SEO Processes

Problems and Actionable Fixes:

High Bounce Rate:
Look at top fold content. Is it compelling enough? Are the words an effective hook? If it's media, is it engaging media?

Google Is Ranking Homepage Instead
Roll with it. Use the homepage when you can for specialists like Skoulas and Nima. We have beautiful pages so it will be a low bounce rate, and it will be high engagement stats like pages per session because it's like the beginning of an adventure for them.

Low Click-Thru Rate on GSC
Add Jump-to links which will improve the search appearance by adding small site links below it. Also give another look to the metadescription. Is it compelling enough? Does the search listing stand out compared to the other search listings? See below for metadescription process.

VERY High Traffic Page (Procedure or Blog)
Leverage the volume by adding a shareable infographic. If a page is getting 10,000 visits quarterly, and the infographic gets a 0.5% share rate, then 50 people shared the picture that quarter, which translates to 200 shares per year. That's a lot!

Processes

Need a content snippet?
Karla has created a CTA library for medical and dental clients for most procedures. If need be, adapt the content in the snippet for your own purposes.

Current Actions to Do For Each Client

1. ADD BREADCRUMBS TO EACH SITE. Here are the directions.

2. ADD HEADINGS FOR ALL VIDEOS, especially ones on procedure pages.
WHY? Headings should be engaging and attractive, such as "Watch Dr. Nima Give a Walkthrough of the Rhinoplasty Procedure". For people who are genuinely considering getting the procedure done by Dr. Nima, what could be more attractive or relevant than that? Headings are better than captions because they are engaged with before the visitor gets to the video. So it essentially preps the visitor with a CTA to engage with the video. When it's a caption, the visitor has already cognitively decided to skip the video, so it's harder to persuade them. Also captions don't have a commanding appearance, so their words can be more easily be disregarded.

3. ADD TRACKING TO FORMS VIA THE CONFIRMATION PAGE
WHY? This allows us to more efficiently and accurately track which procedure is converting. Historically we have been tracking goals according to the landing page, and have gauged popularity through that method. However, a great deal of branded traffic comes through the home page and doctor page. The only way to track what procedures these people are inquiring about is to get the data directly from the form. Otherwise, we have no idea about their visit.
HOW? We setup the forms tracking on the backend of Wordpress, specifically on the confirmation page. There is an option to pass certain form variables through to the URL, such as "/thank-you/?=rhinoplasty". This is done by selecting to pass the procedure of interest, which was a dropdown selection for the visitor on the form. The thank-you page is the confirmation page, and everything after the question mark does not impact the actual page shown. However, it does now show up uniquely on Google Analytics. We can see the data by going to Google Analytics and selecting the Behavior tab, and filtering pages, looking for "thank-you". If it simply lists "/thank-you/" without a question mark, you may need to work with the dev team to fix the problem.

4. ADD SOCIAL PROOF TO SIGNIFICANT PROCEDURE PAGE
WHY? Because we make claims on our website that imply that we're the best choice. People are going to want independent verification or proof of these claims. In order to make sure that they begin this part of the buyer process, we need to have social proof on the page. Otherwise we risk the consumer simply being skeptical and eliminating our client as a viable alternative in their mind.
HOW? Create a to-do for the design team to put together a social review widget. We want to highlight both the amount of reviews and the high rating.

Branding:

Good adjectives we are allowed to us:
Highest rated
Leading
Strive to provide the best
Leading provider
Go-to
Committed to providing the top

Standard Items:

Social Widgets/Social Proof:

There is a big variable element to this because we want to stretch the branding as far as we can get it, with many different considerations.

Get a High Number of Reviews

We want to tout how many 5-star reviews the client has gotten, and stretch it to be as high of a number as possible, rounded down to a nice even number. In order to do this, we have to potentially count across a number of websites: Google, Yelp, Facebook, and RealSelf for plastic surgeons. If there is a high volume of reviews, the easiest way to tabulate the number of 5 star reviews is to instead count the number of reviews that AREN'T 5 stars. So sort reviews by lowest, and count how many are not 5 stars. Then to get the number of 5 star reviews, subtract from the total. Do this for each site and combine their numbers together. For example,  230 total reviews - 20 bad reviews = 210 5 star reviews. So for the social review widget, we would display something like "Over 200 5-star reviews" and then underneath, offer an effective review.

WHY: Quantity of reviews is an important legitimacy signal. There is a huge difference between a client that has 30 reviews and a client that has 300 reviews. The latter indicates that the client is the best of the best. Also that it is a safe pic. They perform thousands of procedures so this is routine, and people continue to choose them. This gives the visitor a feeling of safety. Also there is a potential bandwagon effect which can also be a powerful motivator.

