If you’re like most healthcare marketers, you go to great lengths to make sure your service lines rank high in Google search.

But Google is a funny thing. It’s always changing and throwing new surprises your way that make you rethink your SEO strategies and tactics in a fresh and interesting light. What worked last month might hurt your rankings today. And a new update coming up might reset everything all over again.

So what do you do when you see your site rankings start to slip? Do you invest in a big content overhaul? Or fight back with smaller tweaks?

There’s a case for both options. And depending on the state of your current site content, sometimes, small changes can lead to big results.

Two Main Ways to Optimize for Search Engines
There are two different approaches to help improve your search engine rankings: Make big, sweeping changes that involve in-depth content strategy and a complete section rewrite, or implement smaller changes throughout a section wherever possible to optimize content and performance a little bit at a time.

While a deeper focus on content strategy and a whole-section rewrite offer the greatest long-term SEO benefit, you may be surprised to learn that smaller efforts scattered throughout your content can make a big impact on search engine results, as well.

Deciding what’s best for your site means looking critically at the strength and focus of your current site content. If your content isn’t relevant and doesn’t add to the global conversation about your topic, a full rewrite might be in order. But in some cases, a quick content refresh and some other tweaks is all you need to see improvement.

SEO in Action
Recently, one of our clients, Olmsted Medical Center (OMC), approached Geonetric to help them improve search engine rankings for two service line sections of their site: wound care and sports medicine and athletic performance (SMAP).

We began the project by assessing OMC’s current section content and keyword rankings. This helped us determine where current problems existed in the service line content and helped us narrow our keyword focus.

After implementing some small initial content strategy and development recommendations, we continuously monitored the sections’ keyword rankings over the next three months. During this time, depending on what the rankings reflected, we’d make tweaks here and there to try to influence the search engine results in OMC’s favor, all while making sure to follow user experience and Web best practices. Tactics included improving HTML page titles, page descriptions, page headers, body content and more.

Positive Optimization Results
We’re happy to say our efforts on OMC’s service lines worked. At the end of the project, the SMAP section saw a 14 percent rise in organic search traffic, and several of the keywords we focused on moved to the number one slot in the Google search results list. Other keyword rankings also improved in great numbers, some rising by as many as 84 spots in the search results list.

The wound care content also saw positive improvements. The pageviews for the section rose 46 percent, and we saw a 63 percent rise in organic search traffic. The bounce rate for the section also fell, which indicates that users are exploring the site more and finding the content more useful. Additionally, we saw great improvements in rankings for almost every keyword we worked to optimize.

This means more people are now finding OMC’s SMAP and wound care service line content through organic means. This helps them spend less money on paid advertising for certain keywords going forward so they can focus that cost on other areas where it’s harder to rank due to local competition.

Overall, the project was a success and is a great way to illustrate the impact small SEO efforts can have on improving your search rankings.

From a Big Overhaul to Small Tweaks
If you’d like help with search engine optimization, Geonetric offers several SEO packages to help you improve your rankings and work to drive more people to your site content.