* The following transcript is computer generated and may contain errors.

Paul Knipe:
Welcome, everyone. We're really glad to have you with us today. We'll do some introductions here in a moment. But our focus today will be a webinar on how to understand how SEO contributes to your marketing mix. I am just going to dive right in and I think that as we go, Grant and I have a lot to cover today, but we're also hopeful to wrap up with some room to field questions from you.

Paul Knipe:
At the end you can post questions in the chat and we'll do our best to answer them. We certainly want to continue the conversation with with each and every one of you after today's webinar, if it makes sense. But to just jump right in, I want to introduce myself. I'm Paul Knight, senior account director at Healthcare Success.

Paul Knipe:
I focus a lot on both brand strategy, brand development and the execution of our digital marketing campaigns, particularly paid search and social and SEO. Grant You want to say hello?

Grant Simmons:
And I'm Grant Simmons on the East Coast of the US. I am very focused on the SEO side. So looking at how we can promote, invigorate or otherwise cause success through organic traffic for our customers and clients.

Paul Knipe:
Thanks, Grant. Just dive right in with a quick recap. Healthcare Success has had a great series this summer of other SEO webinars. If you've been able to see this, that's great if you're interested. We had two in June and July. SEO for the C-suite and how to win first place on Google. We will make today's webinar available after the call, but if you'd like to access these webinars, you can visit healthcaresuccess.com and you can view our webinars page to view these previous sessions.

Paul Knipe:
We'll also be adding today's session to that list. So let's start off, I think let's give a primer on SEO and the basics of our marketing mix and grant. We'll leave things off scroll.

Grant Simmons:
All right, so people understand what SEO is. But Google itself quotes ACA as being such, and optimization is often about making small modifications to your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements. When combined, they can have a noticeable impact on the site's user experience and performance and organic search results. There's two massive things that Google talks about user experience as being really key.

Grant Simmons:
So SEO is certainly about improving user experience and performance. So performance meaning organic traffic, but also looking at performance from the standpoint of rankings as well. I like to say so that was obviously Google speaking. I like to say the best content is content that satisfies a user's informational needs because not only is it about answering the question that people have an actual into into Google, but it's also about being helpful, addressing the content they have and making sure that content is easily consumed.

Grant Simmons:
And that means fast and frictionless. Now, I added a link in there to Google's SEO Starter Guide. It is a great reference to understand the key components of SEO. I just wanted to cover what I say areas. Next slide please. So what this presentation is about is about how I see how integrates with the different marketing channels you might be employing within your organization.

Grant Simmons:
You know, the consumer journey is no longer a linear, you know, a linear path from point A to point B, It used to be in the traditional marketing. I usually would see standing on TV, normally on television after a program commercial. Then I would go to a store and I would buy it. They would Experian it, and then they would either promote it or they'd say, I don't like it anymore.

Grant Simmons:
But today, in the digital realm, we find that consumers have lots of touchpoints, and that can be from online advertising. It can be from traditional media like TV out home and things like that, where SEO definitely helps is that people are always looking for information. Google is this massive answer engine. People are looking for information, so there's many touchpoints in the research process and in the satisfaction process and in the reviews process where people actually are searching within within Google.

Grant Simmons:
So Google actually causes the zero moment of truth or micro moments, which are the moments when people are actually searching for information that helps on their purchase journey, Right? So a patient's actually making decisions online? Well, what we can do is look at the data. Now, Google, we saved more than 1 billion health questions a day. That's a lot.

Grant Simmons:
But break it down, 70,000 health related searches a minute. And that is 7% of the total searches on Google, which obviously is in the billions. So people are definitely searching online to find answers to their questions. Now, that zero moment of truth, that point, that micro moment when people are searching is generally around researching your products, service, a treatment, you know, kind of looking at, you know, what their conditions might be for social proof or to get an understanding of how they're feeling.

Grant Simmons:
But really that research and information gathering happens online and it's broad. It can be everywhere from searching for a particular practice location to searching for reviews on the doctor. And so those kind of decisions are made consciously and subconsciously. So it's either reinforcing the fact if they like something already or it's close to their home or location, or it's reinforcing the fact of maybe I shouldn't go to this person without any help to start.

Grant Simmons:
So knowing the patients and prospects are searching online and making their decisions from the impression they find online is really important. So as SEO and its foundation facilitates the visibility of content for discovery at that moment of search and moment of decision, whether it's like I site positive or negative, or dig deeper. So yes, patients are definitely making decisions online.

Grant Simmons:
So why information are they searching for? So generally the decisions are influenced. As I said, let me views, patient testimonials, case studies or outcomes to help them understand what the potential impact of any kind of treatment might be. The detailed product or service information around the treatments. It's not like the old days where users go into a doctor's office and that's the first time they've heard of a specific procedure.

