How to Perform an SEO Competitor Analysis for Healthcare

The battle for the top position on Google search engine page results (SERPs) gets more difficult each year.

As a result, you'll need to gain a deeper understanding of your primary and secondary competitors before you can start any new website build, redesign, restructuring project, or digital marketing campaign.

You’ll need a competitor analysis for SEO.

An SEO competitor analysis allows you to research your competitors’ SEO strategies and tactics, their weaknesses, and strengths, so that you can improve your own SEO.

Ready to dive in?

This blog post offers a five-step guide to performing an SEO competitor analysis for healthcare organizations.

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors (using the right tools)

Step 2: Analyze Your Competitor's Website Structure and Content

Step 3: Monitor Your Competitor's Local SEO Tactics

Step 4: Check Your Competitor's Online Patient Reviews and Reputation

Step 5: Analyze Your Competitor's Social Media Presence

Step 1: Identify Your Competitors

You might think you know your primary competitors.

But beware.

As more B2C companies enter the healthcare market, it’s essential to identify your online competitors regularly, paying close attention to consumer-based businesses.

For example, FastMed Urgent Care is a multi-location urgent care business in Raleigh, NC, with three primary urgent care competitors: Duke Urgent Care, WakeMed Urgent Care, and UNC Urgent Care.

If they want to market online or rebuild their websites, they must conduct a thorough competitive analysis of these primary competitors. However, to remain competitive, they must also identify market disruptors like CVS Minute Clinics, Walgreens Healthcare Clinics, Walmart Health Clinics, and other regional or local pharmacy chains offering similar walk-in healthcare services.

How can they (and you) do this?

• Perform keyword research
  Determine which phrases have ample search volume with commercial intent.
  Check out our detailed explanation of how to perform keyword research.
• Run a Google search
  Test your targeted keywords and make note of the top-ranking pages—some results may surprise you.
• Track Industry Trends
  Subscribe to industry publications, attend conferences, and join professional networks to stay on top of anything that could impact your market.

Tip: Leverage the Right SEO Tools

Identify your competitor’s organic search rankings, backlink profiles, and top-performing keywords with popular SEO competitor analysis tools such as:

• Ahrefs
  This tool allows you to compare domains (websites), which can help you identify content gaps and generate new topic ideas. Visit their Competitive Analysis tool, enter your website and the websites you’d like to analyze, and get started.
• SEMRush
  The SEMRush Organic Research tool offers a Competitors Report, which provides a snapshot of your organic competitors. It even sorts them by competition level so you can focus on your biggest competitors first.
• Moz
  Like Ahrefs, the Moz Keyword Explorer helps identify keyword gaps and content opportunities. Enter your website and your top competitor’s websites to begin analyzing.

How can these tools help inform and improve your backlink strategy?

Backlinks are links from other websites that link back to your content (e.g., blogs, case studies, podcasts, service pages, and more).

Google rewards sites that have high-quality links pointing to their content. Leveraging the following insights from Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Moz can help improve your site’s authority, visibility, and search engine rankings:

• Research and identify competitor high-quality backlink sources.
• Analyze which content types and topics attract backlinks.
• Review the anchor text commonly used in your competitor’s backlinks.

Step 2: Analyze Your Competitor's Website Structure and Content

Once you know who your competitors are and understand their keyword strategy, the next step in your SEO competitive analysis is a thorough evaluation of their website structure and content.

Structure

Evaluate their website architecture, navigation, and user experience. A well-structured website is essential for improving SEO results.

Are they focusing on silo structure and top-level navigation?
Are the customer paths clear and straightforward?

Silo navigation is a type of website architecture that Google loves because it organizes content and pages into distinct sections based on topic. Let’s look at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center, for example. Notice how there are five main silos, each containing related topics.

Take note of strategies that work well for your competitors and leverage them for your website. This can include tactics such as:

• Simplifying your navigation structure.
• Grouping similar content topics into silos.
• Improving user experience by increasing site speed and enhancing mobile responsiveness.

