Case study · Healthcare and clinics
Occupational and Physical Therapy Clinic · Michigan
A three-month SEO and conversion programme aimed at one number the clinic cared about. The clinic was acquired at month six, which is a business event and not a marketing result.
How does a physical therapy clinic get more new patients from its website?
By ranking for the injury and condition searches people make before they look for a clinic, and by removing the friction between arriving on the site and asking for an appointment.
This Michigan occupational and physical therapy clinic reported 45% new-patient growth after three months from an SEO campaign combined with user experience and conversion work. The clinic was acquired at month six, which happened during the engagement and is not claimed as an outcome of it.
A referral-shaped business in a search-shaped market
An occupational and physical therapy clinic wanted to grow new-patient acquisition.
Therapy practices have historically been built on referral. A physician refers, the patient attends, and the clinic's marketing effort goes into relationships with referrers rather than into being found. That model still works and it is no longer sufficient, because in most states patients can now self-refer and an increasing number of them start with a search rather than an appointment.
The searches they make are distinctive. They are about the problem, not the profession: a shoulder that hurts when reaching overhead, recovery after a knee replacement, a child struggling with handwriting, getting back to running after an ankle injury. Very few of them contain the words physical therapy at all.
Most therapy clinic websites are organised the other way round, as a list of the services the clinic provides using the clinic's own professional vocabulary. The mismatch between how patients describe their problem and how clinics describe their solution is the single largest missed opportunity in the category.
Why the experience work sat alongside the SEO
In 2020, Google commissioned Deloitte and 55 to monitor mobile load times across 37 brand sites and more than 30 million user sessions. They then measured what a 0.1 second improvement did. The study is dated and it is still the largest of its kind.
That study is dated and measured large brand sites, so it does not predict what will happen on any individual clinic site. It is quoted because it identifies the right relationship: for a lead-generation business, the experience of the page is not separate from how many enquiries it produces.
What we assessed
How patients described their problem
We built the demand picture from patient language rather than clinical terminology. Injuries, activities, body parts, and the specific phrases people use when something has stopped working properly.
Whether the site addressed any of it
The existing site was organised around services: occupational therapy, physical therapy, hand therapy. Useful to a referrer, meaningless to somebody typing about a sore shoulder.
How many steps stood between interest and an appointment request
We counted them. For most therapy clinics the answer is too many, with a contact form that asks for insurance and referral details before it has established anything.
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What happened on a phone
Therapy patients often research on a phone while the problem is bothering them. We tested the site the way it is actually used and measured where people gave up.
Whether self-referral was explained
Many patients do not know they can attend without a physician referral, and many clinics never say so. It is a significant barrier that costs nothing to remove.
From a service list to a problem-led site
| Item | Before | After the work |
|---|---|---|
| Site organised around | The clinic's services | The patient's problem |
| Vocabulary | Professional terminology | How patients describe symptoms |
| Self-referral | Not mentioned | Explained clearly |
| Steps to an appointment request | Several | As few as possible |
| Form fields | Insurance and referral up front | Only what is needed to make contact |
| Primary measure | Website traffic | New patients |
Three months, scoped to one outcome
The campaign was defined by the metric from the start. That constraint shaped every decision in it, and it is the main reason the work was fast.
Build pages around conditions and activities, not services
A page for the shoulder problem, the post-surgical recovery, the running injury, the paediatric handwriting difficulty. Each written in the language the patient uses, each explaining what therapy for that problem actually involves.
Rebuild the interface around a single action
UI and UX work concentrated on one thing: making it obvious and easy to ask for an appointment. Navigation simplified, the action repeated at natural decision points, and everything that competed with it removed.
Apply conversion work to the enquiry itself
Form fields cut to the minimum needed to make contact. Insurance and referral questions moved to the follow-up conversation where they belong. Phone made equally prominent, because a substantial share of this audience calls.
- One clear action per page, visible on a phone without scrolling
- Fields reduced to name, contact and what hurts
- Self-referral explained next to the action, not in a policy page
See the remaining steps: Three months, scoped to one outcomeHide the remaining steps: Three months, scoped to one outcome
Make the clinic locally unambiguous
Profile, address consistency, structured data and local relevance, because therapy is a repeat-visit service and patients will not travel far for a course of appointments twice a week.
Measure new patients and nothing else
Traffic, rankings and sessions were treated as diagnostics. The report showed new patients, because that was the number the clinic was buying.
Where therapy clinics lose people
The gap between a visitor who wants help and a booked appointment is short, and almost every clinic puts obstacles in it.
The first obstacle is the page itself. A visitor who searched about a shoulder injury and landed on a page headed Outpatient Physical Therapy Services has to do the translation work themselves, and a meaningful proportion will not bother.
