"We" or "I" for a small local healthcare enterprise?
-
Hi all,
SEO newb here (or possibly rookie!). I'm a health professional and run a small, new specialised healthcare business targeting a local area (15 miles max). My product as such is the service I provide. There is a grand total of one employee, that of course being me! My SEO goal is phonecalls made and subsequent bookings as opposed to sales.
Prior to joining here, I just looked at websites that provide a similar service and blindly assumed that a "We" approach to writing content was the accepted norm for presumed professional appearance. On reflection however, not only are most of these employing a team, most are in areas much more metropolitan than I operate in (I operate in a medium sized town where almost everyone knows everyone else by about 1 degree).
In addition, I have run into a few difficulties with this however when writing content/incorporating keywords. Now I am about to re-write my "About Me" section I'm having a real challenge using the aforementioned context while sounding personable and like-able.
Does anyone have any advice or experience re the correct context to use, in regards to the difference in CTR's and bounce rates etc in a small one-man enterprise that offers specialised services to the local area?
Many thanks!
-
It's my pleasure! It sounds like you are asking some really good questions of yourself, and being observant! That's definitely a great start. I'd say a podiatrist has some pretty excellent leeway in presentation, particularly if you are serving a great many athletes who want to meet health goals. I'd suggest coming up with some personae for your main customer "types" to get a sense of where that might take your content. And good for you for blogging!
You can also visit Specialty Care Services
If it turns out that most of your colleagues are being somewhat stuffy in their presentation of foot health management, you, with your pleasant personality, might have a chance to set your brand apart by presenting your practice as one where you are personally ready to help patients meet their physical fitness goals, with happy feet instead of tired dogs. -
It's my pleasure! It sounds like you are asking some really good questions of yourself, and being observant! That's definitely a great start. I'd say a podiatrist has some pretty excellent leeway in presentation, particularly if you are serving a great many athletes who want to meet health goals. I'd suggest coming up with some personae for your main customer "types" to get a sense of where that might take your content. And good for you for blogging!
If it turns out that most of your colleagues are being somewhat stuffy in their presentation of foot health management, you, with your pleasant personality, might have a chance to set your brand apart by presenting your practice as one where you are personally ready to help patients meet their physical fitness goals, with happy feet instead of tired dogs.
-
Wow, many sincere thanks for such an informed, well-written reply!
Certainly a lot to digest and apply, particularly re the "consumer voice" and the patient journey. By nature I am actually pretty informal and "people personey" but after reading other websites I kind of got sucked in to an overtly professional, formal wording despite my patient base being elective and largely interested in aesthetic resolutions as much as pain ones (at least this time of year, I'm a Podiatrist).
When I read my content however, I feel it doesn't really convey "me" or really what the personalised treatments I provide are sufficiently. And this is before I even start implementing keywords lol!
In my first blog posts, I have adopted a much more informal tone and again this seems at odds with the rest of the website. I must add here that I am really not comfortable about going the whole nine-yards and doing vlogs, at least not yet lol!
On the other hand, I have seen examples of peers with very personalised content down to "likes and dislikes" and it seemed a little bit too informal for what is essentially a consultative health role. Tough balance I guess but one that rests solely on what potential patients are likely to find engaging and ultimately respond to....
Again many thanks!
-
What a great topic! There are likely going to be too many variables for someone in our community to exactly match your scenario and say, "Third person language vs. first person = X stats for a specialized medical practitioner." In order to get answers for your particular business in your particular local community, you'd need to run A/B testing to track whether you see a difference in conversions from one form of language or the other. I think it would be very interesting to run such a test, and could be informative.
In lieu of having ready-made stats on this for you, my thoughts are these:
-
Focus on the voices of your patients, more than on "I" or "We" language in the majority of your content. Particularly with the evolution of voice search, it is how your patients talk, and how Google is able to understand the semantics of your patients' language as having a particular search intent, that are going to matter the most. The language on your website will typically convert best if it is built to solve customers' problems using customers' language. Example: instead of a dental practice saying, "Services: We offer dental crowns using our CEREC technology", you'd be saying, "Get out of the dental chair with a perfect crown in less than 2 hours, thanks to CEREC technology." By swinging the language in the direction of the benefits the customer receives, local businesses are operating in the world of the consumer instead of the world of the company.
-
Be authentic. If your practice is small and your service is highly-specialized, your website can properly set correct patient expectations of what they'll encounter at your office, potentially reducing patient churn. If I were consulting with you to help market your practice, I'd be asking you some questions like these to discover the ideal tone:
-
Is the service you offer related to an upsetting health condition (like cancer) necessitating the need for a more formal or empathetic tone?
-
Or, is the service you offer more of an elective service (like botox for wrinkles), prompting a more upbeat presentation?
-
Who will be your typical patient (age, region, income, education, etc.)?
Ask yourself these and other questions about who will be reading your content, so that you can match its tone. There's a wide latitude between a specialist treating prostate cancer for men in their 50s in Boston vs. a integrative medicine doctor teaching the Forks Over Knives diet to women suffering from lupus in a laid-back town like Santa Cruz, CA. While empathy will be part of both scenarios, how formal/personable the doctor is in presenting herself/himself to patients may differ widely. So, know your audience, and present yourself and your office experience authentically, offering to solve patients' problems in language that will make them most confident and comfortable.