Grant Simmons:
They're actually doing the research beforehand and will anticipate often questions that doctors are asking them, and they'll be prepared a lot more prepared. And you can see here, there's there's a lot of studies around this. But with all these searches that Google has some 100 billion searches a month now, 70% of U.S. adults report using the Internet for health related questions like how is Zika transmitted?

Grant Simmons:
Symptoms, you know, itchy reaction, elbow just so they can do this self-diagnosis or behavioral interventions like quitting smoking. All these things were historically questions you would ask in a doctor's office or in a hospital. New uses of financial information online from trustworthy sources. And the great thing is SEO House Elevate your content and great content so you can find it not just on your website, but they can find it, you know, in other information that video on YouTube or things like that.

Grant Simmons:
So there's zero amount of truth that making sure the right information is put in front of the customer at the right time is really important. So this this whole goal of showing up in search results is really about getting to the next step or engaging. And more often than not, that's about making appointments or actually looking for directions to come to particular practice hospital.

Grant Simmons:
So Google did a study on hospitals and it was, you know, what influences hospital selection. Now, a lot of people said to me when I posed the question to them, say, we're just going to choose the closest hospital. But that's not actually the case. Know users will look at ratings of the hospital, you know, obviously what they offer and everything else and make a decision based on that.

Grant Simmons:
84% of the folks in an actual Google study said they use online and offline resources to research search drives nearly three times as many visits to hospital sites compared to non search visitors. So they might be searching offline and looking up the old yellow pages and things like that. Well, search is much more effective at getting the engagement.

Grant Simmons:
Now, patients primarily search on symptoms and conditions, not a surprise. This self-education is an ongoing thing where, you know, people really want to understand what they're getting into and what's getting used to be. Questions you ask a doctor. Now you ask Google. And the amazing thing is 44% of patients who research hospitals on a mobile device went on to schedule an appointment.

Grant Simmons:
That is a pretty high conversion rate, a pretty high engagement rate, a pretty high intake. Right. And so definitely we think there's value in being able to show up for search and shows one of those channels, electricity.

Grant Simmons:
So I'll I'll say So I was going to say, Paul, did you have anything to add to that all?

Paul Knipe:
Well, we'll get to this in a moment. But I really think that when we think about the mix of channels and we think about the ways that someone builds a profile in their mind of not only the journey that Grant walk through, how they gather the information necessary to come in with an informed point of view versus the old way of doing things.

Paul Knipe:
It'll be important, I think, in this in this discussion day to talk about how they gather that, because search is a part of it, but it certainly comes from other sources as well.

Grant Simmons:
Got it. So I wanted to talk very briefly about the benefits, the content, because we talked a lot about content and that research process. So SEO, you know, it's not just about the technical side, but it's basically about engaging the right content based on U.S. in creating that content. So it's aligned with search engine best practices and allows people to actually find it presents the content in the way that's understood by both users and search engines.

Grant Simmons:
That's going to format the page and potentially some of the technical. And then really it actually serves content in a friction, frictionless and fast experience. So SEO helps to make sure that the content is set up great because search engines love to serve up great content. They define great content by consumers, the users intent, and it is frictionless as far as it's really concerned.

Grant Simmons:
So some of the other stuff from the show standpoint, we also look at how we promote content. So how do we get content out on the web? So it's found not just on our website but other websites as well. And that could be like, you know, guest post so well, getting featured on a TV website or something like that.

Grant Simmons:
Will you be found off your site? And so and share also helps in that promotion side as well.

Paul Knipe:
It's important, I think, just to close that content piece that we're excited to kind of go through some of the dynamics and the mechanics of what good content best practices are with SEO. So we'll talk about that in a moment. But as I mentioned, I think that when we talk about marketing channels, certainly when you think about how every channel functions in the minds of a patient or a consumer when they're researching, when they're trying to determine the best content sources, it doesn't come from one place.

Paul Knipe:
We'll speak about branding in a moment because brand authority brand equity will play a big role and how someone consumes information, what they deem credible versus otherwise obviously paid search. The way that we see sponsored ads, the way that our search terms and our keywords bring up things is certainly how we research and how that performs. And what comes up is also based on credibility and authority.

Paul Knipe:
But it isn't just digital. There's also, I think, a role for recognizing the ways that traditional media, TV, radio, infomercials, billboards out of home all deliver a unified content value proposition in health care. This is really important because there are so many touchpoints where some prospective patient or consumer may come into contact with the brand of an organization, their specific language, and talking about their services and offerings, whether it's procedures or conditions.

Paul Knipe:
And then I think print publications aren't dead. But how all of these things come together in the minds of a consumer and help shape their behavior when they sit down to search something is an important dynamic. So it isn't limited to this list, obviously, but I think we recognize that a mix, a communications and marketing mix is an ecosystem someone gathers information from and then that helps shape their behavior online.