The second is the form. Asking for an insurance provider, a referring physician and a preferred location before a person has decided anything converts the enquiry into an administrative task. Those details are necessary, and they are necessary later.
Both are cheap to fix and neither requires more traffic. That is why a three-month programme could produce a measurable change: the demand was already arriving, and it was being lost at two identifiable points.
What changed, and what belongs to the clinic
The clinic reported 45% new-patient growth after three months. The word reported is on the original case page and it is retained here, because the figure is the clinic's own count from its own records rather than something we measured independently.
The original page also records that the clinic was acquired at month six of the campaign. An acquisition is a corporate event driven by valuation, strategy, timing and the intentions of a buyer. A clinic growing its patient base may well be a more attractive target, and that is as far as any honest connection goes. We did not sell the clinic and we are not claiming the sale.
Three months is a short window, which cuts both ways. It is fast for a change of this size, which is credible here because the work was conversion-led rather than purely organic, and conversion improvements show up immediately. It is also short enough that seasonality and referral patterns could account for part of the movement.
About these results
The 45% figure is the clinic's own reported new-patient growth after three months. It was reported to us rather than measured by us, and no baseline patient count was published.
The clinic was acquired at month six. That was a business event during the engagement and is not claimed as a marketing outcome. We did not advise on or participate in the transaction.
Three months is a short measurement window for a healthcare practice. Referral patterns and seasonality vary across a year and a quarterly comparison cannot separate them from the effect of the work.
Results are from a specific client engagement and vary by market, budget, competition and other factors. They are examples of past outcomes, not a guarantee of future results.
What was actually delivered
- An SEO campaign scoped specifically to new-patient acquisition
- Condition and activity pages written in patient language
- User interface and experience work focused on a single clear action
- Conversion rate optimisation on the enquiry path and the form itself
- Self-referral explained where the decision is made
- Local SEO foundations: profile, address consistency and structured data
- Reporting on new patients rather than on traffic or rankings
If you run a therapy practice
Organise your site around the problem, not your professions. Patients search for a painful shoulder, not for outpatient occupational therapy. Every page that leads with a service name is asking the visitor to do a translation, and a portion of them will not.
Say that patients can self-refer, if they can in your state. It is one sentence, it removes a genuine barrier, and a surprising number of people believe they need a physician referral and never call to check.
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Cut your form to the minimum. You need a name, a way to reach them and a sense of the problem. Insurance details, referral information and location preference are a conversation, not a gate. Moving them later will change your enquiry rate more than any amount of extra traffic.
Pick one number before you start, and let it constrain the work. This engagement was scoped to new patients over three months, and that constraint is why it stayed on conversion instead of drifting into the slower, more comfortable parts of SEO.
Getting traffic that does not turn into appointments?
We will count the steps between a visitor and an enquiry on your site. It is usually more than you think.
Straight answers.
Why does the page say reported rather than just stating the figure?
Because the number came from the clinic's own patient records rather than from something we measured directly. That distinction is real and we would rather show it than smooth it over.
The word appears on the original case page too, so we have kept it rather than quietly upgrading the claim.
Did the marketing cause the clinic to be acquired?
No, and we would be uncomfortable with anyone implying it did. A clinic is acquired because a buyer wanted it at a price the owner accepted, driven by strategy, valuation and timing.
Growing patient volume may make a practice a more attractive target. That is a reasonable thing to say and it is not the same as claiming credit for a transaction we had no part in.
Is three months long enough to judge a marketing programme?
For conversion work, largely yes, because improvements to a page take effect as soon as the page changes. For organic visibility, no, since the compounding happens over much longer periods.
This engagement combined both, which is why the short window produced a measurable change. The organic side of it would have continued developing well past the three months.
What should a therapy clinic write content about?
The conditions and activities patients search: specific injuries, recovery after named surgeries, sport-specific problems, and paediatric difficulties described the way a parent would describe them.
Not the modalities. Nobody outside the profession searches for the name of a technique, and a page built around one will be read by other therapists rather than by patients.
How much does site speed matter for a clinic site?
Enough to treat it as a conversion requirement rather than a technical preference, particularly since this audience is frequently browsing on a phone while uncomfortable.
Google publishes explicit thresholds for the three Core Web Vitals, and passing them is a reasonable floor. Whether a faster page produces more enquiries for your specific clinic is something to measure rather than assume.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- Google Search Central: Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results (opens in a new tab)How loading, responsiveness and layout stability factor into search.
- web.dev: Web Vitals (opens in a new tab)The published thresholds for LCP, INP and CLS.
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (opens in a new tab)The self-assessment Google publishes for judging whether content deserves to rank.
- Google Search Central: Local business structured data (opens in a new tab)The markup that tells search engines what a location is and where it is.
- Google Ads Help: About conversion tracking (opens in a new tab)The mechanism that connects a click to a booked job.
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.