What's the 20/80 rule in local SEO as it relates to health care organizations

[Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine]

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.

[MiriamEllis]

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!

[Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine]

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.

[MiriamEllis]

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!

[Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine]

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

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Patrick!

Great topic and here are the first 10 steps I would focus on:

1. Make a spreadsheet with the NAP+W of every office and every practitioner you are planning to market.

2. 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.

3. 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).

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Now, do a citation audit to discover existing citations, duplicates and any inconsistency problems. Document your findings. Make corrections where necessary.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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!

[MoosaHemani]

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!