Case Studies

How We Increased an Addiction Treatment Facility's Organic Traffic Value From $39K/mo to $124K/mo in 1 Year

Chad DeBolt

Chad DeBolt

Chad DeBolt is the personality behind and founder of Surchability. He’s been heavily involved with online marketing, specifically SEO, for 16 years.

Overview

If you are operating a business and looking for a solid SEO strategy that’s both ethical and effective, we’ve got just the thing.

Our Google Concierge Strategy has already proven its worth by boosting organic traffic significantly for almost any type of business.

Using this strategy, we were able to boost organic traffic from 3.8k/mo to 12.5k/mo (a 224% increase) in 12 months for an emerging addiction treatment facility.

These results enabled them to stop wasting money on paid ads and LegitScripts certification because they now owned an asset with real value.

Interested?

Then let’s get into the nature of this strategy.


The Google Concierge Strategy:

How to Give Google What It Wants, So You Get What You Want

Most people think Google is in the search engine business, but it’s actually in the reputation business.

Google is obsessed with being the BOSS when it comes to offering the fastest, most relevant, most helpful, and absolute best answers to its users’ search queries.

That’s why it has invested in thousands of algorithm updates to become even more precise in its understanding of search intent and meaning.

What Google really wants is to be the most reliable option for users by giving searchers what they want, which is the best, quickest answer to their searches.

The key to our strategy is that we position ourselves as Google’s concierge to help it achieve its own goals.

We want Google to see us as its most reliable resource for quality content.

Here’s how that works…

If we are well-versed in Google’s search algorithm, which we certainly are, we can make it practically impossible for Google not to select our web pages as the top search results.

We earn authority and confidence in the eyes of Google by supplying it with high-quality resources to present to its users (thereby assisting Google in its efforts to prove its reputation as the best).

Our efforts to provide Google with what it needs to succeed and cater to what it wants (like a good concierge should) end in us receiving exactly what we want as well.

The more Google sees us as an authority, the higher our rankings.

So, the searchers are pleased.

Google is pleased.

And so are we.

Alright, now that we’ve defined the “Google Concierge Strategy,” let’s discuss the three steps involved in executing this strategy.


Step 1: Technical & Content Audit

This step is all about laying the right foundation so you don’t screw up before you even start.

It doesn’t matter how amazing your content is.

If the technical aspects of your site listed below are out of sorts, you’re not going to get ranked.

The top three issues to consider during this audit are:

  1. Page Speed: This is more important than you realize. Google really cares about providing searchers with user-friendly page results. So, if your site is slow or if you have images that take forever to load, it needs to be fixed.
  2. Canonical Issues: This is often overlooked yet extremely important. Getting your URLs established correctly will ensure that you’re not losing traffic to other domains for preventable reasons.
  3. Link Equity Issues: Don’t relinquish your authority to other sites because of outbound links set to “follow.” When you get your SEO up and running, this kind of mistake would be like dumping in a fire hose of traffic at the top of your site but then having a hundred tiny holes in the bottom, leaking it all out.

Getting the technical parts right lays the foundation for the rest of your SEO strategy.

If you don’t have this down, nothing else will matter.

So, make your best effort on this first critical step.

Once your technical audit is complete and any needed adjustments are made, it’s time to do a content audit.

There are basically two possible paths here.

1. Work With What You Have.

If you’ve got decent content already, you might just need to spruce it up or make some strategic additions to it. This is a great place to start since you’ll be able to leverage what you already have to get a head start and achieve results faster!

Here’s how:

  • Establish your high-value pages: Use Ahrefs to analyze URLs to figure out which pages already have a good chance for success.

  • Establish your “quick win” opportunities: Find keywords that are already ranking on page one or two of search engine result pages (SERPs) but are not yet in the top three spots.

  • Create an optimization plan based on high-value pages + quick win keywords: This requires a thorough analysis of what is already working/ranking in the SERPs, as well as determining where your existing content falls short. Adding or altering content, getting strategic links into high-value pages using keywords as anchor text, and so on are common examples of needed improvements. If you already have some content, you’ll be able to get started quickly with the methods outlined above. We optimized it to better fit search intent and then pushed it to rank higher. As you optimize, Google will notice that you’re achieving quick wins, which will lead to even greater success. However, if you need to start from scratch, this technique still works (albeit it takes somewhat longer).

2. Start From Scratch.
If you’re just getting started or haven’t created much high-quality content yet, this is the best approach.

  • Complete competitor gap analysis: Take your top 3-6 competitors and run a comprehensive content gap analysis on each of them. What are your competitors doing well, and where can you close that gap?
  • Consolidate your data: Take the raw data from your spreadsheet and categorize the keywords into clusters based on topics or themes. Since Google thinks of keywords as groups, being Google’s concierge requires you to operate in this way as well. For example, here, we created a topic cluster for our client on the topic of “alcohol withdrawal symptoms.”

