What's the secret to SEO? Comparing 4 health sites and their strategies
Season 7, Issue 4: We're doing website comparisons, again!
📬 In this issue:
A TMI story that explains the context of this issue
Comparing websites and marketing between 4 companies selling the same thing (not a tech example!)
Link round up
Hola Mehketeers,
Come down a rabbit hole with me, and I promise it’s going to come back to marketing.
Last year I went on a trip organised by a friend, which included travelling with two people I’d never met before (don’t worry, it’s a positive story.)
One of them had a PhD in the gut microbiome, and while sipping cocktails at a pool we really got personal with our individual gut health details. I honestly don’t remember exactly what it was that she studied but I got back home determined to look more into my own gut health.
Back in 2020, I had learned through a gross hand rash that
Rashes on knuckles and joints (including elbows/knees) that don’t spread past that are usually caused by food intolerances/something you’re eating
You can develop intolerances you never had as a kid between the age of 20-40
I learned that hard way that I had become lactose intolerant (RIP) and up until this trip I was also convinced there was something else in the mix because I had also started getting hayfever which I never had before but as any Australian will know, GPs suck these days and it was put into the “too hard” basket. It took 5 GP visits just to find out what my rash was! FIVE!
So, I get back from this trip, and I Google…
Lo and behold a treasure trove of terrible-to-great website examples to go through in Mehdeeka!!!!!
What can we learn from websites in the medical industry?
Ok that’s our mission for today, to have a look at these websites and try to take something away from them that we can apply to our own websites with fresh eyes.
As always, screenshots of websites are necessary because they might change, but putting them in an email is a horrible experience, so here’s a GDrive folder of the files:
Can we rank the websites/pages from good to bad?
We cannot and that’s why it’s worthy of a Mehdeeka issue.
If we refer to the Google search result above, the SEO rankings of the sites are:
Integrated Health (blog post)
TherapyWorks Newport (home page)
Dr Rob King (blog post)
Digestive wellness clinic (we won’t be looking at this one)
Microba (subdomain home page)
Do you want to know what the top ranked site looks like?
Here’s a hopefully small screenshot. Of the whole page. See full screenshot here.
What we have here is a wall of text that happens to (probably without intending to) be really well optimised for SEO.
The CTA here is to book an appointment, but there’s also two hyperlinks in the last line of text before the picture of the box, and one of those links is to order a home kit. For $499.
As an actual customer, actively in the market seeing this site, my first impression was “definitely not.”
Onto the next.
TherapyWorks’ website starts introducing some best practice, their site says it was made by an SEO agency who has to their credit, gotten them to 2nd place. And no one seems to be running ads on this search term, so results are pretty good (though as a client I would be like “we need to take down TherapyWorks 👿”)
We’ve got a banner, we’ve got a proper header, a maps listing, multiple CTAs, FAQs, an inquiry form, and more areas of the site listed in the footer and header to explore.
Not bad, not bad.
(As a customer you have to fill out the form to order a testing kit [the purple square] which says error: contact form not found - a good reminder to regularly check your website from a customer’s view…)
NEXT
Dr Rob King, come on down, you have one hell of a name and you’re in third place, come collect your medal! However, your site does look like it is just a list of keywords.
But, we do have a slightly different thing happening here. Gut health isn’t actually his main thing, he’s a mens’ health specialist. So, Dr King, what you have here is a huge opportunity to optimise this page for conversions. There’s not a single hyperlink or CTA on this page.
The final sentence of the blog is “All appointments are booked online through my website.”
An interesting case of yet again probably unintentional results!
(My interpretation as a customer was basically oh, not for me I’m not a man and this isn’t his main thing.)
Last one
You know what kills me about this one? It’s actually a really good site. If you were to ask me just on copy, UX, design, funnel design… it’s hands down, no competition, the best one.
It is also the longest one so you’ll need to just see the full screenshot, or actually visit the site. But I want to talk about this specific content module on the page that Google takes you to.
Do you know how much this sold me as a customer? I didn’t even realise until I got to this site that none of the other sites told me what will I find out from this testing kit?
It’s also how I found out it won’t tell me what I’m intolerant to, and saved me the $349 that this kit sells for - I really did almost buy it though!
I’m not a doctor, but from my research it really seems like the best way to test intolerances (not allergies, they’re different, go see a doctor) is an elimination diet.
Comparing Integrated Health and Microba: Why is one first and the other fifth?
I accidentally forgot to cancel my free trial to SEMrush before it charged me for a month, so I figured why not use it and check out these two websites. Here’s the high level overview:
Comparing the two results, Microba wins for authority score, organic traffic, and backlinks.
The keywords driving organic traffic to Microba is all specific to microbiome related topics, whereas Integrated Health’s is brand name and “blood test” related.
My hypothesis (and I’m not an SEO expert in the slightest) is that URL structure is playing some sort of role in this:
https://insight.microba.com/ vs
https://www.integratedhealth.com.au/testing/gut-microbiome-testing-sydney__trashed/
Putting aside the VERY??? strange __trashed/ ending to IH’s URL, it does actually tell us what the page is about and it leads to educational content. In this situation, I was however looking for a service (“how to get tested”) and maybe my “how to” query confused Google.
I’m venturing outside my SaaS safety zone with this one, so let me know your thoughts on why the rankings are what they are!
The lessons!
Despite being what I, a marketer with an inflated ego, think is the best website, Microba ranked 5th in the SEO results. Behind some pretty lacklustre sites.
After a quick LinkedIn stalk, they do have an in-house marketing team that is *probably* looking after the site. I don’t want to speculate on what their priorities are because it could honestly be anything, but it is an interesting place to bring up the debate of form vs function.
Should you prioritise SEO results? Should it come at the cost of design or customer experience (like if you have to pick one because you have few resources)
If you’ve done a great job on content, user experience, etc, have you had a look at your technical SEO set up? Are you creating purpose-built landing pages?
If you’ve done all of that, can you start focusing on things like your authority score, backlinks, or double checking you’re following best practice in terms of URL structure, image files, site speed, resubmitting your site map for indexing and so on?
Links that are not about gut health or SEO
Or are they? Nah, they’re not. Let’s dive into:
An article about a guy who raised a pet warthog and then the warthog tried to kill him (I almost cried reading this, I had to take a break from it. Also who knew Texas Monthly was so full of good reads? This is the second story I’ve linked from them lately!)
Content Summit is happening in Brisbane on May 28… Should I go??? Any Mehketeers going to be there?? It seems very B2C focused so I’m on the fence.
A Twitter thread on the art development for Spider Gwen’s universe (very interesting how many people/departments are involved)
This campaign for Honest Eggs Co strapped a step counter to their chickens to prove they’re getting out and about, and then stamped the chicken’s step count on their eggs
Ciao for another week!
Kayla