Table of Contents
Part 1, Part 2 (you’re here), Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
In part one for our case study, we went over researching our keywords, SEO, learning about the clinic through surveys/interviews and bench marking our rankings.
In part two, we’ll study our competitors. We’ll look at:
- The backlink profile of our competitors
- Quickly go over a backlink gap analysis
- Predictive organic traffic analysis
- Look at their copy
- Credibility factors
- Human factors
Competitor backlink analysis
We’re going to look at the four competitors versus Clear Advantage Ortho and study their backlink profile.
Here are the top clinics we’ll be measuring our client against:
- http://www.westcoastsmile.com
- https://dentistonkingsway.com
- https://fraserviewdentist.com
- https://www.vccid.com
When we look from above, it seems that VCCID has the highest domain authority (surprisingly, they rank the lowest, which leads me to believe that their on-site SEO is lacking).
West Coast Smile has a decent authority score of 27 out of 100. The others are all very low and can improve.
We’ll now go over the backlink profile for each competitor and see what they’re doing right (or wrong for that matter).
Backlink profile for Clear Advantage Orthodontics
The backlink profile for Clear Advantage Ortho is okay. We’ll need to study the competitors to know if we need to build a lot of backlinks.
Download the backlink profile of Clear Advantage Ortho here.
Oddly enough, we notice they have a lot of backlinks from 94 domains. We’ll have to look closely to ensure there are no spam issues.
When we dig deep, we notice two websites with more than 3000 links pointing back to Clear Advantage.
Both medicard.com and dentalcard.com seem to be legitimate. We won’t need to disavow them.
The rest of the links are from directories. We don’t have any citations from relevant websites. There is huge potential here because a few high-profile and topical links can completely have Clear Advantage Ortho rank for every primary keyword they’re targeting.
Backlink profile for Dentist On Kingsway
Dentist On Kingsway has a very low domain rating of 3. They will be easy to beat unless they have incredible content, which I doubt.
Download the list of backlinks for Dentist On Kingsway here.
They have no links we can try to steal. We’ll skip this competitor from our research.
Backlink profile for Fraserview Dentist
The backlink profile Fraserview Dentist is non-existent. We won’t have to worry about them in terms of backlinks.
Download the list of backlinks for Fraserview Dentist here.
Backlink profile for VCCID
VCCID has a very healthy domain rating of 27. They’re homepage, surprisingly, has a URL rating of 35.
Download the full list of backlinks for VCCID here.
When we look closer, it’s evident that their organic traffic is dropping significantly.
A lot goes into figuring out why VCCID is losing traffic. This requires a full SEO audit and backlink analysis of each link.
VCCID is clearly losing steam and is not a threat to our hypothetical client.
Backlink profile for West Coast Smile
West Coast Smile is the only real competitor to Clear Advantage Orthodontics. They have a healthy domain rating of 27 and a URL rating of 9.
Download the full list of backlinks for West Coast Smile here.
Their organic traffic is growing and growing rapidly.
I found the one reason why West Coast Smile is doing better than the others. I looked at the backlink profile and found a do-follow link right on invisalign.com:
Getting a link from Invisalign is highly relevant and a citation I’ll be looking to get for Clear Advantage Ortho.
Predictive organic traffic forecasting
I am part of an amazing community. We help each other in every aspect of digital marketing.
Recently, Patrick Stox wrote an article on Ahrefs about forecasting potential SEO growth using Google Colab.
We’re going to compare the organic traffic data we have for all of our competitors and forecast their growth in the near future.
Let’s get into the data:
Clear Advantage Orthodontics is growing steady and shouldn’t have an issue unless they mess up their SEO. Traffic volume growth is still a lot lower than West Coast Smile.
West Coast Smile is also doing great with parabolic growth potential.
VCCID is going to be in trouble unless they find out why they’re losing traffic. I would definitely take this to the main doctor and propose an in-depth audit.
Dentist On Kingsway is growing with better volume potential than Clear Advantage Ortho. With an actual client we would research every single keyword Dentist on Kingsway ranks for and why.
Fraserview Dentist has stagnated and needs to improve their digital marketing campaigns. Otherwise, their growth will slow down to a trickle. There might be a decline in traffic depending on what their competitors do in the future.
