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A strong SEO foundation is absolutely critical to your success in organic search.
A strong foundation unlocks growth potential and gives you a competitive advantage as you won’t have to work as hard to achieve results compared to competitors who lack a strong foundation.
Oftentimes, especially with local businesses such as Bounty Physio who operate in the Central Coast region of New South Wales, a strong foundation alone can yield exceptional gains in organic search visibility and traffic… a 40% increase in just over 3 months in this case!
Bounty Physio were in the process of getting a new website and brand refresh, and following this, were looking to improve their organic presence, driving more traffic and enquiries.
This was the perfect time for the Fusion team to get involved and ensure a strong SEO foundation was in place.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of how we designed and implemented the SEO foundation that improved organic search visibility by ~40%, top 3 keyword positions by ~22% and top 10 keyword positions by ~29%.
The 5 Steps To A Rock Solid SEO Foundation That Improves Organic Search Visibility And Sets You Up For Success
- Step 1: Keyword Research & Site Architecture
- Step 2: Content Gaps
- Step 3: Onpage Optimisation
- Step 4: Technical SEO Audit
- Step 5: Offpage Optimisation - Citations
Step 1: Keyword Research & Site Architecture
For Bounty Physio, establishing a strong SEO foundation began with meticulous keyword research.
This initial step was critical for understanding how potential clients search for physiotherapy services in the area. The team used a variety of tools and methods to gather data on keywords that could drive targeted traffic to the site, including:
- Search volume
- Commercial intent and customer journey stage
- Local intent within the target audience catchment area, further segmented by top tier and secondary tier priority
- Keyword difficulty
- Niche keywords
Analysis and thematic grouping of keywords resulted in four core groups of searcher:
1. Core
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People searching generically for a provider in the category within travelling distance. Examples:
- Physio
- Physio Tuggerah
- Physio Central Coast
2. Services
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People who know or at least have a good idea as to which specific physiotherapy treatment they think they need. Examples:
- Exercise Rehabilitation
- Dry Needling
- Taping
- Sports Massage
3. Conditions
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People who are searching for a physio who might have specific expertise and experience treating their current condition. Examples:
- Neck physio
- Back physiotherapy
- Shoulder physio
4. Sport specific
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Athletes and active people engaged in physical activity and sports, seeking a physio with expertise and experience working with their sport or activity area. Examples:
- Running physio
- Golf physio
- Netball physio
With a comprehensive list of keywords in hand, the next challenge was to structure the site in a way that optimises for these search terms while ensuring a seamless user experience.
Site architecture played a pivotal role here, with the team developing a logical, intuitive navigation and URL structure that made it easy for visitors to find the information they were looking for.
This involved organising content into clear, relevant categories and using internal linking strategies to guide visitors through the site, encouraging longer visits and deeper engagement, while ensuring the flow of authority (AKA ‘link juice’) around the site.
This foundational work set the stage for increased organic search visibility. Ensuring we structured the site to cater to these 4 search themes would achieve a number of objectives:
- Having a relevant page for each theme plus the individual segments within each theme (e.g sports -> golf), would allow Bounty Physio to compete in organic search for these terms, thus increasing their visibility and exposure for prospective clients seeking their services
- Having a relevant page for each of these segments, ensures that when a searcher lands on the page, they immediately know they are in the right place, the physio provides what they are looking for and has experience / expertise in this area, and their informational needs are satisfied.
This leads to more enquiries for Bounty Physio’s services from a greater number of searchers
- From a bigger picture standpoint, if Bounty Physio have content on their site about all these sub-segments of physiotherapy – services, conditions, sports etc – then this improves their topical authority in the overarching topic of physiotherapy in the eyes of the search engines
- What this means, is that search engines can more clearly see – via the content and searcher behaviour / interactions – that Bounty Physio are an expert authority in the overarching topic, as they can provide expert information that’s well received, in all these sub-segments of the main topic
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High topical authority can mean:
- More visibility and traffic from search engines
- Easier to compete in organic search and for higher competition keywords, against higher authority sites
- New content you produce – such as blog posts or new pages – has a better chance of performance and / or faster performance as your site is a trusted expert with authority in the topic area
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High topical authority can mean:
Step 2: Keyword Mapping & Content Gaps
Following the establishment of a keyword-focused site architecture, the next critical phase in crafting a strong SEO foundation involved a content gap analysis.
