University Health is a centrally located San Antonio hospital and level 1 trauma center. It includes a network of dozens of health centers and prides itself on serving the communities’ needs and providing high-quality care. After partnering with Geonetric on a successful website redesign, University Health put their trust in the healthcare marketing experts at Geonetric to take over their paid search campaigns, and eventually, overall digital marketing strategy.

Optimizing PPC Ads with SEO

University Health’s needs involved both paid and organic optimization. They were not getting the return on investment (ROI) or conversions they were expecting from their digital ad campaigns. Ad campaigns were competing with other University Health campaigns and did not coordinate with their organic search efforts. The ad campaigns not being properly set up were also negatively impacting user experience. There needed to be less clicks for potential patients to get to what they were looking for on their site. This reduced the impact of the campaigns and wasted dollars in ad spend. University Health looked to Geonetric to increase ROI in their pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaigns.

Geonetric recommended a new digital strategy that combines University Health’s PPC and search engine optimization (SEO) efforts to generate more impactful results. In their PPC campaign, keyword research and forecasting drove the direction for ad copy, landing page copy, and campaign budgeting. New landing pages were created to promote their services lines by supporting multiple locations on a single page with clear conversion points added throughout.

A growing partnership

An overhaul of the existing campaign structure and assets, as well as continuous optimization, led to a significant growth in digital performance. Geonetric increased University Health’s conversions by 79% across the board over a nine-month period.   One service line in particular saw a 691% increase in conversions and an 84% decrease in cost per conversion in the month following the takeover.  By creating a cohesive digital strategy, Geonetric also improved University Health’s user experience, leading consumers through the conversion process. Geonetric continues to push performance to new heights with monitoring, optimization, and A/B testing.

University Health initially contracted with Geonetric for a 15-month takeover of six campaigns. After seeing such positive results, University Health asked Geonetric to take over four additional campaigns along with managing their SEO and personalization approach. Geonetric continues to work with University Health on creating a cohesive, results driven, digital marketing strategy.

Finding Value from Internal Input

The primary objective of Avera’s intranet redesign was to help employees get the information they need to do their job quickly and effectively. The intranet team at Avera knew they had to look for internal stakeholders to achieve their goals. To get the inside scoop they:

• Launched an employee survey with 970 participants
• Ran a virtual card sorting exercise with 33 participants across various roles
• Reviewed user data and analytics trends, including an in-depth look at site search volumes to identify specific tools that didn’t have an obvious home on the site or were too deep to find easily
• Implemented heat-mapping to see interaction and engagement trends on the homepage and other key pages
• Analyzed ongoing internal requests for intranet updates to identify themes

Avera’s core governance team of internal communications staff also took feedback from the wealth of employee and physician input on the needs and desires for the future intranet when creating their new site.

Using The Findings

Conclusions from the employee survey, data, and card sorting exercise became the outline for the team’s vision of an enhanced, user-focused intranet, such as:

• Users visit KnowledgeNet frequently and use it to find a variety of resources, native and off-site
• Most users found value in tools and apps, news, topical resources areas (HR/benefits, educational materials, IT needs, etc.)
• Users would like to see improvement with site search, navigation, links to tools, and mobile site access
• Users think about resources in a topical, related fashion, not by department ownership
• Different users expect to access tools in different ways

Delivering a User-focused Intranet

After investing in research, the team was able to build a new intranet with user-focused content strategy and design. The new KnowledgeNet offers:

• A mobile-friendly, app-like design
• A user-friendly and intuitive sitewide navigation
• An improved A-Z list of resources that allows users to search by keyword or tool name
• A news feed with thumbnail images
• Engagement-focused homepage elements like digital employee greeting cards
• A three-panel engagement element that updates regularly with blog posts, appreciation stories and current job opportunities

In addition, popular landing pages, such as Education & Training and Employee Wellness Resources, put tools and information front and center, combining information into user-focused hubs versus siloed departments.

