Local SEO: How geotargeting keywords brought 333% more revenue

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Apr 19 2012 | MarketingSherpa - Adam T. Sutton
SUMMARY: Natural search keywords for many industries are dominated by a handful of established players. You can try breaking in through the "front door" by going for the broadest high-traffic keywords, or you can try using the "side door," with more targeted terms, which might be wide open.

This case study shows how a regional medical office launched a local SEO program in a competitive market and increased revenue in a major category by more than 300%. You'll see how the team researched keywords, local-optimized its website, and increased procedures by 33.5% during an off season.

CHALLENGE

The Hauser-Ross Eye Institute & Surgicenter is a regional eye care provider located about 45 miles west of Chicago. The office earns a large portion of its income from medical and elective procedures, and the marketing team thought that improving the site's SEO could help boost procedures.

The team had never launched a full-scale SEO campaign, but it thought that improving the site would help attract more inbound queries for procedures in four categories:

• Lasik
  
  
• Cataract
  
  
• Optical
  
  
• Cosmetic

Competition for search rankings, however, was rife in these categories, says Jennifer Smith, Digital Marketing Specialist at Hauser-Ross. Terms such as "lasik" and "cataracts" were dominated by sites with huge libraries of content and national brands, whereas Hauser-Ross was a regional provider with a small website.

"Our goal was really to cut through that competition to boost our visibility and certainly attract users with a high-intent to purchase," Smith says.

Somehow, with little history of search engine optimization, the team had to break into this competitive channel and direct inbound queries to its website.

CAMPAIGN

The team decided to launch a first-ever SEO strategy, and started by setting up a paid search campaign to explore the category. After crunching the data, the team found much of its best opportunities in location-based SEO.

The team took the following six steps:

Step #1. Find your niche

The team established a pay-per-click ad campaign in October 2011 that targeted keywords in the four categories mentioned above. The paid search ads gave the brand immediate visibility in search engines and provided data that could be used later to help build the team's SEO strategy.

For three months, the team maintained and improved the program, always looking for keywords that fit these three criteria:

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