This step is pivotal to ensure that the website is aligned with the keyword themes and sub-segments and keywords identified in step 1. Also in the content gap analysis, is identifying any areas where the current site may fall short and need enhancing or optimisation work.
Analysing Against New Site Architecture
With the new site architecture in place, designed around the keyword research (keyword mapping being to match target clusters of keywords to a suitable landing page or proposed new landing page), we closely examined Bounty Physio’s existing content to align with this structure.
This comparison highlighted areas where the site’s content fully matched the targeted keywords and, crucially, where it did not — the so-called “content gaps.”
Identifying Content Gaps
Content gaps were identified through a systematic review process, looking at:
- Topics not covered: Essential physiotherapy services or queries relevant to the target audience that were not addressed.
- Underrepresented keywords: High-value search terms discovered during keyword research that were not adequately targeted in the existing content.
- Depth and quality of content: Areas where the current content might touch upon a relevant keyword or topic but fails to provide comprehensive or engaging information that meets the searcher’s intent.
This step involved tools and analytics to quantify how existing pages performed for target keywords, how well they engaged visitors, and who they were up against from a search competitor standpoint.
Reviewing Similar or Related Content
In addition to missing content – the gaps – part of this analysis also included reviewing content that was similar or slightly aligned with the identified keywords. This allowed us to:
- Determine whether existing content could be optimised, enhanced or expanded to cover the gaps.
- Identify opportunities to consolidate content, merging similar pages to create stronger, more authoritative resources that better serve user intent and improve SEO performance.
Strategic Approach to Filling Gaps
Based on our content gap analysis, we developed a strategic plan to fill these gaps effectively:
- Content Creation: Outlining new pages that needed to be created to address search needs, ensuring they are informative, engaging, and aligned with user search intent.
- Content Enhancement: Updating existing content to improve relevance, enhance information depth, and ensure alignment with the new site architecture for better SEO performance.
- Content Consolidation: Combining similar or related content pieces into more comprehensive pages to avoid content dilution and strengthen the site’s authority on key physiotherapy topics.
The outcome of this keyword mapping and content gap analysis, was a roadmap for content development and optimisation that not only aimed to enhance Bounty Physio’s organic search visibility but also to make their site a more valuable and informative resource for current and prospective clients.
This step was instrumental in setting the stage for significant improvements in search rankings and user engagement.
Step 3: Onpage Optimisation
With the architecture constructed, keywords mapped and content gaps addressed, the next phase was ensuring each page was optimised correctly around the target keywords assigned to that page.
Additionally, an internal linking structure was established to help improve search engine crawlability and the flow of authority across site sections and pages.
Meta Data
Meta data – meta titles and meta descriptions – are a fundamental part of onpage optimisation.
Most SEOs and SEO agencies will know to include the main keyword (which is a given), but we often see people missing a trick by not treating the meta title and meta description like a mini PPC ad.
Whatever you do, don’t use the old school pipe separators. You rarely see any listing in the search results showing this – whether Google disregards it or whether fewer people are using it – but we still come across clients with this style of meta title in place (example below – wasn’t actually the case with this client though):
Pelvic Physio | Tuggerah | Bounty Physio
Not very enticing to click on is it?
Yes the goal is to help search engines understand what the page is about, but an equally important goal is to win the click from the search results… Click through rate is also an SEO ranking factor!
Let’s look at an example:
Specialist Pelvic Physiotherapy, Tuggerah, Central Coast
Discover our specialist pelvic physiotherapy services on the Central Coast. Designed for comfort, relief and improved function. Your health is our priority.
In this example, for the meta title we’ve included the main keyword (pelvic physio), the suburb and region location (Tuggerah, Central Coast), plus the addition of ‘specialist’ to bolster the strength of the title.
This will improve the chances of ranking for the generic keyword (based on the searcher’s proximity), the generic keyword + suburb and the generic keyword + region.
It also entices the click by speaking to the benefits of the service that address the searchers pain points.