Content strategy helps Avera cross-link to other sections and resources to help their employees quickly locate the information they need. This approach helps make the new site manageable for users.

Committing to Content Governance

To maintain their commitment to keeping the intranet site user-focused, not departmental, Avera worked to shift how their teams saw KnowledgeNet, as a hub for many resources.

The core governance team met weekly before launch to review requests, resources, data, and opportunities to map out and document their governance plan. With the help of consulting with other discipline partners and senior leadership input, they created a governance plan that covers the broad range of banner implementation to adding news and making adjustments to the new resources or sections.

This shift allowed the intranet committee to have a purposeful content strategy to deliver information that enhances employees’ daily work, empowers employees as brand champions, and encourages more engagement.

Promoting by Roadshow & Results

Avera’s intranet team went on a roadshow before launching the new intranet. They met with leadership groups, key stakeholders, and other audiences to tell them what to expect, demonstrate new features and celebrate the new design and functionality.

Internal feedback since launch has been positive, and the new platform crucial for allowing the internal communications team to communicate timely information during the pandemic.

Positive data and usage trends continue to show growth and engagement in key areas, including:

• 173% increase in resource and tools traffic
• 77% increase in card interactions
• 10% increase in news stories views
• 5.4% increase in overall site page views

In addition, KnowledgeNet recently took home a gold in the Web Element – Intranet category at the 2021 MarCom awards.

Silver Cross Hospital is a rarity in the competitive Chicago healthcare market: they are an independent hospital, and they’ve remained that way for the past 126 years. While they are generally considered a community hospital, they compete at a much higher level since they partner with leading Chicago academic institutions for neurology, cancer, pediatrics and rehabilitation. They are home to the most extensive robotic surgery program in the Chicago area. And they are known as the “baby hospital,” with 3,000 births a year and opening their county’s first Level 3 NICU in early 2022.

In 2019, Silver Cross partnered with digital experience agency, Geonetric, to redesign their website with VitalSite content management system (CMS) to take advantage of VitalSite’s integrated content marketing hub was a top priority.

Investing in content marketing

Silver Cross saw the potential of delivering timely content to high-value community members, and in 2012 started IMatter, a site for women who joined the hospital’s loyalty program. The program rewarded women for taking an active role in their health through screenings and scans by giving them discounts at dozens of local businesses that were IMatter partners.

The IMatter website was separate from the main Silver Cross website and offered a blog covering health topics and news stories. The site was a great first step in content marketing but didn’t attract enough traffic or conversions to deliver real value.

When Silver Cross began working with Geonetric on the main site redesign, the team decided to integrate IMatter into the overarching content strategy and give the blog a prominent home on the main site to expand their reach.

Connecting the content marketing hub to organizational goals

As the planning got underway for the new content marketing hub, the primary goals were increasing patient engagement and retention, improving brand awareness and helping with population health initiatives by sharing wellness content. Soon after launching, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and sharing educational content about safety measures also became a top priority for the organization and the new content marketing hub.

Launching Stay Well

The new content marketing hub is known as Stay Well and features a custom design with a large hero image. To improve user experience, Stay Well has filtering to allow users to search by topic or service. Silver Cross’ custom design includes a modern card layout to highlight a featured article and display other content. Stay Well’s integration into the main site has the bonus of displaying related articles on services pages and connected to provider profiles. In addition, Silver Cross’ marketing team can easily share any article on social media.

Creating the content

Silver Cross was able to bring timely content over from the former blog to the new content marketing hub. The team adds new stories and videos on topics like upcoming health observances and key service lines. The Silver Cross team incorporates a mix of authors on the hub, including:

• Doctors who need added promotion or exposure
• Internal writers
• Freelancers
• Patients who share their personal story

Enjoying the results

Since its launch, the content marketing hub has delivered impressive results. When looking at Stay Well landing page entrances for the first eight months:

• 13% increase in organic search traffic, bringing in an additional 126 sessions
• 56% increase in social media traffic, bringing in an additional 539 sessions
• 26% increase in direct traffic, bringing in an additional 251 sessions
• 5% increase in referral traffic, bringing in an additional 50 sessions

In addition, the team is seeing a lot of success re-using content from the blog on social media. One article that featured a video of a prominent Silver Cross OB-GYN discussing the COVID-19 vaccine and pregnancy received more than 1,500 views on Facebook.

