SEO case study

HOTH X Helps Oral Surgery Practice Boost Traffic 1,400%

Improving an oral surgery clinic’s SEO isn’t the same as helping an online retailer or tourism website.

We have to increase both their traffic and authority at the same time! Why? Because oral surgery is serious business.

Potential clients are already apprehensive about getting surgery and they want to pick a doctor they can trust.

Read this case study to learn how we did both for an oral surgery practice located in the Southwestern United States.

By the end of our oral surgery SEO campaign, this client received 1,400% more web traffic and improved their domain authority (DA).

The site received more traffic and visitors knew they could trust the services being offered. Start scrolling down to learn more.

Background

A large oral surgery clinic with seven locations in the Southwestern United States started working with us back in 2017.

This client offers a wide range of services to customers: oral surgery, dental implants, maxillofacial surgery, and cosmetic surgery. They also employ eight specialists in dentistry and surgery.

Back then the clinic was interested in building links and refreshing some of its website content with new blogs. They started ordering our products individually (as needed) but lacked the consistency to really break through the search rankings.

After a few years of modest growth, this client decided to enroll in HOTH X in 2019 and that’s when the real action started!

What’s HOTH X? Our fully-managed SEO program to put a client’s SEO on autopilot and earn HUGE results.

The clinic’s website looked fantastic when they started working with us and they even had a few informative blogs on wisdom teeth extraction and other related topics.

We knew that getting access to all of our SEO products under the HOTH X umbrella would help them grow to unprecedented heights!

The SEO Audit

Even though this client had been using our products a few years before getting into our fully-managed SEO program, we had to do a complete site audit before building them a new marketing strategy.

HOTH X clients are assigned a dedicated campaign manager who works with them to build a new oral surgery SEO strategy from the ground up. And they get full access to all of the tools we offer!

The SEO audit would show what’s working and what needs to be improved in their SEO.

In January 2019, the clinic’s website was getting around 200 visitors per month. They had used our products to grow from only 10 monthly visitors the year before, but now they wanted more.

Their site was ranking for approximately 600 organic keywords, with only about 30 in positions 1-3.

The HOTH’s link-building services had grown their backlinks from 2 to 30 by the beginning of 2019 but it was clear a more sustained approach was needed. Backlinks are a top-ranking factor and if done right they can propel your site to the top of Google.

It was clear from the audit that we’d have to work on building up their content, ranking for more high-performing keywords, and earning them more powerful backlinks.

“Easy Wins” Keyword Analysis

Our SEO audit revealed that the oral surgery clinic was already ranking for 600 keywords. That meant we already had something to work with.

Early in any SEO campaign, we like to collect and use what we refer to as “easy win” keywords.

Identifying keywords a client is already ranking for in positions 4-30 are considered “easy wins.” All we have to do is take some of these keywords and make them more prominent across a client’s site.

The effect of this is an instant boost in traffic and ranking. SEO is a long-term approach to building a website.

What are some examples of “easy win” keywords for this client? Words or phrases like:

  • “upper jaw surgery before and after”
  • “anesthesia for tooth extraction”
  • “snap in dentures near me”
  • “cavities in wisdom teeth”
  • “smart lift face lift”

We found hundreds of “easy win” keywords like this and all we had to do was use them in new blogs, pages, and web copy.

Once these keywords were in place, we could focus on grabbing some of the more competitive ones in positions 1-3. Those would take more time and effort but once we got them the client’s oral surgery SEO would go through the roof.

Competitive Gap Analysis

The next step in our campaign-building process is to analyze what our client’s main competitors are doing.

Nationwide, there are approximately 7,500 practicing oral surgeons and 94% of them operate independently. Not all of these surgeons are operating in our client’s service area but it goes to show how much competition there is on the field.

In terms of websites, we found 50 domains in direct competition with our client, based on specialties and keywords.

A few of these competitor sites were nearly identical to our client. For example, one oral surgery clinic in the same state as our client had 138 keywords they didn’t rank for.

Some of those keywords included “take out wisdom teeth,” “realigning jaw,” “oral surgeon procedures,” and “list of oral surgeons.”

While another competitor ranked for 21,288 unique keywords. This competitor was in a different state but they would still be fighting our client for the same ranking keywords.