Paul Knipe:
I mentioned brand. It's important to really talk about brand in specific ways as it pertains to SEO because a brand is many things. There's the quote that a brand is a thousand little gestures, but in some ways it's important to think about brand awareness. It's awareness, It's being aware that a brand is there. You may not have feelings about it, but you know about it.

Paul Knipe:
Brand equity involves a little bit more judgment. You have a sense of where its strengths are. It's beyond awareness and it comes down to the degree of credibility. It's personality, it's core assets, and that can be visual assets. It can be a certain tone of voice, it can be a certain way of communicating that brand essence. The personality comes through positive or negative.

Paul Knipe:
These things determine a brand's equity. It's really important to think about this when we search, because when we search all of the channels that we may have seen that have influenced us with their content as well as the role of that brand in defining its authority and credibility, I think it's important because what we see, what we click on is driven by those things.

Paul Knipe:
So why do users click? I think when you come down to it, we all go through this process where we evaluate search engine results page a SERP, and we look at the position and search results, the visual appeal of it. In other words, how does the description match our own expectations around that brand, around the service, around the condition?

Paul Knipe:
How familiar are we with it? I think there's a sense of credibility that comes with familiarity, but it's not the only thing. But I want to zero in on this word intent, because Grant has mentioned it a couple of times. Intent is really the magic word with SEO in many respects, because does does the result match our intent?

Paul Knipe:
And when we think about what we click on, that to me is often for me personally, what what motivates me to act. So what other brands appear in the search results? How do we stack up? Sometimes it's a combination and a quick scan of all of these things. Really interesting to think about how we go through this process, but why we click on what we click is usually a combination of these attributes.

Paul Knipe:
To demonstrate this, I think Grant and I wanted to highlight this example how Brand plays a specific role. In this case, it's with real estate. Do you want to speak to this grant?

Grant Simmons:
So I actually was working for one of these early state companies and I decided to find out why we weren't getting as many clicks when we thought we should, that now you showed on the previous slide a click of a Now, no one would expect people in position. One get more picks than people in position to get more clicks and people in position three.

Grant Simmons:
And that's generally how it works. And you can see this lower part, the chart where it says generic, that is just a generic listing of 50% clicks are right when you're in position one fifth in the same position to 25% position three 11% is just from for now. There can be a slight bump there just because what what else is on the page like some videos or other things like that.

Grant Simmons:
But we use that as kind of a baseline. And what we saw is when a brand is well known and Zillow certainly is a well known real estate brand, that that actually got 54% and a click through rate when they're in position one and folks like Trulia and homes less known were obviously much less of a click through right when they're in position one.

Grant Simmons:
And this really underscored to me at the time the question I wanted answered, which is why aren't we getting as many clicks in position one and this is obviously around who else is appearing in the search results. Now, sometimes you can help your clicks, right, by building up more brand equity and more brand awareness. Sometimes you just have to improve your search results.

Grant Simmons:
So that what shows up is more aligned with the intent to your point. And that was really interesting. We just saw with with a client a couple of weeks ago was urgent care and and so we saw that the number two result was actually saying wasn't an urgent care. We're saying cheaper than urgent care to try and get the intent of people that might be looking at stuff from a cost standpoint.

Grant Simmons:
So, you know, you can be really creative of what shows up in the search results, but you have to be really aware of who else is showing up as well. And I think this gives a really good indication of why Brand is really important for that. Click through right, which equates to more traffic to your site.

Paul Knipe:
So let's talk about content, because a good SEO strategy is really going to come down to content. First and foremost, you know, this question of do I need SEO? Well, it sometimes is a matter of thinking about what you need to say about your work, your conditions, your procedures, your offers from a health care standpoint to patients and consumers.

Paul Knipe:
And how do you SEO that content? Well, the basics here are, you know, content that has been optimized for SEO is really about designing it to rank and search engines for specific search terms and intense. So it should have a natural flow. It should feel naturally written by experts in that field. The content written for SEO is optimized around specific keywords, the topics, the entities that user intent.

Paul Knipe:
It has to be relevant to the product procedure conditions at hand. But how do you do that? Ultimately, content needs to have a presence of high volume search terms, keywords, and I think that targeting the right intent of that query is a big part of that. So your research around high volume search keywords, integrating them appropriately through well-written content around the intent that a user has when they're searching is really about how you artfully balance these elements into the right flow.

Paul Knipe:
There are some myths that are worth talking about with content and SEO. There's been a belief for a long time still in some corners, but early on that length of content really was the most important thing that with a certain volume of content that you're just more likely to seem credible and that search engines are going to scan the content, it's not necessarily true.

Paul Knipe:
It's about solving the user's need, and we should define quality content through that lens. It's not a function of words on a page. The main priority for search algorithms is to fulfill that search intent beyond just the keywords. It could hurt your organic rankings to try and just go for length, to go for volume. It is useful to look at your competitive landscape and we'll want to talk about that a little bit today because how your competitors talk about things, their procedures, their conditions, their treatments, who they are, will ultimately give you an idea of what they're focusing on.