EvergreenHealth is a two-hospital health system in Washington that helps enrich the health and well-being of their community. Their Kirkland campus has a 318-bed medical center and four medical specialty buildings, and the Monroe campus has a 72-bed hospital with a medical specialty building. Kirkland is also home to tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon, and EvergreenHealth knew it was more critical than ever to provide their tech-savvy community with an easy-to-navigate, system-wide website that delivers a premium, mobile-first user experience. That’s why the health system sought out Geonetric’s help to create a new website that builds brand awareness, is user friendly, and is built on a scalable content management system (CMS), like VitalSite for future website needs.

Mobile-first, system-wide approach

Geonetric delivered on EvergreenHealth’s vision for a mobile-first digital platform with a patient-centered focus. The homepage design added branded colors and icon elements along with a more modern design, keeping content clean and easy to scan.

EvergreenHealth’s homepage banner focuses on the broad range of care options they offer and getting site visitors easier access to care – primary care, specialty care, urgent care, emergency care. This user-friendly approach invites people to learn how to match their healthcare needs with the expert health services available throughout EvergreenHealth.

With at least half of all site visitors originating from a mobile device, unique mobile navigation prominently displays the three top tasks. Find a Doctor, Health Services and Locations are anchored to the bottom of the homepage on mobile, creating an app-like layout and allowing site visitors to use their thumb to click on the needed information quickly. In addition, the user-focused task navigation and information panels help visitors search by symptoms, find health services and learn more about EvergreenHealth locations, news, events, and history.

Custom provider profiles

Unlike traditional provider directories where site visitors can only search for a doctor based on name, location or service, EvergreenHealth’s “Find a Doctor” lets patients search using a pre-populated menu of symptoms and procedures. Searching by symptoms makes it’s more straightforward and user-friendly for site visitors to find the right provider with the right expertise. For example, potential patients can search “knee pain” and see a list of doctors specializing in knee conditions.

The symptom search is available from the homepage and the provider directory landing page. Other, more traditional search options, including name, location and specialty like “orthopedics,” is also available.

Because of this functionality, EvergreenHealth knew traffic to provider profiles would increase and looked to Geonetric for their expertise on how to optimize provider profiles.
A new, custom provider profile intuitively displays office information, provider photos, patient ratings and reviews, and highlights the doctor’s expertise to create compelling physician profiles that convert visitors into patients.

Coordinating content strategy and content for the move to system

One concern during the redesign was the volume of content EvergreenHealth had on their current site. Geonetric’s content strategists recommend a simplified, user-focused sitewide structure and navigation for the main site to create a better user experience and help site visitors find medical services.

With the realization of bringing over five out of the seven microsites as part of the system-wide approach, Geonetric worked closely with EvergreenHealth to review duplicate content and prioritize moving high-ranking and high-engagement pages. A content matrix guided the shift from individual sites to a system site, mapping what pages to migrate, edit or create. The matrix also identified natural cross-linking opportunities for visitors to quickly find the remaining microsites, EvergreenHealth Monroe and EvergreenHealth Neuroscience, Spine & Orthopedic Institute.

In addition, Geonetric’s content team wrote several service line sections during the redesign, including primary care and orthopedics to support EvergreenHealth’s small marketing team.

Marketing hub strategy

To take EvergreenHealth’s content marketing to the next level, Geonetric created a content marketing hub strategy. Healthiest Best, a previous content hub microsite, was integrated into the main site to increase traffic and boost search engine optimization. A new content structure driven by user data, makes it easy for readers to find the most popular topics and services. The custom design leverages EvergreenHealth’s system branding and site visitors can filter stories by topic or service or use an intuitive keyword search.

