Sharp

Realizing a Lift in Cost-Effective Conversion with Localized Search Strategies

Sharp HealthCare is a leading health care provider in the San Diego region. Its web site, Sharp.com, is a major source of health information and in-depth profiles on Sharp's thousands of affiliated physicians. Sharp contracted SiteLab for help addressing some of its search marketing weaknesses and to develop the Web site for a new hospital, Sharp Memorial. Specifically, Sharp wished to take greater advantage of the surge in local search volume. In addition, while Sharp already had great success with its paid search efforts, there was room for improvement.

Content-rich Sharp.com offered an excellent base of authority for our search efforts, but we encountered some challenges with the following:

• Setting up an accountable analytics system to track efforts against a benchmark
• Determining the value of a conversion in the absence of a clearly defined online path from the moment a consume arrived at the site to the selection of an affiliate doctor as a primary care physician
• In our capacity as a consultant, we did not have direct access to Sharp.com; implementing our strategic recommendations required going through an additional management layer
• The market for healthcare-related keywords is extremely competitive, requiring us to employ advanced search optimization tactics

Solutions

Working with Sharp HealthCare leadership, SiteLab;

• Implemented a search conversion tracking system and consulted on the implementation of goal tracking all traffic in Sharp.com's analytics account
• Benchmarked existing search campaign performance using the new conversion and goal tracking
• Implemented automated bid management for paid search to maximize budget spent on keywords that drive the highest ROI
• Developed an "SEO Bible", a comprehensive document identifying and prioritizing SEO enhancements for Sharp's IT team

Results

• Within 1 year of implementing conversion tracking, paid search conversion volume increased more than 30% without any increase in budget (first four weeks of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009)
• As of Q2/2010, conversion volume had nearly surpassed total 2009 volume and conversion costs had been reduced by more than 10%
• Average monthly organic site traffic increased more than 30% from the time SiteLab delivered our comprehensive SEO site analysis up Q2/2010
• Organic traffic to doctor profile pages was up by 12.5% over the same period
• Localized organic keyword traffic containing the term "San Diego" has increased by more than 25%

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Services:

Search Engine Marketing