Colorado Advanced Orthopedics Case Study

Client Overview

Colorado Advanced Orthopedics is a part of Pioneers Medical Center in Meeker, Colorado. Colorado Advanced Orthopedics is a renowned center for orthopedic excellence, serving patients who live locally and travel nationally and even internationally. From knee and hip replacement to spine, neck, and foot, Colorado Advanced Orthopedics has quickly grown in prestige, attracting top doctors in their field and an increasing patient base.

Colorado Advanced aims to make people feel cared for, helping them celebrate life’s joys and return to the life they once had.

Client Goals

Create an established digital and online presence to increase stature and visibility regionally and nationally.
Increase awareness throughout the region, state, and surrounding states, promoting Colorado Advanced Orthopedics as a medical tourism destination.
Promote the brand’s "Celebrating Life’s Joys Approach™" online.
Establish online campaigns targeting essential services both regionally and in surrounding states.
Increase search engine visibility and rankings.
Establish tracking systems for measurable performance.

Challenges

Initially, there was no website presence other than through some pages on the Pioneers Medical Center’s main website.
It is a very competitive market in Colorado with established and well-known orthopedic practices.
The location of Meeker, Colorado, while other more well-known orthopedic centers were located in Denver and other more significant markets with easier access, such as Grand Junction.

Our Approach

Market Positioning Action Plan™

Our exclusive Marketing Positioning Action Plan™ was implemented to discover a unique position for Colorado Advanced Orthopedics (and Pioneers Medical Center) among its competitors. Through this process, we developed:

Personas and their Unique Selling Proposition
Keyword Research to identify search engine ranking opportunities
Competitive Research and Analysis to determine the market’s competitiveness and critical differentiation messages.

This process, research, and analysis resulted in the creation of Colorado Advanced Orthopedics’ unique core branding themes:

Offering: Personalized Care Delivering an Amazing Overall Experience
Experience: Lifting You to Celebrate & Enjoy Life

Brand Platform

Utilizing and building off of elements from the Market Positioning Action Plan™, we created the Brand Platform. The Brand Platform included the creation of:

Purpose
Core Values
Unique Vocabulary
Content Strategy
Messaging Hierarchy
Unique Imagery
Overall Brand Story

The Brand Platform culminated in the unique positioning and messaging for "Celebrating Life’s Joy Approach™," promoting helping patients get back to living the life they love through compassionate orthopedic care.

Website Design – UX and UI

Using our exclusive Websites Right Methodology™, we developed Colorado Advanced Orthopedics’ website UX and UI based on their personas and opportunities revealed through Keyword Research and competitive analysis. This methodology included:

Adopting findings and opportunities uncovered in their Marketing Positioning Action Plan™ to reverse engineer the website navigation and URL structure to create better opportunities to rank for critical services.
Simplified user experience, allowing users to quickly locate critical information, such as Schedule Appointment Pay My Bill and Patient Portal.
Create clear calls to action that provide patients with accessible pathways to either call or schedule appointments.
Showcase testimonials and news promoting the expertise of the team.
Implement a Tactical Content Strategy to engage and educate users while aligning with SEO needs.

Website Development – Scope and Programming

The website was created using our industry-leading, custom-designed Enhanced WordPress Platform and following our proven Websites Right Methodology™. Highlights of this methodology include:

Clear documentation of website goals – allowing us to measure success.
Collaborative planning of the website homepage is critical to defining the story.
Creation of detailed website mockups to ensure everyone on the team loved the new site design.
Detailed functional requirements documentation to ensure alignment and understanding as to how the specific functionality of the website will be displayed and managed.
The creation of a complete project plan and timeline with a visual Gantt chart.
Detailed weekly status touch-base emails and updates.
The incorporation of third-party tools to enhance website functionality.
Custom programming and development of advanced website functionality.
Comprehensive website testing for different browsers and devices (mobile & tablet).
Tactical content leadership is needed to communicate the story effectively.
The incorporation of proven SEO best practices for better search engine rankings.
Post-launch testing and ongoing analysis to ensure the website’s success.