Paul Knipe:
And it could illuminate areas where you have opportunities to add content that they may not be. But keeping in mind this life mask is very important. You know, this idea of what time is it in London? You don't need to start from the beginning of time and go through the mechanics of what a clock is. They really just need to know that time And that's a good instance of solving a specific issue for your users.

Paul Knipe:
Another myth is keyword counter example on the left is really a good demo of how it's not really good content if you're just stuffing it with language or keywords that is repetitive and is designed explicitly around a misguided approach to appeal to search engines. The truth is that they're not the only signal that search engines use to evaluate the quality, the relevance, the authority and stuffing your page with keywords multiple times is called over optimizing and it can hurt your SEO performance.

Paul Knipe:
It makes the user experience in the reading experience awkward, thorough, engaging content that answers the user's questions fulfills their intent is really the most important piece here. Grant You want to talk a little bit more about content as I do.

Grant Simmons:
And to be honest there, back in the day when I started as SEO 20 something years ago, putting keywords on a page was was everything you did multiple times, sometimes even at the same color as the page. So yeah, these old hack type things are not working today. So what is working? So the best content people often ask me what is the best content for a particular treatment condition?

Grant Simmons:
Well, Google actually defines best content every day and every search. They define the best content in their search results. So some of the best thing from a competitive analysis is to take the primary keyword that you have and put it into the search results and see what results come up. Now, it's not just great about defining who your competition might be.

Grant Simmons:
It's actually really good for understanding how Google's interpreting the intent of a specific query. So when you look at these things, these are how to use Chamblee with a how to Google represent videos because more often not it's much easier to watch how to do X than it is to read how to do X. So if you're looking for what is the definition of the best content on the web, obviously you can search in Google and say that far the best content of the web is what's found in search and the best type of content, whether it's graphics, images, sound music, lyrics or whatever else is defined in that search result.

Grant Simmons:
So if somebody searching for, you know, what is a rash on my elbow, I mean, it probably is great to have a bullet point of what it could mean. So that format or more likely or not appear in the search results is a polluted list. So just think about that. The best content is defined by Google today and it's found in the search results.

Paul Knipe:
So getting into more details around the marketing mix, I think it really starts from a digital standpoint around paid and organic. So what is this relationship between paid search and SEO? So the importance is really in two areas. You have to connect them both in terms of your strategy, your observation of data and keywords because they cross-pollinate each other and you start with your strategy.

Paul Knipe:
But from a process standpoint, it's really important for agencies or even in-house teams that are managing digital marketing to closely collaborate and to communicate on what the reporting, the performance and data is showing. The reason why is that if you're running programs simultaneously, you can often see things from one channel like organic that helps inform what you're doing strategically with your keywords in another, like paired and an example is, you know, existing website pages might read organically for newer search trends without any paid activity.

Paul Knipe:
And SEO report each month can show that that then can highlight opportunities to go after queries on the paid side for newer terms. There may be an indication that competitors are not yet pursuing those terms and there could be an opportunity identifying gaps, looking for opportunities, filling them in between these two is very important. This comes up all the time within our agencies, work with clients.

Paul Knipe:
We do a monthly SEO reporting looking at organic conversions and high performing content pages, and we also do a paid search monthly report. And when we do this, it's always ideal to really look at trends that aren't necessarily captured in one channel because they could be incredibly useful in another. Our clients look for us to spot those things and it's very important.

Paul Knipe:
I think if you're not running one channel to consider how the learnings from it could influence your introduction of a second channel like ACA, Organic bottom line keyword research with search data will inform SEO and often vice versa. We've included a link here to that, share some great case studies and data profiles around how click through rates over time.

Paul Knipe:
Really, you can you can use both channels to close gaps. This is a quick quote. Grant shared a study with me recently. This is a mathematical study that isn't necessarily new, but it was a good demonstration of what I'm talking about, a combined click through rate, some paid in organic search listings when both options are available is going to be greater or equal to the click through rate from the scenario where there only organic search results.

Paul Knipe:
In other words, the two together collaborated. They overlapped, they helped fill in gaps. But it does require a great team to be able to see these trends, spot them and know how to use them. I don't know if you wanted to add more to this particular.

Grant Simmons:
Well, I was going to say that many companies I work with advice, they said, Well, I'm showing up for organic results. Why do I need to show up for paid results as well for the same query? And I think the answer is it's it's cumulative. It's not just one is going to cannibalize the other. What happens is you actually get a higher click through right on a on the page overall.

Grant Simmons:
So imagine a hundred people searching. You get 50 clicks and organic when you add in page search as well, you might get 60 clicks. So it's not like you're actually cannibalizing, you're actually adding in additional clicks. And once again, it's a mathematical study. It's a it's a long rate. Was it 20 pages? But it basically did out across a broad range of many different queries.

