500 million people stump Google every day

If you look at people’s search behavior over time, you’ll notice that most broad search terms are declining in popularity. Here’s one example for the term “prescription drug.”

This is a visual representation of a fact that Google has known since their early days: many search terms Google sees have never been used before. In 2015, the number of those first-time terms was nearly 500 million-per-day. To put that in perspective, the population of the United States is 320 million.

Many factors are powering this trend. As Google adds functionality, people integrate it further and further into their lives. The explosion of mobile devices adds to it, bringing search capabilities into our hands whenever we want it. A huge boost in content that tackles topics with greater focus and nuance further adds to this focus, rewarding searches for increasingly subtle variations on a topic.

This confluence of factors represents a major opportunity for hospital marketers to capture searchers. Here’s how to capitalize.

Build your authority

Major content marketers have been serving up health and wellness content for some time. WebMd is the 800-pound gorilla, and the Mayo Clinic has brought their brand into that space in powerful ways. Other big players like WikiHow are exploring ideas to carve out their own piece of the pie.

Smaller hospital systems can carve out their own niche by publishing content geared towards their local community. If you’re doing your research, you’ll understand local concerns much better than the big guys can.

Publish, promote, repeat

Many hospitals are moving marketing budgets toward content creation, hoping to capitalize on America’s ever-increasing dependence on search engines. You should be doing the same. Publish, promote, repeat is your new mantra. Reviewing your success every 3 months to look for wins and new opportunities brings a philosophy of improvement to the process.

Think 10x

Rand Fishkin planted the idea of 10x content in my mind. He explains it better than I can, but the general idea is that publishing good, relevant content is no longer enough. You have to push yourself to publish content 10 times better than what’s already in the search engines. It’s harder, but the alternative is producing ever-diminishing returns.

Further Reading

New to content marketing? You’re not alone. So are most of your health system peers. Here’s a great article from our blog, reviewing important content marketing formats. If you’re looking more active help, see how we handle hospital content marketing or give us a call.