The Clinic Marketing Podcast - Local SEO & Healthcare Digital Marketing Tips for Clinic Owners & Wellness Providers

Steal Your Competitors’ Best SEO Tactics (Legally!) | How to Spy on Your Competitors' Local SEO Plan | Ep. 108

• Darcy Sullivan • Episode 108

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Ever wondered why other healthcare providers consistently appear at the top of search results while your clinic struggles to gain visibility? The answer lies in strategic competitor analysis—a powerful yet often overlooked aspect of local SEO.

In this episode, we’ll break down exactly how to identify your real competitors, what to look for when analyzing their online presence, and how to use that information to improve your own SEO strategy.

And stick around to the end, because I’ll be giving you three actionable steps you can implement today to gain a competitive edge.

Webpage Episode: https://propelyourcompany.com/how-to-spy-on-your-competitors-seo-plan/

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Clinic Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, darci Sullivan from Propel Marketing and Design. Today we're diving into a critical topic how to analyze your local SEO competitors so you can outrank them and bring more patients through your doors. In this episode, we'll break down exactly how to identify your real competitors, what to look for when analyzing their online presence and how to use that information to improve your own SEO strategy. And stick around to the end, because I'll be giving you three actionable steps you can implement today to gain a competitive edge. So if you've ever wondered how other clinics seem to dominate search results while you struggle to gain traction, this episode is for you. Before we dive in, I do want to mention that today's topic came in as a special request from one of our listeners. If you have any requests of topics or SEO related questions or website related questions that you would like answered, please reach out to us on Instagram at Propel, your Company. All right, let's get started. So step one you want to identify who your real competitors are. The first step in a competitor analysis is to identify who your real competitors are. See, many clinic owners make a mistake of assuming that, just because they're a chiropractor, that other chiropractors in their direct area are their competition, and that's not necessarily true. Your real competitors are those who rank in the top spots for keywords that you want to target, meaning when you type in those keyword phrases into Google, other sites are coming up for them, not yours. They also need to meet other criteria, like serving the same target audience in your geographical area and have a similar business model or offer overlapping services model or offer overlapping services. So let's say you're a chiropractor in Austin, texas, you might think your competition is every single chiropractor in town, but if you specialize in sports injury rehabilitation, your actual competitors might be a mix. They could be chiropractors, some physical therapists or even other clinics like orthopedic clinics that offer similar services. So how do you find out who your real SEO competitors are? Well, there's a couple quick ways. One Google search Type in the key services along with your location and see who appears in top search results. Examples for this could be, given the previous example that we used, you might want to type in sports injury chiropractor Austin and see who comes up.

Speaker 1:

Now it's important to know that when you're doing a search like this, you want to make sure that you're actually looking at the organic results and not just looking at ads, because those people are paying to play. They are paying for some of those top positions on Google. So we want to make sure that we're actually looking in the organic results, actually looking in the organic results. Next, check the top listings in Google Maps for relevant search terms. You can also use SEO tools. There are a ton of them out there. Some are freed, some are paid, some are freemium, meaning they have free and then premium options. Almost all of them do offer a free trial period. Some tools that we like for this include Ahrefs, simrush or Moz. They can help you analyze which competitors are ranking for some of the same keywords as you.

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Once you've identified a list of competitors, it's time to analyze what they might be doing right. So once you know who these competitors are, next you're going to want to analyze what they're doing to rank. Here are a few key areas to evaluate. One, their website, its structure and content. How is the website organized? Do they have services pages optimized for specific keywords? Do they have specific services pages that highlight what services they offer? Are they using blog content to answer patients' questions or provide additional valuable content to their website visitors? If you run an acupuncture clinic, at the top, your competitor might have a well-structured website with detailed pages regarding acupuncture for back pain or acupuncture for migraine. They might even have detailed information about what the difference is between dry needling and acupuncture. Really honing in on what their target audience is looking for, along with combining it with SEO and making sure all of the pages are optimized to boost their rankings. You'll also want to look at their Google business profile listing. Do they have a complete and optimized Google business profile? Are they getting a steady flow of positive reviews? How frequently are they doing Google posts and updating images? If you notice a competing clinic in this example, a physical therapist clinic has over 200 reviews with an average star rating of 4.9. While you only have 20 reviews, you know you need to focus on getting more patient feedback.