Grant Simmons:
So it does it does depend on the industry. And obviously you have a lot more control over what shows up in page search results than you do in organic results because you're actually, you know, when you're using Google, you actually defining what it is you want to show up for. It looks, but I think it's additive because you're reinforcing the brand.

Grant Simmons:
Number one, you're creating some familiarity in that search result when people see two different results there. But also, I, I think and they didn't have an exact idea here, but I think it's just people as they scroll down a page, they stop where they say something that they're already saying. So sometimes that idea of saying a page searches over the top.

Grant Simmons:
As you scroll down, you see the organic online. Okay, These guys must know what they're talking about subconsciously. That's definitely worth worth along to to leverage organic traffic, organic data for page and vice versa. All right. We're going to talk about another channel here, digital PR or define digital PR, It's like traditional PR They share one goal in common that's helped improve the reputation or increase the visibility of a particular brand.

Grant Simmons:
And I guess really, really important when we look at the two different channels are traditional PR and digital PR. Obviously, one is online, so and we have slightly different metrics there, you know, from traditional PR to man, you know, reach impressions, frequency, things like that. It can be the same metrics online, but our key goal is how much visibility can we get, how many impressions can we get either direct compressions of an ad or a piece of content or subconscious When I say subconscious, it's when ads appear on the side of a page.

Grant Simmons:
People still see that in their periphery. It can still have an impression based approach to it. But I think the key thing about digital PR is we're not just looking at impressions and frequency, we are looking at other things like links and mentions and things like that to help improve ICM. So next slide, please. So I know people say, you know, when we're doing digital PR, which is obviously promoting content online, you know, getting it featured on other websites online, you know, what are the metrics that we should be looking at?

Grant Simmons:
I know people look at domain authority. It's a D or, you know, domain relevancy or things like that. You know, certainly from an NGO standpoint, we're looking at building authority. That's really one of the key things for national authority means we're getting links from other sites. And links are definitely one the metrics we look at. But if something's getting a linguist, not getting any traffic, that's probably not relevant.

Grant Simmons:
So we also look at traffic and then brand, but we're looking at where we're featured because there's often an association or reputation from where you're featured. So if I'm featured on The New York Times, that has a certain eloquence but a certain elevation to it that says, Oh, these guys are featured on New York Times, they must have some authority around the topic they're talking about.

Grant Simmons:
So from my standpoint, it really is about visibility and awareness. It's about traffic because that implies that it's actually valuable to the users. And then backlinks is for me, a secondary metric. So, you know, building authority is about getting links from topically relevant sites. And we're looking always at building authority of our own sites around treatments, conditions, you know, procedure, expertise, things like that.

Grant Simmons:
And one last point here is we tend to say in SEO that more high quality links, you know, from those sites, those authoritative sites like Forbes or Mayo Clinic or things like that, those high quality links are worth more. They are worth more. In the scheme of Google's algorithm, it hasn't changed. It was built on the quality of links.

Grant Simmons:
It hasn't really changed that much now. And generally that is better than a lot of low quality links, often from guest blogs or something like that that are not topically relevant. They kind of cover lots of different topics. So when we're assessing the value out of our digital PR war, so can the alignment and the affinity of sites are linked to us.

Grant Simmons:
All right. Some liquidity content. Another question I asked. I get asked a lot of questions, but now you ask is what is link worthy content? Now we are all consumers and and generally we all share content on social, social media. And sometimes we share content that we see online something link worthy some that's interesting to you and you believe will be interesting to other people within your circle.

Grant Simmons:
So what is link worthy content? Generally? It is content that can generate the links and engagement and traffic. That's our success metrics. But it's also in that because you can create link worthy to me, it stands out from the crowd. These are three examples that I created my own job here. If we look at data driven stuff so we can get data and visualize it in a different way, right?

Grant Simmons:
That first image is about the company. Next time the glasses and they're going to search about the tech cities. So it was something where we looked at the different elements around remote working around the availability of high speed internet and all that stuff to come up with data points around what's the most tech city. The second one was tied in to pop culture, which was Star Wars.

Grant Simmons:
We did City was well. We put cities against each other to kind of come up with a metric of the light or the dark side of cities. So it's fun to go to a lot of engagement, a lot of links. The last one was the framing of cars in New York City, where we did surveys of about 2000 people.

Grant Simmons:
New York was the friendliest and everything else. Why is this a great example? Because we got picked up by the local television station because it was link worthy and newsworthy. Then we had the mayor of the Bronx defend the fact that the Bronx was the least friendly place in New York to the survey. So all these things about creating buzz around your brand and in the medical space, it is just as easy to find stuff that aligns with any of the privacy concerns.

Grant Simmons:
But it still is really interesting and unique for your brand. So digital PR is a really important part of where a CEO can meet the traditional PR media and visibility. And then a lot of people also ask me what is a bad link? Is there a bad link? So these are three examples of large brands BMW, Home Depot and Washington Post that were penalized a menu penalty from Google for building, quote unquote bad links.