Reeling in the results

Since launch, overall engagement has increased 9% in page views, 13% in pages per session and 4% clicks from Google organic search. With 52% of users on a mobile device, EvergreenHealth saw a significant decrease of 30% mobile bounce rate a 26% overall bounce rate.

Fisher-Titus serves 70,000-plus residents in the greater Huron County area with a 99-bed acute care medical center as well as skilled nursing, home health and outpatient services. The medical center has been a staple in Norwalk since 1917. Fisher-Titus has always had a deep commitment to local care.

With big competition a short drive away in Cleveland and Toledo, the organization needed to make it easy for residents to know what’s available without the need to travel. Fisher-Titus turned to digital agency Geonetric to create a new site that was easier to navigate, had a more modern design and was built on a content management system that housed all the needed modules in one platform.

Investing in healthcare-focused solutions and strategy

Having worked with non-healthcare-specific vendors in the past, Fisher-Titus was excited to partner with an agency that focused on supporting the patient journey through digital. The organization was also drawn to the VitalSite Essentials CMS as it came with all the needed features functionality in one, easy-to-use platform.

With a sleek, modern design, the new site better matches the patient-centered care delivered inside the medical center. It also offers an enhanced experience with responsive design.

New primary navigation is based on decades of best practices in how healthcare consumers search and find information, putting Find a Provider, Find a Location, Patients & Guests and Medical Services at the users’ fingertips. Secondary navigation places on the homepage features top tasks like Pay a Bill and View Classes and stand out with icons.

Fisher-Titus’ new site also offers sophisticated cross-promotion throughout the site. This feature, built into VitalSite Essentials, allows site visitors to see related providers, services, locations, events and news in one spot.

That cross-promotion feature comes in handy for sharing content from their blog. This allows Fisher-Titus to share helpful articles on related services pages, encouraging site visitors to stay on the site and learn more about topics they care about.

Enhancing site functionality

One of the benefits of VitalSite Essentials is that is offers the core functionality out-of-the-box. With the new platform, Fisher-Titus was able to upgrade provider, classes, services, and location functionality.

Find a Doctor

Fisher-Titus’ new Find a Doctor offers a robust search feature that allows users to search by their top criteria. With built-in Schema.org markup on all physicians, the directory also helps Fisher-Titus improve search rankings for providers.

Each provider has their own profile page, showcasing areas of interest and specialties, alongside integrated physician reviews. Profiles also show the locations the provider sees patients, with a map, and a call-to-action to make an appointment.

Classes & Events

The Classes & Events directory helps Fisher-Titus with event promotion. The organization can now upload and control their own classes and events calendar, as well as feature related events and dates – something they weren’t able to do on their old site.

Serving a rural community, events and classes are a big part of Fisher-Titus’ outreach. Offering more features to site visitors as well as to administrators has been a much-needed improvement. The Fisher-Titus team is currently working with Geonetric to add a payment module to the functionality.

Find a Location

In addition, the Find a Location directory is a new feature for Fisher-Titus, allowing each location to have a profile with contact information and a map.

Care & Treatment

The Care & Treatment page also offers a full A-Z listing and taxonomy on the backend connects services with alternative terms, making it much easier for site visitors to find the service they are looking for regardless of the label they use to search.

Improving the user experience

The new site launched in March 2021 and immediately started delivering results. There has been a:

• 44.2% improvement in bounce rate
• 21% improvement in pages per session
• 8.4% increase in average session duration

The site is also delivering more site visitors from major cities in the region, including a 29% increase in users from Sandusky and a 15% increase in users from Willard.

In addition, Fisher-Titus worked with Geonetric to set up goal tracking with Google Analytics and since launch they have seen a 5.7% increase in goal completions and a 65.2% increase in goal conversion rate for “Viewed Find a Physician” and “Viewed Physician Profile.”