Our job was to look at all of the competitor sites and build a list of high-performing keywords that could be added to our client’s new oral surgery SEO strategy. Not every keyword would work for our client but the competitive gap analysis was a good start to our research.

The SEO Campaign

The next step in our process was to build a brand new SEO campaign for the oral surgery clinic.

Enrolling in HOTH X meant they could work side-by-side with their campaign manager to decide what combination of best-selling HOTH products would grow their business.

They first enrolled in HOTH X in 2019. From that point, we started consistently using the following products:

  • HOTH Boost
  • HOTH Guest Post
  • HOTH Blogger
  • HOTH Syndication
  • HOTH Web Copy
  • HOTH PPC

What does each of these products offer clients?

First of all, HOTH Boost is a way to increase the authority of your existing links. The higher your authority, the higher you’ll be ranked on Google because the search engine wants to make sure they’re sending users only the best content.

On top of boosting their existing links, this client also increased their total number of links using HOTH Guest Post. This is our premium link-building service that gets you natural, high-quality, in-content links.

Basically, our team of professional writers will create some guest posts for your business and then we publish them on our network of high-authority publishers.

Each guest post contains a link back to your site, which boosts your ranking. Plus, you have the option of focusing on domain authority or web traffic with each guest post.

HOTH Syndication is another helpful tool for expanding your brand and earning you natural backlinks. We’ll help you identify your top-performing blog or content, and then we’ll syndicate it to over 300+ news sites.

Many of those news sites will publish your content and when they do that’s a new link! News sites tend to have a higher domain authority so they’ll share that “link juice” with you as well.

Link building is important but we also wanted to help this client develop their blog and web copy.

For that purpose, we used both HOTH Blogger and HOTH Web Copy. Blogger is our most popular product that produces SEO-optimized blog posts for your site.

Web Copy is similar but it optimizes what’s written on your web pages. We’ll optimize your pages for higher conversions and ensure the embedded keywords are ranking on Google.

More recently, this client also took advantage of HOTH PPC. This program helps businesses with creating and managing paid advertising on Google. There is also a fully-managed option for PPC!

Ordering each of these products separately will produce gains here and there, but putting them all together under a coordinated oral surgery SEO strategy would send the client’s traffic through the roof.

Keep scrolling below to find out what happened next.

Campaign Results

This client’s traffic started increasing as soon as they enrolled in HOTH X. It rose steadily until January 2020 and then spiked due to our oral surgery SEO efforts.

At the height of our campaign, they were getting over 3,000 visitors per month.

That’s an increase of 1,400%! Check it out in the chart below.

A chart showing the client's growth in traffic by 1,400%.

Increasing the oral surgery clinic’s ranking keywords was one method we used to increase their traffic. We incorporated more “easy win” keywords in the very beginning and then set out to capture the more competitive ones.

As you can see below, their total number of keywords increased from 600 to 5,300 at the height of our campaign.

We also snagged more competitive keywords in positions 1-3 and 4-10. Ranking for all of these new keywords meant our client’s site appeared in more Google searches.

A chart showing how the client's ranking keywords increased from 600 to 5,300 at the height of their campaign.

And, finally, another reason for the incredible increase in their monthly traffic was from new backlinks.

They had around 30 backlinks when they first enrolled for HOTH X. Today, that amount is around 450. Another increase of 1,400%!

A chart showing how the client's backlinks increased from 30 to 450.

Not only did these new backlinks bring referral traffic to our client’s site but they also signaled to Google that the site was trustworthy and authoritative. This also results in high rankings.

Overall, this client experienced some tremendous success thanks to our fully-managed SEO program.

Takeaway

What can you learn from this case study? First, SEO takes time to build up steam. You need to create a strategic plan, execute it consistently, and wait until the needle starts to move.

Don’t give up on an SEO strategy if it doesn’t start producing within a few months. The most effective plans can take six months or a year to have any effect.

Another takeaway from this case study is to consider fully-managed SEO programs like HOTH X. That way you can use multiple products and leave the technical details to the experts.

The HOTH has helped over 200,000 businesses boost their SEO. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or the size of your business, we can help!

Schedule a consultation with one of our SEO experts to learn more about our products or HOTH X.