Grant Simmons:
So the link building where you are trying to manipulate Google search results by buying or influencing people to have links with certain attributes is against Google's guidelines. And the worst case scenario on a bad link is that you can get banned from Google. Some of these folks were dropped out of Google index completely. They got it back. Some in the pages they created with the links going to them were taken out of the index so could not drive traffic.

Grant Simmons:
So I think the thing here is you can earn an annual penalty by doing the wrong thing. This is where SEO can help inform and lingering strategy or link outreach strategy to make sure that you're aligning with Google best practices and Google guidelines.

Paul Knipe:
And it's important if you're ever thinking about working with an agency, you know, it's it's vital to evaluate and ask about methods because there are lots of agencies that have what we would call Black hat linked strategies as part of their approach to try and use short term organic results. But in the end, it can really penalize and hurt you.

Paul Knipe:
Our agency has a very straightforward approach that reflects, I think, a lot of the best practices we're going through today. And this is just sort of a cautionary note. So when we think about the mix in your marketing picture, SEO plays a vital role, But what is the mix is going to be different for every organization. It's going to be a combination of print, it's going to be a combination of digital.

Paul Knipe:
And ultimately you need to have a good understanding of your strategy for reaching out to audiences, defining your brand, and making sure that that brand and what it means to your audiences is reflected in every choice that you make. So the marketing mix ultimately can be put together with these four PS this framework that's maybe familiar to you, but it's a great way of defining your product essentially.

Paul Knipe:
What is it that you are offering to consumers, whether it's a service in health care, a procedure, an offering of some type, the price, where does it fall? What does it cost them? How is that a value proposition or not? Is it worth it? The platforms, That's really what we've talked a lot about today, the places, the platforms, the places this party is ultimately that choice of where you best find your audiences and speak to them where they are.

Paul Knipe:
It's not going to be one place in. Many instances. We all use the Internet, we all search keywords and we all look for products and services. So we've focused today's effort on digital channels, but everything plays a role in an integrated, truly integrated marketing mix will include a range of things that reflect the consuming behavior of your patients and the people you're trying to reach for Promotion.

Paul Knipe:
What are your choices? How do we use the right language? The right offers to reach them and find a way to stand out from competition? This is why brand strategy and defining your own equity, if you will, your own personality. And that part of your strategy is important because you need to know what your stake in the ground is compared to someone who's right next to you, who may be in your marketplace.

Paul Knipe:
They may be a bigger player, they may be an emerging challenger. But how do you promote to stand apart from them with your messaging, and how can that trickle into your SEO strategy as well? So the four P's really are your consideration to define the perfect marketing mix. A big part of this is competitive research. We talked about competitors in this presentation, but ultimately the questions here are vital for determining what to look for and what your competitors have.

Paul Knipe:
What is their level of brand awareness and equity again, are they big? Well established, entrenched, well-known, small? How do they communicate who they are on their home page? You know, Grant has been a good advocate of just saying sometimes that alone is a great way of determining what we're working with in terms of a competitor or how we frame our own story and narrative.

Paul Knipe:
So who are your competitors in your category? Who are your search competitors? In other words, who are you up against? Against the same types of terms that you're trying to rank for? How are they organizing their sites around conditions, treatments, patient information? How a website is structured is sometimes really important as well, because the clarity of how you deliver content in a user experience top to bottom in that website, information architecture, it can be distinct, it can be very well-organized.

Paul Knipe:
Sometimes it can be more fluid. Really important to look at competitor sites to see how they're doing it so that you can improve on it and really stand out. Ultimately, that site organization and taxonomy is a big thing too, because you want to make sure that search terms are reflected in your site navigation and in that taxonomy, because that will be the wayfinding system for any user on your site.

Paul Knipe:
And can you see keyword strategies when you look at your competitors content, when you look at a treatment or a condition page on a competitor website, what are they saying about it? How are they using specifics to really fulfill the user's intent? Because if they're not doing a good job, identify and ways to improve on it is really the key, how can you do better?

Paul Knipe:
Anything else you'd like to say on the competitive research grab?

Grant Simmons:
No, it's it's an integral part. And the first thing we do is discovery advice, just to make sure we understand you hit the nail on the head. There is what your competitors want shop for. I think if you look at someone's home page, you can see immediately based on the main header on the page, the title of the page, the sections that are within the main top navigation, you can understand pretty much what they're trying to run for.

Grant Simmons:
We don't assume everyone knows what they turned around for that, you know, we find the best people and we try and do better. So not hitting our head.

Paul Knipe:
In the end, I think we really liked the idea of sharing this topic with you today, because when you think about all of these considerations, all the channels, all the ways that you can think about putting a marketing mix together, SEO does play a role pretty consistently for any business, and that it really gives you the ability to understand the questions from consumers and patients.

