastic Surgery, New Jersey – Breast Augmentation
122 East Ridgewood Avenue
Paramus, NJ‎ 07652 – (201) 967-1212

Recently Dr. Parker, working with our favorite plastic surgery website designer Aimee Ellingsen of Cake Websites & More, spent a lot of time revamping his breast lift pages.

Now, I’ll tell you. After 3 + years of working with plastic surgeons I know way too much about plastic surgery.

This stuff is amazing! Dr. Parker, through words and illustrations makes the considerations and the procedure of breast lift imminently approachable.

There’s a lot to plastic surgery marketing, but the foundation is a doctor who cares enough to educate patients on complicated topics.

Many plastic surgery procedures are easy enough to conceptually understand. But after 3 + years working with these guys I really never understood all the considerations of Breast Lift. A Breast Lift is a much more complicated decision process. How much breast material is there, how much sag, where are the nipples relative to the breast as a whole? I mean it’s crazy.

Anatomy of Breast Ptosis Image from Parker Center for Plastic Surgery

So the point is, Dr. Parker and Aimee Ellingsen‘s team created this GREAT content. Perfectly explanatory works which help one understand not only what kind of intervention is needed depending on the condition of the breast, but what the options are and what the surgical process looks like.

Breast Lift Options Picture from Parker Center for Plastic Surgery New Jersey

And now, I get it! I, as a lay person, now fully understand the problem, the solution and, if I were a prospective patient, would be able to begin the process of understanding my need for plastic surgery.

As is often the case, content really is King. Dr. Parker intending to be informative and educate patients wound up creating great content, which is the foundation of great plastic surgery marketing.

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Related Posts:
- Plastic Surgery Internet Marketing – Less Scary than You Think
- Benchmarks for Plastic Surgery Marketing Online December 2009
February 10, 2010