University Health is a publicly funded, locally owned and operated academic medical center in San Antonio and Bexar County in Texas. The health system has been in existence for more than 100 years with the mission of improving the health of the community through high quality, compassionate patient care, innovation, education and discovery.

The health system was facing an impending upgrade on its Sitecore digital experience platform. University Health decided to use the upgrade as an opportunity to advance digital strategy and build an innovative web presence that lives up to its mission. They turned to digital experience agency Geonetric to make it happen.

Investing in system-centric content strategy

The new University Health website takes a more system-centric marketing approach, leveraging the system’s size, depth, and reach of medical services more effectively. The content strategy focused on bringing the organization’s Health Focus blog and transplant microsites into the main site, making it easier for patients to find the information they need within one site. Cross-linking services, providers, and locations across the site showcases University Health’s expertise and multidisciplinary team approach to care.

Developing more intuitive navigation and making it easier for site visitors to find the information they need quickly was a key redesign goal. To accomplish this, the main navigation is prominent and easy to identify with a sticky header that remains in place even as users scroll.

Other navigation highlights include:

• Strategic drop-down menus from the main navigation give users choices and help quickly guide them to their desired destination. The drop-downs allow users to preview several navigation options, making lower-level content visible without scrolling.
• Sophisticated taxonomy in the prominent site search function allows visitors who like to use search to get helpful, accurate results.
• Expanded footer to address secondary audience needs common to academic medical centers, with links to the Fellowship Program, Residency Program, and Clinical and Internships.

Labeling medical services with patient-friendly terms make them accessible to users of all health literacy levels. Structuring services sections to align with a typical patient journey—from identifying conditions and symptoms to treatment and ongoing care. This approach allows the health system to provide digital touchpoints throughout a patient’s care. Thoughtful cross-linking strategies throughout the content connect to related providers, locations, news, blog content, and classes and events.

Navigation optimization for each user device was essential. To create an app-like experience on mobile, the navigation features three buttons fixed to the header for doctors, services, and locations.

Building and testing user experience design

Beginning with a design workshop, the Geonetric team and University Health stakeholders discussed visuals, reviewed the University Health’s branding standards and agreed on a color palette that considers web accessibility for calls-to-action link text and button styles.

Geonetric fielded an unmoderated first-click test on various design concepts to gain insight on consumers’ ability to start down the right path to find specific information easily. The test uncovered opportunities to enhance the user experience, such as:

• Update call-to-action copy
• Revise mobile navigation display
• Additional areas to cross-link between related pages

The new, tested design utilizes screen real-estate with full-width custom photography provided by University Health. The design also works to visually break up content and call-to-action in clear ways, with eye-catching elements such as a short orange underline for emphasis and visual separation from the body content. The entire site projects a warm and welcoming appearance while maintaining consistency with the University Health brand.

The redesigned homepage is flexible, giving University Health the space to promote high priority services, integrate blog content, align hero images to match marketing campaigns, and an area to highlight campus expansion efforts.

A new provider section boasts expanded search functions to help users find a provider within University Health and a comprehensive provider profile design with integrated patient reviews, videos, locations, and insurance information.

Creating personalized experiences with personas

Taking full advantage of Sitecore’s personalization capabilities, University Health and Geonetric dug into consumer research and web analytics to create six personas for the system. The personas focus on the core service lines of primary care, diabetes, heart, cancer, pregnancy and birth, and transplant.

The personas act as a guide for the University Health marketing team as they create compelling service line and health and wellness content and campaigns. They layout in an easy to read format:

• Demographics
• Technology and media habits
• Top health goals
• Common thoughts and feelings about healthcare
• Top pain points and value propositions
• Tangible ways University Health can assist each audience digitally

Nurturing digital brand awareness and trust

Implementing a new, integrated content marketing hub helps enhance University Health’s brand awareness. Consistent, compelling, and timely consumer-focused wellness content, creates trust and loyalty among target audiences. Improved user experience functions allow users to filter blog content by topics and services and then refine it by expert and service line. University Health can easily swap out featured stories to align with patient journeys or campaigns.