Paul Knipe:
I think the way that people search and that intent and what you see in terms of organic traffic and conversions is the best way to understand what content matters and what matters to these to these patients and consumers. You know, you can get a lot of good insight around your own brand discovery and visibility. It really helps that it builds authority for your brand because over time I think you can become a presence in ways that speaks to your credibility or importance.

Paul Knipe:
And that reputation is valuable. As we said, the inter-relationship between paid search and SEO is undeniable. They really can go hand in hand. They inform each other. And then finally, I think that for people who are newer to you that you may be trying to reach out to for the first time, SEO, it really can elevate your content for people who are just at the beginning, who are at that process where they're just starting out and looking.

Paul Knipe:
A good SEO strategy will help meet them along the way.

Grant Simmons:
Yeah. Can I add one thing there? We talk about authority. Authority. A lot of people say, Well, I'm not a national brand, I'm a local brand. And I think what's key is being an authority. It can be a location based authority for a specific medical specialty, not just showing up in New York. When you're in California, it's actually showing up in that location you're in.

Grant Simmons:
So an authority or topic authority has the the temple nature of it from a time standpoint and a geo factor as far as location. So being authority is far more than being a national or international authority state and being authority in the place you want to be as well. And this is kind of a wrap, which is that if you are doing any marketing, not having a SEO as part of that mix is a large gap in understanding the competitive environment online as well as understanding how people are searching, period, whether they're driving past a billboard and they see your website or whether they see on TV something of a sales search for X, Y,

Grant Simmons:
Z to find this, you know, series an integral part and can amplify almost any channel in a way that makes sense from a content standpoint, a messaging standpoint, or any number of different things. So our big takeaway from this, apart from how to do some of these things, is really about making sure SEO is an integral part of your marketing mix.

Grant Simmons:
No matter where you are, what you're treating customers you're serving, or whether you're B2B or B to a patient. We want to make sure the SEO is there to make sure your message and find the right people for the right time. The right intent.

Paul Knipe:
We want to thank everyone for joining us today. I think that this is a deep topic. We're very passionate about it and I think we want to extend an offer to each of you or your colleagues or people in your networks. Many organizations understand who they are, who they're trying to reach, but they may not always have access to that SEO data or page paid digital data to help inform their first or next steps.

Paul Knipe:
That's a way of saying, I think we can be that partner, that can look at data, that can look at your overall performance and push it forward, improve your performance over time, both for organic and potentially for pain. But I think we really want to make sure that you understand also that we can provide a free SEO check up to you and your organization if you want to reach out to us.

Paul Knipe:
We love to get to know you, to probe into your business and to see if there are opportunities for us to improve your SEO performance over time.

Grant Simmons:
Right. And and there is a few questions there. Paul Yep.

Paul Knipe:
Yeah, let's dive into questions. I wanted to make sure we had a few extra moments for that.

Grant Simmons:
Hey, Ben. All right, so what percentage of people who search subspecialty on mobile such as orthopedics schedule unemployment? Great question. So we have some of that data, but it really is across the board and our goal is to shoot for 10% or above when someone's searching. But remember, there's a research phase that people go through and sometimes we're looking at what we call micro conversions.

Grant Simmons:
So having something additional on that page, like a downloadable information sheet or something like that to judge the interest of someone. So I don't have the exact percentage. And the other data was from Google Study, but we're definitely going for 10% or about as being a measure of success that calls to action on pages are generally missing. And so when we first look at a page, we're trying to assess whether it's missing a relevant, relatable and valuable offer to someone to book an appointment.

Grant Simmons:
Okay. So when I do anything to that.

Paul Knipe:
No, that's I think that's good. Let's go to the next one.

Grant Simmons:
Okay.

Paul Knipe:
Clearing up the word count. How is that even manageable? Well, I think first off, you know, some of the steps that we captured today can help give you a picture of what length? Probably looks appropriate. Now, some of that is looking at competitors. How are they doing it? They may be doing it wrong, but you have to think carefully about how can you answer a basic question without extraneous information when someone may be looking for information on varicose veins, for example, or a certain type of post-traumatic stress disorder therapy, you have to think carefully about it.

Paul Knipe:
Are you giving them full exposition of the issue from top to bottom or you really talking specifically about what you do, your approach and how you can do that in the most succinct, keyword driven way possible? And usually that end point is not going to be a dissertation that's so long that it's unreadable. It'll probably be an authentic, expert driven content segment.

Paul Knipe:
And if you've also done your keyword research that is relevant to those keywords and the services you provide there.

Grant Simmons:
Yeah. I want to add a little bit to. That is, you know, looking at page from a sexualized standpoint. So looking at the relevant sections, they exist within a page and then you mention keywords a few times they're already looking at queries, which is how people are searching. So it's not like the traditional this is the one word people are searching for, you know, see PTSD.

