Your healthcare system is unique, so your service-line content should be, too. How do you plan for content that best fits your specific marketing and organizational needs?
Start with Strategy
Before you start writing—or even outlining—your service line section, take these steps:
- Consider your voice, tone, and style – Will your content be academic and authoritative or caring and conversational?
- Determine your project goals – What do you want to accomplish with this new content? For example, are you hoping to increase seminar registrations, drive appointments, or improve your search engine rankings?
- Reflect on your capacity – What resources can you dedicate to content creation and upkeep?
- Understand your audience – Who will the content be for, and what do those people want to learn or do on your website? How are they searching for healthcare services?
- Review related marketing material and news releases – What has your organization already developed about this service line?
- Interview internal stakeholders and subject matter experts – What information do they think is important to include on the website? What common questions do they hear from patients that you can answer online?
- Identify gaps or inaccuracies in current web content about this service – What information needs to be added, expanded, or updated to best reflect your services?
- Check out your competition – What do competing health systems offer for this service line, and how do they market it? How can you make your organization stand out online?
Your answers to these questions will help you figure out what stand-out service line content looks like for your organization.
4 Examples of High-Quality Heart & Vascular Content
Get inspired by checking out how other healthcare systems have approached heart and vascular service line sections. Whatever approach you choose, get the best results by following our guidelines for writing healthcare web content.
Focus on the Patient Journey: Adventist HealthCare
To make their website as patient-centric as possible, Adventist HealthCare, based in Gaithersburg, MD, takes a patient journey approach to their service line content.
Its Heart & Vascular Care service line section follows a typical patient pathway to receiving heart care—from preventive care (“Keep Your Heart Healthy”) to screening and diagnostic testing, through treatments, and, finally, to rehabilitation and follow-up care.
This approach helps consumers orient themselves and easily find the information they want at the time they visit the website.
Plain language, short sentences, and bulleted lists make it easy for users of all literacy levels to read and understand health care concepts. A focus on explaining the benefits of certain technologies, services, or treatments helps users make educated decisions about their care. Understandable, empathetic content supports conversions because users are more likely to take action when they feel reassured by the brand.
Spotlight Subspecialty Care: Overlake Medical Center & Clinics
Every health system, hospital, or physician practice has something that sets it apart from its competitors. Something that’s worth shining a spotlight on. For Overlake Medical Center & Clinics’ cardiology department, it’s their electrophysiology care.
Their distinctive Seattle-area arrhythmia center—and its focus on patient education—merits a deep dive into this subspecialty online.
Overlake’s extensive Arrhythmia Center content is robust and readable, with detailed pages that highlight causes, symptoms, and advanced treatments for atrial fibrillation and other types of heart rhythm disorders.
Content uses plain language to answer common queries, like “Should I See a Doctor for Heart Palpitations,” and thoughtfully explains what the center’s awards, technology, and facilities mean for health care consumers and the care they’ll receive.
Give a High-Level Overview: Olmsted Medical Center
Like many health systems, Olmsted Medical Center in southeastern Minnesota has a small marketing team. They don’t have the capacity to update core website pages frequently, so they’ve chosen to take a high-level approach to service line content.
Their Cardiology & Vascular Care page provides a comprehensive overview of cardiovascular services—from diagnosis through treatment. Subheadings and bulleted lists make the content easy to scan.
The page is concise but optimized for search and for users. It lists common conditions and treatments—and, just as importantly, explains them in patient-friendly terms.
Build SEO for Cardiology: Hartford HealthCare
Search engine optimization should be woven into every content development project you take on. Sometimes it’s the driving force.
Rewriting the entire Heart & Vascular Institute section wasn’t in the cards for Hartford HealthCare in Connecticut. But when research revealed that that “cardiology” was one of the most popular heart care-related search terms in their area, they prioritized a new, SEO-friendly cardiology page.
To boost SEO, the new specialty page:
- Answers key user questions
- Integrates “cardiology” and related keywords in subheadings, body copy, and other high-SEO value areas
- Cross-links to related pages
- Features a prominent call to action
The new content brought the web traffic Hartford was looking for. So they took that targeted approach to additional high priority service line pages across the site.
What’s Your Approach?
Need help determining the best approach to service line content for your organization? Contact us. Geonetric’s experienced content strategists and writers work exclusively with healthcare clients, which means we understand the complexity of healthcare marketing and writing.