Content

Analyze the topic quality, relevance, and depth of your competitor’s various types of content by reading their blogs, articles, service pages, patient resources, and more. Keep questions like these in mind during your SEO competitor analysis:

• How often are they updating their content or posting blogs—is it more or less than you?
• Is their content well-researched, informative, and engaging—how does it compare to yours?
• Are the topics relevant to their target audience—do you notice any gaps or opportunities?
• Are they using videos and custom graphics?
• How does the length and depth of their content compare to yours—do they have a 3,000-word article on a topic you cover with only 300?

If your competitors offer detailed guides or patient resources that your site lacks, take time to create similar but higher-quality content to fill these gaps and improve your site’s SEO.

Step 3: Monitor Your Competitor's Local SEO Tactics

How do your competitors attract local audiences? Local SEO strategies are essential for medical organizations serving specific communities. Assess and improve these tactics to compete more effectively within your community:

• Is their Google Business Profile comprehensive and robust, and if so, how does yours measure up?
• Have they added their businesses to local business directories and listings? Have you?
• Is their NAP (name, address, phone number) information consistent across online directories and listings? What about yours?
• Are they using location-specific keywords strategically in their content (e.g., comprehensive primary care in Beverly Hills, CA)? Are you?

Assessing these points (and more) helps healthcare organizations gain valuable insights into their competitors’ local SEO strategies and helps guide their own.

Step 4: Check Your Competitor's Online Patient Reviews and Reputation

Are your competitors actively managing and responding to patient reviews on platforms like Google, Facebook, Yelp, Healthgrades, and RateMD? If so, it’s important to assess the sentiment, frequency, and themes of the patient reviews to understand their strengths and weaknesses (from a patient’s perspective) and identify areas your healthcare organization can improve to differentiate itself.

Here are a few questions to consider:

• Are they responding to reviews regularly? Are you?
• Are their responses templated or original, thoughtful, and intentional? What about yours?

If you are not prioritizing responding to patient reviews across public platforms, it’s time to reconsider. While there is no direct evidence that responding to patient reviews directly impacts Google rankings, actively engaging with reviews can improve several aspects of your online presence known to influence SEO (e.g., relevance, user experience, local visibility, authority, and more).

Tips for monitoring and analyzing competitor review response strategies 

Staying aware of your competitor’s review response strategy provides valuable insights for improving your own approach and helps you remain competitive. We recommend doing the following regularly:

• Gather patient reviews and competitor responses.
• Evaluate average response time.
• Evaluate response sentiment and originality.
• Assess overall review ratings over time.

Managing this process can be arduous and time-consuming and take you away from core business objectives.

Consider partnering with an experienced healthcare reputation management company. They can provide comprehensive competitive insights and strategies to ensure your review response strategy is effective and competitive.

Step 5: Analyze Your Competitor's Social Media Presence

Today’s leading healthcare organizations leverage the power of social media platforms to connect with audiences, share relevant health content, and establish thought leadership.

If you want to compete in these spaces, you must understand what your competitors are doing to engage their audience on popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

• Do they share engaging, helpful, and educational content? How often?
• Do they vary their content types (e.g., copy, static images, video, polls, etc.)?
• Do their CTAs (calls to action) drive follower growth over time?

Understanding key competitive metrics like these can help refine your organization’s social media strategy and increase engagement with its target demographic.

Integrating social media into your overall digital marketing strategy can also indirectly impact SEO performance over time because it boosts engagement, website traffic, brand visibility, backlinks, and more.

Stay Competitive With Regular SEO Competitor Analysis

Conducting comprehensive analyses on a regular basis is an essential strategy for healthcare organizations that want to consistently outrank their SEO competition.

These audits help improve SEO performance, enhance online visibility, attract high-intent visitors, and differentiate your brand in a saturated marketplace.

To maximize the benefits of a competitive analysis, healthcare organizations must stay proactive and continually refine their strategies based on the audit results.

Contact our SEO agency if you’re looking for a healthcare marketing partner to help build or refine your brand or elevate SEO performance. Our skilled marketing professionals can help with strategy and planning, data-driven marketing campaigns, compelling creative, and more.