We chose not to include the brand name in the meta title (apart from the home page and a couple others) but I know some brands insist on this. Our take is that:
- Not including the brand name gives you more characters to craft more compelling meta titles
- People can see the website with your search result and Google nowadays puts the brand name above the listing (see below)… so there’s no need to include it in the meta title as well
- Google doesn’t always show your specified meta title and description, the description especially. Sometimes it will generate it’s own and display this in the search results instead. I managed to capture this in the screenshot below:
Header Tags
The header tag is a tag that gets applied to headings within the page. It’s a low impact SEO factor but it’s still best practice.
- The main heading should be a <h1>
- Subsequent sub-headings should be <h2>, <h3> etc
Not much more to say on that. It’s just something to ensure you do and try to include the main keyword in your <h1> tag.
Content Optimisation
We carried out much of the content optimisation during the content gap phase, using this step now to give everything the once over and make any additional optimisations. There’s 3 main areas to content optimisation that we considered:
- Target Keyword Usage: We look to integrate primary and secondary keywords naturally within the content.
- Semantic Variations and Entity Salience: We naturally look to incorporate related terms and topics to cover a wider semantic field. So for a post about post-natal physiotherapy, it would be natural to mention terms like “pelvic floor rehabilitation” “back pain relief” and “Diastasis Recti”
- Content Depth and Quality: This is a given, but critically important to go above and beyond in the pursuit of quality, ensuring the content thoroughly answers the user’s intent. We analysed user search, the current search results, competition and consulted with the client to ensure our content provided the user with comprehensive insights for their informational needs depending on the search topic.
Internal Linking Structure
Ensure that relevant pieces of content (especially blog posts) contain links to other relevant sections of the site.
For the main service pages, we want them to make an enquiry and book an appointment, so internal links within the content to take them off the page probably isn’t the best idea. Commercial objectives supersede SEO.
We did however, choose to include a box in the sidebar of the page that lists links to all the specific pages within that service category.
The type of internal link and where it is located does matter to how much weight it carries (links within the main content being higher value), but this was a good way to benefit usability and navigation for the user, commercial objectives and SEO objectives.
A win-win-win!
You should have an ongoing content marketing strategy as part of a holistic SEO strategy. Blog posts are key targets to internally link to other relevant areas of the site, especially their relevant commercial pages, to improve authority and overall SEO.
For example a blog about “Injury Prevention for Runners” should link to the service page for running physiotherapy and/or the category service page of sports physiotherapy. It could also link to relevant case study pages and other relevant blog posts.
Blog content – assuming it’s strategic and good quality – is what people naturally link to on the web. Commercial pages, unless a highly unique product or very creative page, don’t attract links from other sites. So if you manually ‘build’ links to commercial pages, it can raise a red flag.
Generating links to blog posts and internally linking from blog posts to commercial pages passes this authority to the target commercial pages, which in turn rank higher. This is the white-hat, digital PR way of dominating SEO for your niche… but more on this in a future post.
Step 4: Technical SEO Audit
In our experience when it comes to technical SEO, unless you’ve got a really big website (like 20k+ pages), or the website undergoes constant change, then you don’t need much technical work beyond the foundation and maintenance.
This is especially true if your site has a much higher domain authority than competing sites.
That being said, poor technical SEO can hold back organic search performance, whereas if the website has healthy technical SEO, it unlocks growth potential from organic search (your content and digital PR generate that growth, not the technical alone).
So for Bounty Physio, we needed to make sure that nothing technical was going to hold back organic search performance, so our new SEO (and user experience) driven architecture and optimisations would have the maximum effect.
We used a variety of tools to crawl the site against our 200+ point SEO audit which covers crawling, rendering, Core Web Vitals, technical, optimisation and more.
Now – and here’s the part that separates the commercial value you get from SEO services – for each client and website, some points in this audit will be must do’s and high impact, some strongly recommended to do for medium impact and the rest low impact and nice to do, but won’t move the needle commercially.
After running the audit, we categorised each of the 200+ points into high, medium and low impact. In this instance we fixed up the high and medium impact items and ignored the low impact items to make best use of the client’s resources and commercial objectives.
Even doing this and leaving the low impact items still improved the technical audit score to 95%. As long as the site doesn’t undergo significant change, we will continue to run a light audit each quarter and a full audit annually to ensure nothing technical holds back our SEO efforts.
