Reaching Patients Who Don’t Know About Urgent Care

July 7, 2011Ira Pasternack
Content StrategyMarketing StrategyOnline MarketingSearch Engine MarketingSEO

Many of our recent clients already have a website before we meet them.  Some of these practices come to us for a redesign, but many have a different priority – their web traffic has plateaued, and they are looking for ways to reach more prospective patients.

Often, these practices have websites that are optimized for their “core terms”.  For example, urgent care websites may appear on the first page of search results for terms that include the physician and/or practice name, or common generic phrases such as urgent care, walk in clinic, and occupational medicine.   The traffic obtained from these searches is obviously valuable — yet, it only scratches the surface of available search traffic.

Recently, we redesigned a site for a client that had a 10 year old website.  They had been tracking their traffic for years.  Since the beginning of 2011, they had been averaging about 600 visitors per month; this was about double their total from 3 years earlier. That increase is typical, given the growth of the web in general.

The redesign involved only minor changes to their existing content, as well as one key addition:  we integrated the WebForDoctors  Urgent Care Patient Education Library into their site. And, after 2 months, the client has already seen their traffic double to 1200+ visitors per month.

How Does This Patient Education Library Help?

The reason this content attracts so much traffic is that most people don’t just search for your core terms.  Many people don’t even know that something called urgent care is even an option for their health care needs.  But, searching for health information is one of the most common activities online.  When most people search, they are looking for information on something specific, such as a symptom, disease, condition, treatment, or procedure.

In the course of their self-diagnosis and research, many people will eventually consider some sort of treatment.  At the same time, many of them have no experience with an Urgent Care practice.  When they are ready for treatment, these people would typically start at either their primary care physician, or the local emergency room.  By effectively using optimized patient education content, and Urgent Care practice can connect with these prospective patients, educating them about the topic of their search, and introducing them to their own services at the same time.