The addiction recovery industry is a highly competitive and very saturated industry in the United States. As of 2020 the U.S. was home to over 14,000 rehabilitation centers treating millions of people a year, all a part of a +$40 billion industry in the United States. When it comes to online marketing and search engine optimization the industry is equally saturated and competitive.

When a prominent addiction recovery center contacted us with intentions to build them a new website and grow their online presence we knew it was going to be a rewarding challenge. With an existing addiction treatment center in the south-eastern United States and plans in motion to open a secondary location (almost 300 miles away) we knew that the client would require an aggressive and precise SEO strategy.

The American drug and alcohol rehabilitation industry has come under fire in the last few years with many instances of unethical practices, falsified information, patient brokers and HIPAA compliance issues to name just a few. When the reputable client had first approached us, the metaphorical dust was still settling in the SEO community from Google’s YMYL search algorithm update.

For those of you unfamiliar with the YMYL (your money, your life) update, it shook up the ranking and indexing of many sites in the medicine, health, supplement and healthcare industries. The purpose was to ensure that only industry websites with quality and trustworthy content could achieve good rankings. This was an attempt by Google to ensure that their SERPs would not provide search results that were misleading, untrustworthy or dangerous.

With the YMYL update still in our rear view mirror, it was up to us to devise an SEO strategy that would allow the client to quickly and efficiently rank in preparation for the company’s expansion. It was also up to us to ensure that we design a website that would allow us to efficiently execute the SEO strategy while abiding by the compliances and regulations required of the industry.

We designed an SEO friendly website around keyword research, canonical url structure, proper use of headers and a good internal link structure. Ensuring that the website’s page speed was fast was also a priority, with an emphasis placed on optimization of images. We began designing a URL structure that would properly utilize our keyword research as well. Extensive schema markup was utilized sitewide. An FAQ page was created with FAQ Schema markup for reinforcement and easy crawlability.

After the website design was approved, the content written and pre-launch SEO performed it was time to launch. The site launched in late January 2020. We knew regardless of the quality of on-page optimization the site would not rank easily unless we built up the site’s domain authority.

The website was hosted on a fresh domain with no historical referring domains or no authority, so aggressive link building was an immediate priority. By acquiring industry related and niche related backlinks we were able to bring the URL Rating of the domain up to 15 within the first 45 days after launch.

After the website design was approved, the content written and pre-launch SEO performed it was time to launch. The site launched in late January 2020. We knew regardless of the quality of on-page optimization the site would not rank easily unless we built up the site’s domain authority.

The website was hosted on a fresh domain with no historical referring domains or no authority, so aggressive link building was an immediate priority. By acquiring industry related and niche related backlinks we were able to bring the URL Rating of the domain up to 15 within the first 45 days after launch.

These pages were written and designed to showcase the client area, with references to the attraction, weather and general beauty of the south eastern region. The copy on these pages pivots to the serious nature of addiction and how the client’s services could help individuals suffering with a substance use disorder. This strategy was successful in achieving page 1 local rankings within the first several months.

We also began aggressive blogging covering addiction issues that plagued the region and the country. These articles were crafted by our content team to work in unison with our SEO strategy. Topical and relevant these blogs contained excellent keyword density, room for outbound linking and healthy amounts of internal anchor text referring to patient services and programs. Each article tackling a specific keyword the client wished to rankl for.

Within the first 6 months the website had seen 166K impressions.

Around the sixth month, off-page SEO, off-page structured data and business profiles that we had created and referenced in the client’s website schema markup. BlogArticle schema markup was also added to all the created blogs.

By 9 months the client was receiving over 7,000 impressions a day, with organic traffic dominating the traffic channels.

At this time the client was beginning to open their second treatment a state away. We immediately built dedicated pages on the site centered around the new facility, while creating additional content and pages targeting surrounding counties and regions.

By November 2020 the client was beginning to receive interest in the new facility and was receiving new patients. By end of year 2020 the client had received 493K impressions from October 26-2020 to January-26-2021 (one year after launch). Receiving no less than 3000 impressions per day and achieving up 10,560 impressions in a single day. With organic traffic accounting for 56.9% of all traffic

The client continues to work with us here at Elite Strategies to this day. Almost one and a half years of SEO and Web Development the client has two successful addiction treatment centers in two states. Achieving 2.2 Million Impressions. Presently receiving more than 7K impression daily, needless to say our client is quite pleased with the ongoing growth of their brand.

There’s no limit to how much this brand can achieve. From zero to one hundred, our SEO strategy was able to design a website for a fairly unknown company and overcome the YMYL search algorithm update, propel a brand new domain 4 tiers, and achieve 2.2million impressions in under 1.5 years. We look eagerly to the future for what we will achieve next for this great client.