Get a powerful quote(s)

There are a number of ideal elements in this example:

1. It says "best" followed by the keyword (and geo if possible). The most potent thing is this is, not only does it say "best plastic surgeon in beverly hills", but it does it in all caps. This makes that line stand out from the rest of the text. Note that Firm Media is prohibited from saying that the client is the best in his/her field. With this review, we get to have the text "best plastic surgeon in beverly hills" on the page, and this is something people actually search for. So we are now competing for an entirely different long tail keyword that we couldn't before. This is a very rare occurrence. If you can't get the exact string match of "best [keyword] in [geo]" you can try to get some other review that uses the word "best" in a different manner.

Also for Dr. Nima, there was an additional strategy which was, it's a panel of 3 reviews, each of them different. But there was one commonality which was that it said Dr. Nima was the best, and each review did this in a heartfelt, convincing manner. The combined effect should make the marketing message stickier in the mind of the visitor: Dr. Nima is the best. But also note that he does actually have the reviews and the portfolio to say such a thing. He has a ton of wonderful before and after pictures. He has an immaculate score for reviews on RealSelf and Google. These things reinforce the claims made in the reviews.

The overarching claim doesn't always need to be that the doctor is the best. It can be a different area of the value prop. For example, for Dr. Kaweski, one of the main things you here from clients is her unparalleled bedside manner. For Dr. Peterson, her value prop hugely relates around kids, since she has fun things like a spin-the-wheel aspect, a kiddie area, a fun and sweet staff. All of these things paint an attractive picture.

2.  It engages the emotions. Notice how the review makes you feel about Dr. Nima. The review doesn't just say standard positives like the doctor is the best, the service is excellent, customer service friendly. These sorts of things can be found on tons of 5 star reviews. It says things like: "he made me feel at home. I felt so comfortable around him, as if he’s my own brother. He has the hands and eyes of an artist." These are very powerful non-standard complements that create a picture in the reader's mind, and it makes them want to experience the same thing.

3. The text either immediately hooks you on the first line or the important points jump out. In this quote, both are executed fairly well. Basically you want to make sure that the important aspect of the marketing message is absorbed and not skipped over. Or if it is skipped over or browsed, the message is still received. In this case, no one can miss that this review is emphatic that Dr. Nima is the best. Be sure to avoid reviews that are lengthy and that take a while to get to the important part. So if need be, don't be afraid to trim the reviews, taking out the slow or filler sentence, and replacing the gap with an ellipsis ( ...)

Another good quote example:
“Every time I come in I’m treated like a queen. It is definitely a luxury place. I love coming here they make you feel like royalty. I use to have really bad scar acne and now they are gone. I love Dr. Awada she takes good care of you and takes her time.” -Linda S.

This quote is non-standard and it gets into the person's imagination. People will create an incredible attractive image of a patient journey. This line can single-handedly sell a person on the product.

Meta description Optimization

For optimization of the procedure/service pages, we have to make sure that we are answering the question "Why choose our client?" rather than "Why choose to do this service?". The user has already decided the he/she is interested in the service, and it's just a matter of exploring the list of providers. So we need to make our case directly in the meta description. Generally it would be good to use the overall branding message in some form or another.
Examples of brand messages: trust, care, attention, bandwagon selling points like popular or go-to, expertise, top-rated, "like family"/great bedside manner. These are all selling points of why choose our doctor.

In order to make sure we are matching the search intent for the local query, the SEO tech needs to manually review the top 10 listings to see if there are any commonalities. For example, "dermal fillers new jersey" had Juvederm in every single meta description. If the term wasn't in the actual meta description, Google would directly grab the text from the page instead to replace the meta
description. In other words, our meta description absolutely needs to include the word Juvederm.

Another example would be for "dental implants los angeles". Just about every query in some way addresses cost or price. So it's primarily a price conscious audience that is dominating search intent for that query.

Include the geo and doctor name if possible. This doesn't just help by directly matching the long-tail keyword better but also because it's useful information for the person searching. For example, for state-wide geos, a person is going to want a city that is within reasonable driving distance. If possible, make the office location sound good. For example, Dr. Beauty's brand often mentions that it's a "luxurious med spa".

We will be building a repository of meta descriptions so that the more we do them, the easier and quicker it will be. Most meta descriptions may require a little tweaking for the geo or value prop. But it makes the process a lot easier overall compared to starting from scratch.