Grant Simmons:
They're going to be searching for questions like, you know, how do I know if I have the trauma traumatic disorder or anything like that? So when we're looking at that, we're trying to make sure we understand the question number one and through keyword research, seeing how people are searching and then making sure we fully answer that question. And the sanctions, I mean, you laid out pretty good.

Grant Simmons:
You know, what is the problem? What might it be? What might be the solution? B, you know, what's the procedure and things like this, Those are natural sections within the page and it does not belong word count at all. It relies on making sure each of those sections is relevant and relatable to that particular topic. And it fully answers the question that someone might have when they're searching for that particular page information.

Grant Simmons:
So how is it manageable? The way I look at it is define the sections, answer the questions, and then build the content. So it's not word count, it's essentially information satisfaction.

Paul Knipe:
So, okay, next question. What is an example of a bad link?

Grant Simmons:
And bad link would be a link for my electronics website or electronics. An article going to your hospital, talking about it. Yeah. And so for one of the better thing there, but it would be something that is not relevant. So a link from a site that's not relevant, from content, that's not relevant to a page that obviously has tried to gain the system.

Grant Simmons:
The other attribute we look forward to define a bad link is anchor text that obviously is out of place and context is the clickable link from an actual link. So if the anchor text is very keyword focused like it says and you know, knee pain on a on a page that's about, you know, doing work around your house and they've inserted and you might get knee pain from gardening you know that is not a relevant link to a relevant page with anchor text that is natural.

Grant Simmons:
So remember sometimes.

Paul Knipe:
They're they're not easy to find. You know, an uglier form of a bad link might appear in, you know, a comment section of a website on a media site or a discussion forum or suddenly there's a link to Caribbean cruise special offers. And the topic is something entirely different.

Grant Simmons:
So that's generally that's only a way of of doing it. I mean, the thing is, if you if you're paying for link, it's a bad thing.

Paul Knipe:
Question How often do you revisit competitor research? Is there a cadence that this should follow to ensure that you are on the right track for SCA?

Grant Simmons:
Always, always be looking at competition. So whenever you're building out a new section, a new page, you're going to conduct comparative research. So you might be doing it on a very high level topic, but you're doing it for every subtopic within within the site.

Paul Knipe:
So yeah, I would also just add Grant is absolutely right. It should be constant. If you're setting an SEO strategy and doing competitive research at that stage, every six months is sort of a good cadence because it allows for enough time for natural evolution to happen within your category. Sometimes organizations rebrand, they shift their areas of focus. They may dial up or down procedures or offerings or services strategically, and having a read on that is very important.

Paul Knipe:
Six months is a good marker. In some industries, it may even need to be more frequent and potentially every quarter.

Grant Simmons:
Okay, do you can you speak to the use of SEO in social media? Is this possible and how does it work? Okay, so social media is not used as one of the ranking factors Google has said many times, but it's really used for content discovery. So without a shadow of a doubt, social media helps with driving links and traffic to a particular site.

Grant Simmons:
So when I say links, when I talk about link equity, because most social media sites do not give value to links coming from them, but what it does, it allows your content to be discovered. So using social media effectively for new unique content messaging and everything else is definitely something I would recommend. But once again, you have to have something that's that's high value content that people are likely to share to give your brand additional visibility, your content of additional visibility, and to drive traffic to your site, which ultimately is one of the key indicators of success.

Grant Simmons:
All right. I got one last one. Anonymous attendee said, Great presentation. You're welcome. And then Laurie. Hi. How about word count to blog post? Is it the same as for informational web pages? All right, so that word count period does not matter at all as long as you're answering the query. However, more often than not, it's used internally to say, how long should about this be or to cost it out from a standpoint of price for words.

Grant Simmons:
So it's kind of a hold over from that. So I would say, you know, from a blog post standpoint, blog post should be there to support your primary informational pages. So a more simple for a time standpoint and a more conversational generally, which are blog generally. And so word count not as important at all on any kind of content you create.

Grant Simmons:
However, if you're more conversational, generally a blog post is going to be a little bit more wordy than an informational page. But just think of that statement. Nobody's just guidance around competitive research that says know. A blog post on this topic generally has between 500 and 750 pages purely guidance, not a mandate, and generally just gives a good idea around pricing cost.

Grant Simmons:
The time it takes to write. All right. And yeah, really good questions. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for me. Thank you, everyone. And and please feel free to reach out. If you'd like to get a free check out. I'd love to take a look your site, give you some insights into what we find and what might be holding you back, what might be brilliant and, you know, just a quick look at the home page generally and saying if that is focusing on positioning your your brand, your services and products.

Grant Simmons:
Exactly how Google wants to see it. But really appreciate your time tonight. Paul. Thank you.

Paul Knipe:
And we really enjoyed it. We hope you did, too. And we'd love to continue the conversation with each of you. We can.

Grant Simmons:
And this will be available on our website for anyone to see the recording. So thanks very much, guys. Cheers.