When Olmsted Medical Center (OMC), Rochester, MN, set out to redesign their website, they had traditional redesign goals like improving navigation and making the site more user-friendly and more mobile-friendly. The organization also had another, less-traditional goal: make life easier for the individual who manages all aspects of OMC’s website.

With that in mind, when it was time to think about how to improve OMC’s web content, their long-time agency Geonetric suggested they collaborate in a new way. It was important Geonetric’s expert writers reviewed the existing content and updated it to improve readability and usability. But instead of passing Microsoft Word documents back and forth for a round of editing, the Geonetric writers made changes directly in OMC’s content management system (CMS) VitalSite. Then, OMC’s team could log in to review and approve, saving time for everyone involved and ensuring those enhanced pages were ready to go at launch.

Improving content across the site

OMC’s web content was accurate and up-to-date – but they knew it could be improved. So instead of writing a new copy from scratch, OMC asked Geonetric’s expert content developers to give the content on their 15 priority services lines a thoughtful refresh.

The team got to work, reviewing each section and making improvements to ensure each page was optimized based on best practices for healthcare web writing. For each page, the team:

• Ensured the content was patient-focused
• Improved scannability by rewriting headlines and adding bulleted lists
• Added cross-links throughout the site to related services, providers, and locations
• Identified instances of medical jargon and replaced them with plain language to be more readable and improve health literacy for better accessibility
• Wove in some of OMC’s differentiators such as personalized care and community-focus into the copy

Working collaboratively

It wasn’t just the quality of the work that was exceptional, it was also the timely and efficient completion of the work. With such a small team managing both the website redesign and communications for an Epic implementation, OMC and Geonetric worked together to find ways to make processes more seamless and see where Geonetric could deliver value more quickly.

For the content project, the Geonetric content team logged in and made content edits, alleviating the need for documents to go back and forth through email. This allowed the content team to see in real-time how changes looked with the new design and made it easy for OMC to review and approve content. It also saved OMC a lot of time, as approved copy didn’t have to be transferred from a Word document into the CMS.

New location profiles

Location content is more important than ever as health consumers are increasingly searching for and relying on accurate online location information. The same is true for OMC, and that’s why they wanted to focus on new online location profiles as part of the redesign.

To deliver the most value, Geonetric and OMC chose a high-volume walk-in clinic and created an optimized profile template with content that meets the needs of users and drove the strategic design of the organization’s new location profile pages. Geonetric’s writers included all the necessary elements, such as an address, hours of operation, directions, and information about the location.

With the thought-out profile as an example, it will be easy for the OMC team to create additional profiles for the rest of their locations.

Enjoying impressive results

Since the launch of their new site in April 2019, OMC is seeing great results. Many of the service lines the Geonetric team refreshed are reporting an impressive YOY increase in page views, including:

• Breast Health: 32% increase
• Cardiology & Vascular: 26% increase
• Convenient Care: 25% increase
• Pain Management: 12% increase
• Pharmacy: 73% increase
• BirthCenter: 2,336% increase

Occupational Health, Orthopedics, and Pediatrics sections are also reporting decreases in bounce rates, showing engagement is up. Organic entrances are also up, with Pharmacy reporting a 167% increase.

In addition, many sections the Geonetric team didn’t touch are also reporting slight improvements, likely due to the in-depth cross-linking strategies implemented.

While planning their 2018 redesign, OMC kept an eye on the growing (and existing) competition in their Rochester, MN community. But more importantly, the OMC team wanted to help their patients more quickly find the most appropriate non-emergency care clinic.

With an SEO retainer through Geonetric in place, they asked for help: How could OMC build a better non-emergency care service line section – their own branded Convenience Care – that leads patients to the right clinic when they need it most?

A Collaboration of SEO and Content

As any SEO expert will tell you, it’s more than just keywords that drives good indexing and connections with users. Geonetric’s digital marketing team was ready with tools to help research current user experience and seek out trends in keyword data to help drive better page titles and optimization opportunities.

But OMC also needed improved navigation and content, so Geonetric’s digital experts and content writers teamed up.

In the six-month project, from January to June 2018, digital marketing researched data to drive better results for OMC’s Convenience Care service line. As they revealed keyword data and user research, content wrote fresh, keyword- and user-optimized content for each Convenience Care service provided.

Monthly check-ins throughout the project kept the OMC team informed of the progress made and the metrics in flux as content was implemented on their website at olmmed.org.

Geonetric’s digital marketing team also set up specific Google Analytics tracking for the new-and-improved Convenience Care section, as well as Schema.org markup to help search engine indexing.

And OMC’s Clockwise MD wait times site still have a home on the new Convenience Care section as a subpage.

