Prioritization Leads to Profitability

SEO & PPC Case Study

NorthShore University HealthSystem

NorthShore University HealthSystem is an integrated healthcare delivery system employing more than 10,000 people with more than 900 primary and specialty care physicians.

The Challenge

NorthShore sought to market a wide variety of services in the extremely competitive healthcare category, with limited resources.

The Strategy

In order to help the brand achieve a higher return from its marketing dollars, Rise developed strategies around which keywords and service lines should be “owned” and which should be “rented” based on competition and likelihood to rank, as well as other factors.

Data Analysis
By leveraging data from Google AdWords, Bing Ads, Google Analytics, Invoca (call tracking), Google Webmaster Tools, and DoubleClick for Search, Rise was able to identify historical insights and trends, adjust bids in near real-time, and develop the most appropriate content for users.

Keyword Domination
Paid search was used to capitalize on short-tail keywords that would be increasingly difficult to rank for organically, given the steep competition in the medical field. Therefore, the organic strategy was to target and rank highly for long-tail keywords. In this way, both channels were able to efficiently maximize coverage on a large number of keywords related to the primary service lines.

Operational Efficiency
Northshore’s paid search account was restructured with an emphasis on the more profitable service lines, allowing for improved ease of management of campaign-level budgets, ad copy personalization, and keyword-level bids and modifiers. Simultaneously, Rise refreshed all keywords for these service lines, updated metadata, and edited on-page content in order to improve organic traffic to the pages.

The Result

With a focus on profitability, efficiency, and keyword domination, NorthShore achieved a significant increase in traffic and appointment requests.

27%

increase in organic traffic YoY on cancer pages

490%

increase in appointment requests across major service lines with only 6% increase in CPA