Developing patient-focused content

University Health worked with Geonetric to build out robust, relevant, patient-first content that showcases University Health as a compassionate, expert academic health system. The organization is working to enhance its brand in the community and highlight its alignment with UT Health San Antonio and it’s bring its expertise as an academic teaching hospital to the forefront.

Geonetric’s expert writing team highlights these competitive differentiators in new, user-focused content on the site. The team:

• Developed 78 pages of content for four service lines including, Diabetes and Endocrinology, Pregnancy and Childbirth, Transplant Care, and Women’s Health.
• Created content for University Children’s Health pediatric transplant program and pediatric cancer services.
• Restructured and wrote new content to bring the Transplant microsite into the new University Health website. This section is a comprehensive, 40-page section about transplant care that includes calls-to-action, content, video, and the ability to dynamically pull blogs, news, doctors and locations into the service line pages.

Due to the success of the content development work, University Health is partnering with Geonetric again to write pediatric service line content.

Delivering immediate results

The new University Health site went live late May 2021, and is already seeing positive results, including:

• 11% increase in service line pageviews
• 29% increase in clicks on navigation elements
• 51% increase in clicks on the main navigation
• 19% increase in provider profile organic entrances
• 9% increase in phone calls (clicks on phone numbers) from a provider profile pages
• 7% increase in the average time users spent on provider profiles

Mercy has been serving the Eastern Iowa community since 1900, growing from a single, 253-bed community hospital to multiple clinics and facilities today.

And, because online business listings are crucial to help searchers find healthcare information today, Mercy worked hard to ensure its information on Google and Bing was up-to-date. But, as the healthcare organization grew, so did its listing needs. So, when the ongoing management of hundreds of business listing records became a burden for Mercy’s small team, they turned to their digital agency to take over.

Outsourcing listing management

To bring more efficiency to the process, Geonetric began by creating new bulk upload datasheets for Mercy to simplify claiming, creating, and updating multiple listings in both Google and Bing. And, by following Mercy’s source of truth for providers and locations – its website provider and location directories – Geonetric was able to ensure consistent attributes across both sources. This makes it easier for searchers to find and recognize Mercy information – which is especially important when some facilities are standalone buildings, while others are departments within the hospital.

Geonetric also ensures that Mercy’s listings are taking advantage of new features and content areas, such as links to COVID-19 content and video appointments.

Enhancing provider listings

Too often, healthcare organizations focus only on their locations for business listings. But, provider profiles also make up a significant amount of searches. For Mercy, providers make up 18% of all searches.

That’s why Mercy and Geonetric worked together to ensure that all provider profiles were also optimized with:

• Up-to-date information
• Professional headshots
• Trackable URLs linking back to the doctor’s profile in Mercy’s provider directory

Investing in tracking

In 2020, Mercy and Geonetric added UTM parameters to all listings so the organization could track engagement and conversions when users click the listing, which then redirects them to the website.

In that time, the organization has been found by searchers more than 3.6 million times, with 117,802 of those searchers visiting Mercy’s website, another 216,305 initiating a phone call and 64,236 getting directions.

Moreover, since adding the UTM tracking, Mercy has seen a

• 9.2% increase in sessions from listings to the website
• 7.2% increase in new website users
• 11.4% increase in average session duration

Mercy and Geonetric also track listing utilization by the most popular navigation applications: Of these, Google Maps is the most common, with 67% of business listing searchers using that navigation system; followed by Waze (12%); Apple Maps (11%); and MapQuest (8%). Tracking the use of navigation systems also helps Mercy understand which sources are providing the most traffic and engagement; when updates are needed (if traffic decreases from a specific source); and where to prioritize resources.

