MARKETING

Tips for Improving Your Hospital’s Reputation, Even in a Pandemic

A small community hospital in Angola, Indiana, was experiencing an issue wherein many local patients were opting for treatment elsewhere, with some driving more than an hour away. In an effort to reverse this trend, the hospital began to invest in new technology and physicians, as well as revamp its infrastructure.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Despite all the emergency declarations, shortages and chaos, Cameron Memorial Community Hospital was able to shine. By investing in the reorganization of its website and filling information gaps, the hospital was able to better serve the community, all while bolstering its reputation, even in the throes of a pandemic.

This digital reboot helped the hospital specifically through search engine optimization (SEO). Between fall 2020 and spring 2021, the hospital was able to increase organic impressions and traffic, along with rankings for more than 1,500 keywords on its website. It was able to increase its “Find a Specialist” leads by 285%. It was also able to increase its “Google My Business” views by 65.8% in the first half of 2021.

“It’s not only web statistics but patient volume,” said Alex Membrillo, CEO of Cardinal Digital Marketing, the company that strategized the new digital plan for the hospital. “At the end of the day, we get anecdotal evidence from the practice leaders saying ‘our patient volumes are up tremendously over last year. We booked five this month into surgery, and at the same time last year it was two.’ That's what I really like to hear.”

Membrillo and his team were able to reinvigorate the hospital’s digital presence through a multilayered approach. In the reorganization, the website structure was updated to have a new directory that incorporated existing categories and tags in a blog format. This increased the crawl rate, the number of requests a search engine makes to a website in a day, explained Membrillo. With that restructuring, new landing pages were made for different office locations on the hospital website, along with separate listings in Google My Business. Consistent naming, address and phone number listings were implemented, as well as including at least 500 words of text, integration of Google Maps directions and call-to-click links for mobile phone calls, among other features that would improve visibility for local searches.

Proper execution of location schema markup, code that you place on your website to help search engines return more informative results for users, was also important for the location pages, explained Membrillo, along with schema markup throughout the rest of the website, particularly the newly created frequently asked questions (FAQs) pages. Increasing the website’s content was one of the most important aspects of the remodeling, he said.

“Bulking up content on the site is always what’s important. Text-based content is still how Google finds everything and serves results,” Membrillo said. For other hospitals to replicate these results, “If you don’t do anything else, just add content every month—content that’s useful to your demographic—and it will help over time,” he said.

FAQs and blog posts, specifically COVID-19–related ones, were not only able to provide a public service during the pandemic, but also increased referral traffic to the hospital’s website. COVID-19 messaging of unity and safety helped to “create positive sentiment to propel new service line offerings,” Membrillo said. Service line pages—specifically cardiology, orthopedics and pediatrics, among others—were updated to target high-value keywords along with new content. 

Impact
With added information, Membrillo and his team also focused on increasing reviews to improve expertise, authority and trust, a gauge that Google uses in its SEO algorithm to drive what results a searcher sees. Google doesn’t only use business information to promote certain search results, explained Membrillo, but also uses best and highest-rated reviews. To generate more reviews at Cameron Memorial Community Hospital, they integrated review requests sent automatically after patient visits through text messaging along with an online chat feature and two-way messaging.

They also implemented a review-monitoring strategy, setting who was to manage the reviews, creating templates and guidelines to respond to reviews, and promoting positive reviews through other marketing endeavors. A company—like BirdEye or Podium, for example, which both work with Cardinal Digital Marketing—can be added to help organize the calls to action and help sort through reviews, Membrillo said. “When someone checks out, the hospital’s practice management or electronic health record will ping BirdEye, and then BirdEye sends out an email that says, ‘Did you have a great experience? Leave us a review!’” he said. “With these bigger groups and hospitals, it’s the way to go. You can’t just have the front office emailing every patient. It just doesn’t work.”

While national hospital rankings and ratings are important, Membrillo explained that simple patient reviews are what really drive foot traffic. “When your patients are evaluating you versus the independent orthopedic group, they just go and type in your doctors’ names and find Google reviews and Healthgrades and Vitals, and reviews like that,” he said. “The reviews have to be good for them to get a complete picture of what you do and if you’re the best at it.”

The full picture of reorganization and content creation made the difference for Cameron Memorial Community Hospital during the pandemic. It can also work with similar hospitals, Membrillo said. To increase local visibility, hire an SEO contractor to conduct an audit. He also recommends thinking ahead and developing a crisis communication plan before it’s needed. When changes need to be made to your hospital’s website, make sure you know your audiences and understand the platforms on which they receive information. Then “provide information, joy or empathy in every communication,” he said.

This article features interviews with:

Alex Membrillo
CEO
Cardinal Digital Marketing
Atlanta, Georgia