As things scale, we may increase the full audit to every 6 months if we feel this will be required to address new significant issues and to ensure we unlock maximum SEO performance.
Step 5: Off Page Optimisation - Citations
In constructing a robust SEO foundation for Bounty Physio, a key component was enhancing the clinic’s off-page SEO through strategic citations.
Citations, listings of a business’s name, address, phone number (NAP), sometimes with an accompanying profile or description on various online platforms, play a crucial role in local SEO by validating the business’s presence and relevance.
For Bounty Physio, this meant creating and optimising citations across relevant and authoritative directories and aggregator networks.
Creating Citations on Relevant Directories
We identified and targeted 75 high-authority directories through a meticulous selection process, ensuring that each directory could contribute positively to Bounty Physio’s local SEO standing (as there’s a lot of low quality, spammy directories around).
The chosen directories included industry-specific platforms, regional business listings, and major directories that hold sway in search engine algorithms.
Leveraging Aggregator Networks
In addition to individual directories, we also utilised 6 key aggregator networks. These networks distribute business information across a wide array of platforms, ensuring broad visibility.
By carefully selecting these networks, we amplified Bounty Physio’s footprint, enhancing its discoverability across multiple touchpoints.
Consistency Across Citations
A critical aspect of our off-page optimisation strategy was to ensure consistency in all citations. Inaccuracies or discrepancies in business listings can undermine SEO efforts, confusing search engines and potential clients alike. Therefore, we embarked on a thorough review of all existing listings for Bounty Physio. This review process involved:
- Verifying Accuracy: Ensuring that every detail, from the business name to the phone number and address, was accurate and up-to-date.
- Standardising Information: Making sure that every citation presents the same information. This consistency is crucial for reinforcing the legitimacy and reliability of the business in the eyes of search engines and users.
- Updating Listings: Where discrepancies or outdated information were found, we systematically updated the listings. This step was vital in maintaining the integrity of Bounty Physio’s online presence and optimising its local search visibility.
This off-page SEO activity complements the on-page and technical SEO efforts, rounding out a holistic SEO foundation that positions Bounty Physio for sustained online success and visibility.
Through these concerted efforts, we’re setting the stage for not only achieving but surpassing our goal of enhancing Bounty Physio’s organic search visibility and ensuring it remains a competitive force in their space.
Conclusion
Improving Bounty Physio’s organic search visibility by 40% in just over three months underscores the transformative power of a well-executed SEO foundation.
Through meticulous planning, research, and execution across five crucial steps, we’ve laid a robust SEO foundation that not only improved current performance but also set the stage for future growth.
Keyword research, Site architecture and content gap analysis allowed us to align the website’s content with user search intent, ensuring that every page served a clear purpose and reached its intended audience.
On-Page optimisation and a thorough technical SEO audit ensured nothing was going to hold back performance potential, thus unlocking growth in organic search, and making it easier for potential clients to find Bounty Physio online.
Strategic phase 1 off-page optimisation, through the creation and optimisation of citations, amplified efforts, reinforcing Bounty Physio’s presence, while creating links and improving relevance in local search.
By ensuring accuracy and consistency across 75 high-authority directories and 6 aggregator networks, we not only boosted the clinic’s SEO but also its credibility and trustworthiness among potential clients.
This case study showcases the compound benefits of building a strong SEO foundation.
For Bounty Physio, the results have been clear: increased visibility, higher keyword rankings, and a solid platform for future marketing efforts. Yet, this is just the beginning.
Continuing to build on this foundation, through the addition of an ongoing content marketing strategy, we anticipate even greater successes, demonstrating that with the right strategic Fusion of activity, the potential to win in organic search is… Bounty-ful! 🙂
Everything we do at Fusion is about helping people win by tapping into the immense power of when everything – and everyone – works together.
By adopting a holistic and forward-thinking approach to SEO, we ensure that businesses like Bounty Physio not only thrive in the current digital landscape but are also well-equipped to adapt and grow in the ever-evolving world of search.
This case study aims to be a testament to the power of a strong SEO foundation and clear steps to follow so you can implement the same. In today’s rapidly evolving and highly competitive digital arena, such a foundation is not just beneficial; it’s absolutely critical if you want to win.