But, the work of enhancing listings isn’t done; Geonetric and Mercy are currently working to integrate functionality to make an appointment directly into the listings to capture all of the “no-click” searches.

Maryland-based Adventist HealthCare is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of people and communities through a ministry of physical and spiritual healing. The 114-year-old health system and integrated health delivering network offers a continuum of care and is the largest provider of healthcare in the Montgomery County region.

With deep roots focused on community wellness, Adventist HealthCare was an early mover in the content marketing space, creating a WordPress blog in more than a decade ago as a way to share expertise around health and wellness topics. The organization quickly outgrew that platform and turned to long-time partner Geonetric to build a content marketing hub in their main site, delivering a better experience for site visitors and administrators.

Moving from a blog to a content marketing hub

As an organization, Adventist HealthCare invests understanding their keys audiences and their journeys, so the team’s content marketing efforts focus on answering top question and promoting healthy habits and helpful advice. While WordPress was an effective solution for a while, Adventist HealthCare wanted to integrate the blog content more seamlessly into their main website, allowing the content to support more sophisticated journeys and ensure site visitors felt informed and connected at every step before and after treatment.

As a foundation, the Geonetric team created an overarching content strategy for site structure and taxonomy recommendations, ensuring content marketing assets shared the same categorization strategy as the rest of the website.

The content hub, named Living Well, boasts a new custom landing page design with large images, a card-like design, and the ability to filter results by certain topics. Custom interior pages have eye-catching call-outs to put readers on the path to top conversion points, like health assessments.

Cross-promoting with key providers and locations

Building the content marketing hub within the main website’s structure and domain gives Adventist HealthCare more opportunities to connect related content and build domain authority.

Using Geonetric’s taxonomy recommendations, articles in the content marketing hub are connected on provider profiles, service line pages and location pages, putting site visitors on a path to helpful content regardless of how they enter or access the site. Conversely, service line pages link back to health and wellness articles, putting site visitors on a path to helpful content regardless of how they enter or access the site.

This also means content marketing assets are part of the integrated site search, allowing site visitors to find article content alongside searches for doctors and services.

Improving optimization and overall engagement

Since launch in September 2020, the content marketing hub has delivered over 34,000 clicks from organic search engine results pages and 2.5 million organic search impressions. Other notable results:

• Total organic clicks from organic SERP to website increased by over 255,000 or 62%.
• Total search impressions increased by over 5.1 million (52.5%) since the content marketing hub was launched.
• The average position of the site in organic search results improved by 1.2 positions, or 4.2%.

With a goal of using the content in Living Well as part of the patient journey, using cross-promotion strategically was an important part of the project.

• Traffic to the locations section has increased by 34%, to the services section by 21%, and to the doctor section by 21% when compared to the previous period.
• Users who viewed a Living Well page at some point during their visit also viewed 50,144 service line pages, 38,348 location pages, and 18,917 doctor pages.
• Of the 58,382 times a user entered the site on one of the new Living Well pages, 3,377 then viewed a service line page, 3,269 viewed a Location page, and 1,761 viewed a Doctor page.
• Living Well viewers completed 6,999 calls-to-action (including phone calls), viewed a video 3,296 times, downloaded files 1,120 times, emailed the organization 298 times, and had 54 other conversions.

When it comes to website engagement, overall website sessions increased by 140% when compared to the same timeframe one year ago. There was an 18% increase in pages per session, a 42% increase in average session duration, and 23% decrease in bounce rate on the website overall since the Living Well was launched. Other statistics:

• Overall website sessions increased by 140% when compared to the same timeframe one year ago.
• Overall website users increased by 153% when compared to the same timeframe one year ago.
• Overall website page views increased by 174% when compared to the same timeframe one year ago.

Montage Health is a family of organizations dedicated to keeping Monterey County, California healthy. With a 258-bed hospital, Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula (Community Hospital), a medical group, philanthropic foundation, urgent care clinics, employee wellness program, wellness center, and Medicare plans, Montage Health has more than 2,500 employees and serves more than 434,000 residents.