One of the biggest changes (and benefits to patients) was a previously existing PDF for “Acute care or FastCare?” to help patients decide which clinic to visit. Geonetric transferred that PDF to a responsive table on the Convenience Care landing page, which helped increase conversions to the section’s subpages as patients found the answers they were looking for. Including the information on the page was also a great way to include valuable keywords.

Leading Patients to the Right Front Door

The results were what both Geonetric and OMC had in mind when they started the project.

Since launch, the Convenience Care section has seen an increase in organic traffic and engagement. The goal, though, was to get patients to the right clinic when they needed care.

In comparison with 2017, the whole Convenience Care section saw an 18% increase in organic traffic and an 18% drop in bounce rates. More conversions were discovered, too, as the Convenience Care landing page dropped in engagement, but its subpages increased.

And since launch, conversions to reserve a spot at one of the clinics increased by 298%, showing that users are comfortable with what they learned from the content to schedule a visit online.

Overall, all subpages in the section, now newly renamed and uniquely developed, saw massive traffic increases, including a 61% increase in acute care, and a 260% increase in FastCare clinics.

With Mayo Clinic in their backyard, OMC is interested in finding creative ways to compete in Rochester, MN. They often focus on their differentiators, such as providing exceptional patient care that is focused on caring, quality, safety, and service.  They are known in the region for their convenient, quality personal care. One place the medical center knew they could deliver better awareness was around emergency room (ER) wait time. OMC turned to Geonetric and our digital marketing team to create a digital advertising campaign to help build awareness for their ER services.

Playing to Strengths

It’s widely known in the area that Mayo Clinic’s ER wait time can be quite lengthy. Depending on how busy the ER is, the wait can be anywhere from 4-6 hours or even longer. In fact, people have been known to post on social media about how long the wait times at Mayo Clinic’s ER are.

On the other hand, OMC has impressive wait times –they average just 11 minutes from being admitted to seeing a healthcare provider. OMC has a great working relationship with Mayo Clinic and will send patients to Mayo Clinic when they require a high level of specialized care. Because of this relationship, patients who present to OMC’s ER with certain symptoms can receive the required tests at OMC and get transferred to Mayo Clinic sooner than if the patient went directly to Mayo Clinic!

Developing the Campaign

To build awareness for their emergency room, Geonetric ran a paid advertising campaign with display ads on Google and Facebook that feature an engaging GIF ad promoting OMC’s 11-minute average wait times. The ads targeted granular geographic regions where people in Rochester would be most likely to be using their mobile phone, browsing online, or on Facebook.

Beating Industry Averages

Over the course of the 3-month campaign, the GIF ad was viewed over 500,000 times on Google’s Display Network and received 3,248 clicks to the website. This is a click-through rate of 0.65%, which is above the industry average of 0.59%.

On Facebook, the ads had over 83,000 impressions, a total of 3,392 post engagements, and 731 clicks to the website. This was a click-through rate of 0.87%, slightly above the industry average of 0.83%.

Since this was an awareness campaign, there was not a custom landing page or place to convert. OMC wanted people to go immediately to their ER if they had an emergency, and didn’t focus on getting phone calls, website visits, or other forms of engagement.

With a new Women’s Health Pavilion opening soon, Olmsted Medical Center (OMC) engaged in a search engine optimization project to help increase the visibility of its women’s services among health consumers in Rochester, MN, and surrounding communities. Now the new complex – complete with a new Birth Center – and the new Women’s Health Services section of the website are both getting lots of attention.

Armed with Analysis

Uncovering search patterns, interpreting searcher intent, and analyzing how users search for women’s health services in OMC’s geographical area were key to the project’s success. Armed with keyword and user analysis, the Geonetric team restructured the women’s health section to ensure all pertinent service-line content was in the same place and would be easy for site visitors to find. Because some information was missing or outdated, it was important to optimize the content for keywords and web-writing best practices.

Focus on Differentiators

As part of the content restructuring, a new women’s health landing page illustrates OMC’s expanded services and focus on delivering exceptional healthcare. The page explains why women should choose OMC for health services throughout all the stages of life. It’s also the perfect place to tell site visitors about OMC’s differentiators and lead users to the content they need in the section.

Create User-Focused Content

All of the content in the women’s health section was written or edited to align with users’ search patterns. Keyword research guided development of page titles, descriptions, link text and body copy. The copy adopts a friendly tone, drawing readers in and encouraging them to learn more about the services OMC offers.

Update the Virtual Road Map

Geonetric redirected all old URLs to the new pages so search engines and link followers arrive without issue. To further help Google re-index the content section and begin ranking the new pages more highly, Geonetric submitted the new content section to the search engine via Search Console for recrawling.