The purpose of Colorado Advanced Orthopedics is To Make People Feel Cared For with the theme of getting back to the life you love, so the website demanded a varied approach. As a result, the website utilized a great deal of custom photography, showing their real doctors and team interacting with patients versus traditional stock photography. We also have imagery showing people doing what they love and celebrating that joy – hiking, skiing, and more. We have online mechanisms so patients can submit their photos and stories of how they are getting back into life. Sometimes, with permission, the images provided by the users are rotated onto the homepage and featured as stories in the monthly digital publication "Celebrating Life’s Joys." The content on the site also features a lot of information on fun things to do around Meeker, along with local imagery to attract regional search engine signals and promote medical tourism and hospitality in the area.

Ongoing Marketing Program

Performance Intelligence Dashboard and Reporting

We collaborated with Colorado Advanced Orthopedics to determine key performance metrics and plans for ongoing program enhancements. Integrating several tracking systems into the website, we established visual and real-time dashboards for convenient and actionable insights. We also implemented other tools, including:

Heat maps to improve user engagement and conversion
Attribution tracking to measure marketing tactics and performance effectively

We tested and continuously improved results through Performance Intelligence across all touchpoints t. We effectively measured the website, ad copy, landing pages, calls to action, and more to create positive ROI.

Paid Search

Colorado Advanced Orthopedics aimed to attract patients from outside the immediate region of Meeker, CO. In tandem with our content strategy, ads were explicitly created to promote CAO as a medical tourism destination throughout the surrounding areas (Grand Junction, Montrose, Glenwood Springs, etc.), the state (Denver, Colorado Springs, etc.), and surrounding states (Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, etc.).

Working in tandem with CAO, we created various paid search marketing programs. The ads included a mix of evergreen medical tourism ads targeting broader geographies, specialty ads for orthopedics, and services such as knee replacement, spine, and sports medicine. As CAO’s prestige grew, we also found other competitors taking notice, so we added a mix of branded advertising to enhance awareness and protect against competitive advertising tactics.

Through ongoing pain management, we optimized ads to maximize efficiency and ROI, particularly around cost per lead. This management included testing geographic parameters, ad copy, keywords, landing pages, and more to maximize conversions and tracking cost-per-lead metrics to meet and exceed specified goals.

Search Engine Optimization and Backlink Building

We identified targeted keywords and groupings as part of the website’s initial development. While the website was built and optimized for those terms, ongoing SEO was required to remain competitive in search.

Utilizing a vast toolset, our team would audit the website monthly and track rankings, traffic, engagement, identity content gaps, and more. Our team would perform necessary on-page optimizations and work with our content team to ensure all new content was correctly optimized for search.

Our team also created vital backlinks from other contextual websites to strengthen the overall website’s domain authority and search rankings. Each month, we would identify ten plus high authority domains and work with those site owners to have content that included a keyword-rich backlink pointing to a specific specialty page on Colorado Advanced Orthopedic’s website.

Tactical Content Strategy and Implementation

Working with our search engine optimization team and Colorado Advanced Orthopedics, we created an ongoing content plan to identify required content for better search engine rankings. As our SEO team identified terms that could use additional content support on the website, our content team would then create a plan to address and execute the content. The content would include developing and updating key service pages, supporting blogs, and press releases.

The blog content, in particular, served the dual purpose of helping the website rank for key terms around "orthopedics" and "knee replacement" and reinforcing the celebrating Life’s Joys brand. Much of the content was featured in the monthly e-publication, with articles that promoted getting back into life, the local area as a tourist destination, and tips and tricks to stay active and healthy.

Results

We achieved excellent results with Colorado Advanced Orthopedics. Some highlights include:

In the past calendar year (2024), Colorado Advanced Orthopedics has treated patients from a record 39 states and one international patient due to growing impressions in organic and paid search promotion.
They have added to their renowned staff, including attracting and retaining an orthopedic surgeon who works with the U.S. Ski Team.
Continue to see unprecedented site visitors, with average monthly traffic up 115% since the start of ongoing marketing.
Monthly organic search traffic is up 482% since the start of ongoing initiatives.
The number of terms ranking on page one of search engines increased from 408 at the start to 2,101 in 2024, a 415% increase.
Online Google reviews are up 200% over the past year, all 5-star.

"We quickly realized a strong return on investment (ROI) from our website project with Webolutions, demonstrating its immediate value and effectiveness." – R.Gates, Compliance Officer & Marketing Director, Pioneers Medical Center