Although the name Montage Health was chosen in 2016 to represent the system’s “montage” of services, the system has a long history, serving the area for almost 9 decades. The organization’s flagship hospital, Community Hospital, got its start in the 1920s. The Community Hospital name became synonymous with the entire system, even as the organization grew to encompass much more than the hospital.

With multiple websites and a fractured user experience, Montage Health turned to long-time partner Geonetric to create a new web presence on the VitalSite content management system that builds brand awareness for the entire Montage Health system.

Taking a user-focused approach to site organization

The first phase of the project centered on creating a strategy for combining all seven entity websites into one site. From assessing gaps in the user experience to applying user behavior data to diving into the system’s organizational structure, Geonetric’s content strategists built an information architecture that put site visitors first while still representing all entities.

The Geonetric team performed qualitative usability testing, asking site users to complete common tasks — like finding a doctor or location — using different wireframes. Testing revealed site visitors used access-to-care features as a way to help navigate to different types of providers. This insight led to the creation of a Care & Treatment landing page that gives site visitors guidance to choose the best option for their unique needs and preferences. An interactive flip card design and clear, concise copy help users immediately navigate to the best care setting for their needs.

Letting design shine

Building from Montage Health’s brand style guide, the site design leverages the vibrant colors and coastal community the system calls home. Custom icons were created as well as a unique accent bar that helps draw the eye to important calls-to-action.

With the rebrand, the system was working to calm community fears that they had been bought by an outside organization. Montage Health used the redesign as an opportunity to reinforce their community ties by using photos of real locations, real patients, and real employees.

Tasked with making sure all seven entities still had emphasis and representation on the site while living cohesively within the Montage Health brand, Geonetric’s design team gave each entity a custom landing page and interior page where they could use their individual logos and deploy unique branding. For some entities, like MoGo, their network of urgent care clinics, their section of the site has a special but complementary design and tertiary navigation menu that cross-links as needed to interior pages in the section and across the site.

Enhancing the online location strategy

Although all of the entities live within one sitewide, global navigation, it was important that each had a place to tell their own story. This required a thoughtful location strategy that could house more information than a standard single location profile. For example, Community Hospital moved from having its own 746-page website to a robust location profile that not only put the standard location information like hours, maps, and contact information at site visitors’ fingertips, it also gave the hospital a place to share its history, location-specific resources, and cross-link to services offered.

With location-focused copy critical to search engine optimization, all 55 of the location profiles Geonetric developed include Schema.org markup to help search engines recognize the content type. In addition, location-focused keywords are used in driving directions and other content to aid in near-me searches.

Writing user-centric copy

Montage Health enlisted the Geonetric writing team to create new, search-optimized copy throughout the site. Using the findings from interviews with Montage Health’s subject matter experts and in-depth keyword research, the content developers created new copy that answers users’ top questions, follows the patient journey, and adheres to proven web writing best practices. In total, the team developed 420 pages of new content for the Montage Health site, including:

• 48 service line sections (217 pages total), including priority service lines Cancer Care and Heart and Vascular Care
• 55 location profiles
• About us section
• Patient and family resources section
• Accessibility statement
• Montage Health Foundation section
• For healthcare and professionals section

All content cross-links strategically, putting users on a path to finding services, locations, and providers.

In addition, Geonetric delivered content governance workshops for the Montage Health team, as well as recommendations related to their video and classes and events calendar categorization strategies.

Enjoying immediate results

The new site launched in May of 2021 and saw immediate improvements, including a 322% increase in traffic to the locations section on the new site (MontageHealth.org) when compared to the locations section on their previous site (CHOMP.org). Site engagement has increased with a 50% increase in pages per session, a 61% increase in average session duration and a 35% decrease in bounce rate. There has been a 261% increase in organic clicks to Montage Health and a 178% increase in organic search impressions.