Hope these tips help!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What's the best way to create keyword tracking lists for local SEO?
I have a question for the local SEO crowd: when it comes to creating keyword tracking lists, what are your best practices in reference to tracking from a set location? Do you typically create national keyword lists that include the location operator in each term or are you better creating a list of locally-tracked keywords around a business' location and dropping the location operator from the keyword? Or some combination of the two? To clarify, if I had an example business of a realtor in Chatham, MA, would I want to track -"realtor in chatham ma" (national)
Local SEO | | formandfunctionagency
-"realtor in chatham ma" (with the location set to Chatham, MA)
-"realtor" (with the location set to Chatham, MA) Or some combination of all of the above? Right now, I track waaaay too many keyword variants on my local campaigns! Hoping there's a better way from some more-seasoned Moz users. Thanks in advance!2 -
Local store (B2B) that produces high quality prints for photographers: are we adopting the right strategy?
Hi, I'd like to know your opinion on the following case and gather new ideas on how to optimise our strategy: Starting situation: local store (B2B) in a bigger city in Europe that produces high quality prints mainly for photographers on paper (or other materials like canvas, aluminium, etc. ). They really take care of your images (e.g. Color Management) and produce printouts that look how they really should look like. Target audience: photographers (pros), museum, exhibitions and hotel people that would like to produce high quality prints of their images. Almost never the ambitioned private photographers (until now). **Actual situation: **its really a local business (people around 30 km). competition: big online stores where you can upload your pictures and get your prints sent home (quality: not bad, but not exceptional, no special requests; more for private customers) Already done (with relatively little results): _AdWords: _very "tight" keyword combinations, not broad at all, targeting area around business location. results: small traffic, small costs: not a lot of conversions. _SEO: _for organic search we now achieve very good positions for tight" keyword combinations, not broad ones. results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions LinkedIn-Ads targeting the above target group: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions Facebook Remarketing (targeting his newsletter mail-list: results: little traffic: not a lot of conversions Optimized the landingpage (in my opinion far more to the point than before) PROBLEM: Basically we now get to the right people but traffic is really (too) small. At least we don't waste money at all but we don't gain a lot either... If we broaden the "keywords" the private customers will come in and waste our advertising money. Do you ever had a similar situation? What did you do? Any suggestions? Other target groups? Alternative channels? Thanks for your input. Cheers, Cesare
Local SEO | | Cesare.Marchetti0 -
Local SEO Mastermind Group?
Howdy Folks - I run a small (but growing!) SEO agency in Tennessee. I serve, primarily, local service businesses with Organic SEO and website development. I'm a completely self taught SEO and had an average client rank last year of just over position 2. I have long been dedicated to running my own SEO experiments to try to stay on top of what is working. With the constant changes to SEO, and the growing agency, I find I don't have the time to run all of the SEO experiments that I'd like to ensure that our packages are still giving the best value to our clients. I'm looking to see if 1 - 4 individuals, also running local SEO agencies, would like to form a sort of "mastermind group". Share ideas, successes and failures on a level that wouldn't be practical in a forum setting. I'm happy to share what has been working for my clients and would welcome a fresh set of eyes to see what we're missing. **Discussions like: ** Link Acquisition Scaling Staff, Content Creation and Systems Scaling Social Media Outreach Local Outreach Successes - Email Templates White/Black Hat SEO Techniques If you think it would be a good fit. Please PM me or comment. Thanks!
Local SEO | | CRO_first1 -
What is the best SEO tool for tracking local rankings
Hi Can anyone recommend what they think the best tool is to track local rankings. I want to manage several small businesses' visibility and I am not sure which one is the best. I have been told that "Bright local" and "SEO PowerSuite" are the best in the business. Is that true? or is there something better out there Thanks
Local SEO | | coolhandluc0 -
Is it worth tracking both "keyword" and "keyword near me" for a nation-wide directory?
We're a directory of industry-specific services, so a lot of people find their way to our site by searching something like "tire repair near me." For every keyword we rank for, ("tire repair"), we also rank for the "near me" version, ("tire repair near me"). I'm looking for opinions on if is worth spending ~50% of the keywords included in my plan to track these "near me" keywords, or if we would be better off tracking some of the most important "near me" keywords, and some of those same base keywords on a local basis for major population centres, (for example "tire repair nyc"). What does the forum think?
Local SEO | | 4RS_John0 -
Whitespark or Moz Local
Hello all, We can't use Moz Local as we're in the UK. Tempted to use Whitespark, but not quite sure what the differences are between the two. Also, can a website design / digital marketing agency be considered to be a local business - in Googles eyes? Thanks!
Local SEO | | wseabrook
William1 -
I am ranking for local broad terms, but I am not ranking when geo-modifier is included.
I have noticed that my rankings for broad terms have dramatically improved in the area I service. But, when I put the broad term in my search query with a geo-modifier I notice I am still not ranking even though my domain authority and page authority is higher than the competitor who is ranking. Why might this be? I am not penalized, or have a manual action. I am also featured in more hyperlocal niche directories.
Local SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
How does local citations and links differ from national links?
HI So I read on here somewhere that it is important to get local links, instead of just national links. I am curious how does Google know if the links you are getting are from a local source? Thank you
Local SEO | | Berner0