Speaker 1:

What about backlinks? These are links coming from other websites to that competition's website. Are they getting mentioned in local news sites, directories or industry blogs? Have they formed any local partnerships like gyms or wellness centers that are scoring them quality backlinks to their website? If a competitor's website is linked from popular local fitness blogs that review health and wellness, maybe you could reach out to them. Again, there are tons of tools out there, so I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of what specific tools you should use, but you can look for backlink data tools to find out what backlinks your competition might be getting.

Speaker 1:

Now, one thing that I want to mention with this is I know some people go a little crazy over the whole backlink idea, and there used to be this popular idea of just going out and hiring somebody to build you all these backlinks, but they were usually kind of worthless backlinks that had nothing to do with the services that people offered and or the industry that they were in. So we don't want to just like go out and buy backlinks. What we want to do is look and see what popular websites are back linking to your competition and how you might be able to target and approach those organizations. We also want to look at local citations and directories. Does your competition have listings and key directories like Yelp, zocdoc or Healthgrades? Is their business information consistent? We talk a lot about NAP consistency name, address and phone number consistency online and that is one place that you really want to practice that is, making sure that you do have appropriate name and address and phone number listed throughout all of your listings online, and that's something that you want to look and see. Is your competition doing that? What about social media? What is their social media presence and engagement? Do they have an active social media presence? Are they posting content that's actually engaging? If so, how can you leverage and drive some ideas of types of content you can use? We're not copying our competition, but if your competitors are thriving, for instance on Instagram by sharing before and after patient success stories, it might be worth incorporating similar content into your strategy. Be worth incorporating similar content into your strategy.

Speaker 1:

Next, we want to use the competitive insights to improve SEO. Now that you've gathered these data points and you've got this information as to what your competition is doing, what are you going to do with it? Well, one you don't want to copy exactly what they're doing. You can never be the best in your industry by copying somebody else. You also want to remember that, even though you've done this research and I've seen this time and time again, especially when it comes to websites is people will look at their competition and stare down their competition's websites over and over again and fall in love with the idea of some of the elements on their competition's websites implemented on their website, just to see that their competition gets a new website days later. Because, even though you're staring at it and there might be some elements that you like, you want to ask your chart to get audience and get them involved, to make sure that the items that you're thinking of including and optimizing in your website one reflect your services, your offering and also your website visitors. So if competitors, for instance, have deep service pages, you might want to consider expanding your own, but you're not going to use the same content that they're using. You're going to use content that relates to your business. If they have a strong blog strategy, then you can start having a strong blog strategy.

Speaker 1:

But start by answering some of the most common patient questions you get as blog posts. Don't start by just copying the blog post that your competition has. And when it comes to improving your Google business profile, we have tons of resources and we've done tons of episodes that really highlight optimizing certain elements of your Google business profile listing. But again, you want to look at the frequency. How often are they putting time and energy into their Google business profile listing? How many reviews do they have and how can you jump in and make sure that you're able to compete with them when it comes to that. Also, those backlinks that we talked about reach out to local blogs, news sites, companies within your area that make sense for you to create partnership opportunities and try to gain new backlinks. There was one episode that we did that I'll link in the show notes that really went into detail about how to leverage other people's audience in the right way to create quality backlinks and also stay active on social media. Make sure that you're engaging with your audience by sharing patient testimonials, case studies and educational content. Let's say you're a med spa and you realize one of your top competitors has tons of engagement on their Facebook by hosting a live Q&A session about their treatments. You could start doing the same, positioning yourself as the go-to expert in your area.

Speaker 1:

Let's wrap this up with some action steps you can take today. One, run a quick Google search for your top services plus your location, and write down your top three competitors that show up Again in the local results, not in the ad section. Two, analyze their website, their Google business profile, listing their backlink profile, their social media campaigns and more, to see what they're doing well. Then implement at least one improvement on your own website or your Google business profile based on the information that you've gained. Remember, your goal is not to copy your competitors. It's to learn from them and do an even better job. If you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe to the Clinic Marketing Podcast so you don't miss future episodes packed with practical strategies for growing your clinic. And if you want personalized help with your SEO, please visit propellyourcompanycom to learn more about how we can help you attract more patients and grow your business. Thanks for listening.