How Not Using “Near Me” Nearly Doubled “Near Me” Search Results

Client Overview

Southcoast Health is one of the largest healthcare systems in the Northeast. Its network covers much of the southern region of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, includes 250+ locations and over 600 providers. Their website is managed through a custom-made theme in WordPress and was created in the mid-2010s. Previous SEO work has initiated the creation of pages for each location, but many did not have any content to speak of. Today’s Business has had a relationship with Southcoast Health since 2018, providing SEO and SEM services. After an initial period of SEO in 2019, the service was brought back on a permanent basis in November of 2020.

Southcoast CaseStudy SEO OverviewImage

The Challenge

During the initial boom of users including “near me” within their searches, the modifier was applied liberally across southcoast.org’s website. The results were initially very promising, with impressions and clicks both seeing notable gains. But as time went on, updates to Google’s search algorithm lead to a significant decline in clicks and small decline in impressions for “near me” queries. Urgent care was the primary concern at the time. In addition, local searches for services were also underperforming. 

Today’s Business knew it needed to remove the website’s liberal inclusion of “near me,” recognizing that Google was now using it primarily as a directive first and not so much a search term. The plan would not be able to include any technical dev work

The Strategy

The plan could not include any technical dev work, citation building, link building, Google Business Profile optimization, or any other offsite measures. Only onsite work and metadata optimization would be initial options. Consequently, the strategy would be as follows:

  • Remove “Near Me” keyword use.
    Instead, TB would utilize “[service] + [location]” for many of the keyword structures, while “Find Your Nearest [Location type]” would be considered for directory pages, such as the urgent care service page. 90%+ of this would be focused on title tag changes.
  • Location Pages
    Build out the remaining location pages, of which nearly 150 lacked true content. These would be tackled over the course of 2021.
Southcoast CaseStudy SEO StrategyImage

At the time of presentation of the strategy, it was communicated to the client that we expected to see an initial large drop in impressions, but long term this would lead to significantly more clicks related to local searches.

The Results

Note: Branded terms and Covid-19 terms are filtered out, leaving terms such as “urgent care near me,” “hospitals near me,” etc.

Southcoast CaseStudy SEO ResultsImage 1
  • Near me removed from most pages in December 2020
  • Impressions plummet by January, clicks see small decline
  • By February, performance on “near me” queries begins to steadily increase
  • Missing Location Content added in March, May, June, July, September
  • Updates to Google’s Algorithm for local search positively impact “near me” and “service + location” queries. 
  • End of year sees a spike in COVID and other health issues, causing an additional spike around New Year’s.

The Results: Q1 ‘22 vs. Q1 21

“Near Me Queries” Increase

“Urgent care near me” Increase

arrowcase80%

Clicks

(3,134 to 5,625)

arrowcase 61%

Impressions

(315,771 to 507,961)

arrowcase 134%

Clicks

(1,180 to 2,763)

arrowcase 431%

Impressions

(7,834 to 41,619)

Non-Branded, Non “Near Me”, Non Covid Queries

arrowcase 14%

Clicks

(28,683 to 32,651)

arrowcase 54%

Impressions

(1,202,611 to 1,848,422)

Location and Service Pages (No Query Filter):

arrowcase 18%

Clicks

(105,942 to 124,463)

arrowcase 57%

Impressions

(2,863,842 to 4,226,387)

arrowcasedwon18%

Appointment Forms

(533 to 438)

arrowcase 305%

Phone Call Clicks

(900 to 3,644)

arrowcase 120%

Urgent Care Clicks

(11,211 to 24,634)

***Note that most Location and Service pages do not have appoint forms on their pages

1st Half ‘21 vs. 2nd Half ‘21:

“Near Me Queries” Increase

“Urgent care near me” Increase

arrowcase89%

Clicks

(6,655 to 12,559)

arrowcase 79%

Impressions

(750,080 to 1,344,105)

arrowcase 173%

Clicks

(2,491 to 6,792)

arrowcase 332%

Impressions

(18,036 to 77,909)

Non-Branded, Non “Near Me”, Non Covid Queries

arrowcase 17%

Clicks

(56,236 to 65,683)

arrowcase 69%

Impressions

(2,604,133 to 4,401,386)

Location and Service Pages (No Query Filter):

arrowcase 25%

Clicks

(200,973 to 251,059)

arrowcase 57%

Impressions

(5,974,334 to 9,404,908)

arrowcase7%

Appointment Forms

(993 to 1,063)

arrowcase 332%

Phone Call Clicks

(1,928 to 8,322)

arrowcase 143%

Urgent Care Clicks

(23,418 to 56,838)

***Note that most Location and Service pages do not have contact forms on their pages

Conclusions:

  • Impressions are valuable for increasing your brand’s visibility, but prioritizing clicks will lead to greater ROI.
  • The use of “near me” does not drive clicks. What is more likely to happen is that the page will rank in the 11-20 range, behind others leveraging different relevancy signals.
  • Having fleshed out, usable pages for Google meant more relevant content for geo-local searches. The increase of location content and internal linking to related services also helped affirm to Google that each location provided a specific service offerings. In other words, Google trusted Southcoast as a relevant option more, and therefore presented it in SERPs in greater frequency.

Takeaways from the Team:

Overall, Today’s Business focused on improving local SEO for Southcoast Health primarily by using two core tactics: removing the use of near me and creating content for locations. Despite our restrictions on tactics, the efforts have proven quite successful – this is just the portion of the potential power that SEO has for major health networks. Myself and the rest of the TB team working on Southcoast are excited to see what will happen when we expand optimization even further moving forward.

Forrest Old | Director of SEO

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