  • Utilize existing pages: At this point, you may be able to consolidate multiple existing pages into one improved piece of content to target a particular keyword grouping. You may also be able to refresh/build out the core of a single page that already exists (we’ll go over this in the second step of our Google Concierge Strategy).
  • Develop brand new pages: If you have nothing to work with, you will have to start completely from scratch. But don’t worry, we’ll show you how to do just that!

Step 2: Asset Development

Step number two is all about creating an arsenal of content to crush your competition online.

We will show you how to create content that Google will love, whether you are refreshing existing content or starting from scratch.

1. Research industry best practices: Go check out the SERPS to identify the shared characteristics of the content that is currently winning on Google. Look at elements such as:

  • Average content length
  • Subtopics
  • Semantic relationship between other keyword groups
  • The tone of the content (transactional, educational, etc.). You’ll want to tailor your content to meet these current criteria. Basically, figure out what Google likes and then offer it better versions of that.

2. Advanced schema markup: Using a regular plug-in to insert basic schema will not yield the results you need to outperform competitors. Instead, we use a far more advanced approach that focuses on aligning your addiction treatment center with known topical entities.

Remember, our goal is to serve Google like a concierge. That means making Google’s life easier by offering obvious results for it to display. One critical method to accomplish this is to ensure that your brand is aligned with what Google regards to be relevant “entities” linked to the topics you wish to be associated with. Entities and keywords are not the same thing, despite the fact that they may appear to be. Sometimes the distinction is as minor as a single letter being capital or lowercase.

For example, drug rehabilitation is a keyword relevant to our client’s industry. To increase their organic traffic value by 219%, we needed to create great content around this search term. However, Drug rehabilitation (capital D) is actually a topical entity that we needed to align their brand with.

3. Max out your content: Expanding basic, written content with a variety of rich media increases the effectiveness of your content. Based on our experience, we can confidently say that this step is game-changing. Here are some ways we like to max out content:

  • Create a related video, upload it to YouTube, and then embed it in your post.
  • Create an audio recording of the content, publish it as a podcast, and embed it into the post.
  • Create a high-quality infographic to include in the post and share on social.

Why is this step important? Let’s find out:

  • It improves the usability and engagement of your content, as well as adds value to your site visitors. This boosts key KPIs like time on site and conversion rate.

  • It signals to Google that your content is the ultimate resource for this specific cluster of keywords. Remember, you want to create the type of content that will stop Google in its tracks. It should be the kind of page that just booms, “Look no farther! Everything you need is here.”
  • It becomes a backlink magnet. Other websites may want to utilize your post as a resource when writing about related keywords. This is valuable in the world of SEO.

4. Make your content BETTER: This does not mean just making your content longer or simply slapping a video on your page and calling it a day. The best way to make your content better than the competition’s is to find a gap and then fill it.

  • Can the information be organized in a more coherent way?
  • Is there a unique angle that you can take?
  • Where can this content be bolstered by current, compelling statistics?
  • Will the use of visuals add value to the delivery?

Once you have a piece of content that you’re really proud of, it’s time to promote it!


Step 3: Promotion Method

I get that starting with this strategy might feel like a big effort at first.

But here’s the thing: Because you’re creating high-quality content, you won’t need to spend a huge budget or go super aggressive with promotion.

Begin with the simplest tasks, see how they do, and then gradually tackle more.

This way, you’ll improve your rankings and build your domain authority bit by bit without getting overwhelmed.

It’s all about making progress at your own pace.

What kind of promotion do we recommend?

  • Internal linking from relevant pages is an easy first step.
  • Press release to acquire authority backlinks.
  • Syndication of the content itself to platforms like Medium, etc.
  • Syndication of podcasts to Soundcloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, etc.
  • Syndication of video to YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
  • Syndication of infographics to sharing sites, social platforms, etc.
  • Traditional outreach, such as broken/lost link building.

There you have it. The exact three steps we followed for our client.

This is how we were able to achieve some incredible results for our client.

  • 40% increase in brand new, competitive keywords ranking on page one.
  • 224% bump in organic traffic.
  • 219% improvement in organic traffic value.

You now have a clear understanding of how to implement the Google Concierge Strategy for your business.

If you don’t have the time, expertise, or desire to do all of the above yourself, we can become your “Part-Time SEO Manager.”

Using the Google Concierge Strategy, we can help you grow your business.

First, we’ll start by doing a technical and content audit of your site.

Next, we will start developing linkable content assets.

Finally, we’ll use our distribution network to get those content assets ranking on Google.

Reach out if you are:

  • Already running an established business
  • Looking to increase organic traffic by over 200% in 12 months
  • Willing to spend money on asset development for a long-term strategy
  • Prepared for an increase in leads with an effective sales process and qualified staff

Schedule a call with us so we can discuss the services you offer, your budget for asset development, and the kind of content we can create (or optimize) for your business.

Most importantly, we’ll devise a strategy to implement our proven Google Concierge Strategy to help you achieve your growth objectives!