Predictive organic growth forecasting is not an exact science. The thesis is that if nothing changes for each of the examples above, we can predict the future.
If, however, one of our competitors starts improving their digital marketing campaigns, their forecasts will change for obvious reasons.
Backlink Gap analysis
Next, we’re going to look at the backlink gap analysis and find out how many links we need to build (if any).
As I thought, the only two websites we’ll need to beat are VCCID and West Coast Smile. VCCID is having a hard time and losing traffic every day so I won’t worry about them too much.
We need to find out if West Coast Smile is getting high authority backlinks and study the velocity of how many links are being built each month.
Backlink velocity for West Coast Smile
From what we can see, West Coast Smile has less than 70 backlinks. They are actually losing links at a rapid pace.
Our hypothetical client is holding steady and staying above 100 backlinks.
Backlink authority distribution
Knowing how many links our top competitors are building, how fast and the authority of the links is key to gauging the market we’re dealing with.
West Coast Smile seems to have a decent authority distribution of links.
Let’s look at how Clear Advantage Ortho stacks up against West Coast Smile.
Now our data is coming together. It looks like Clear Advantage Ortho has the advantage here with a better distribution of links with higher authority.
Recommendation: Clear Advantage has the advantage here in terms of links. I would still build a few high authority links and try to rank for a few topical blog posts individually.
In this case, I would build 2-5 relevant backlinks to A) the Invisalign page and B) individual blog posts for at least twelve months. I would wind down to 1-3 links from month 13+.
Copy strategy
We use advanced tools, which analyze 500+ on-page signals so that we get a better grasp of how to plan our money pages and blog posts.
Since we’re focussing on just Invisalign, we’ll only try to optimize https://www.clearadvantageortho.com/cheap-invisalign-vancouver-bc/.
Download the full true density report here.
By just looking at the Invisalign page for Clear Advantage Ortho, you would almost think they’ve done everything right to rank. Technically, that’s true.
However, the page is very hard to read and is created to rank and not convert visitors into patients.
I am not a copywriter and believe me when I say our copywriter would kick my ass, but I can assure you that I would do a better job than the people who wrote the copy for Dr. Cziraki.
Let’s help her out.
Main value proposition: Straighten your teeth with Invisalign
Supporting value proposition: With 20+ years of experience, Dr. Cziraki is the top 1% provider of Invisalign in Vancouver
- Invisalign trays are virtually invisible
- Invisalign is much more comfortable than traditional braces
- You can eat whatever you want with Invisalign
- It takes less time to straighten teeth with Invisalign
- Maintaining your teeth is much easier than it would be with braces
Looks like we have a great start. Let’s take it a bit further by viewing the survey we took in part 1 of our case study.
We know that:
- From our survey 27% of respondents suffer from uneven teeth
- About 20% of respondents have considered Invisalign on their own without the help of an Orthodontist
- The main pain points are:
- It’s too expensive: 46%
- People feeling to old for Invisalign: 17.8%
- It’s too much to manage: 12.5%
- Insurance doesn’t cover Invisalign: 27.8%
- About 11% of respondents would consider getting Invisalign if monthly payments were offered.
The last point is important because we can address a large number of people who think Invisalign is too expensive, is not covered by insurance or there are no monthly payments.
This is the only part on the Invisalign page where we see payment options being mentioned:
We’ll greatly improve this when we wireframe our information architecture for Dr. Cziraki.
Credibility and human factors
I get it. You want your pages ranked on Google. I want the same for us and our clients. It’s a given but do you have to make it so robotic? We don’t think so at Drip Marketing (my agency).
We take a holistic and qualitative approach to digital marketing. We’ll address user intent and make sure search engines like Google understand what it is we’re trying to rank for.
The Invisalign page for Clear Advantage Ortho doesn’t have any of these credibility factors:
- Video of Dr. Cziraki and her clinic explaining why she is the best option
- Better photography of the staff, doctor and clinic
- Positive reviews are missing even though the clinic has many on Google
- No form to book an appointment
- No before and after photos of Dr. Cziraki’s work
- No audio files of Dr. Cziraki addressing user intent directly on her Invisalign page
I would completely redo this page because nothing is done right. The team who did this page never considered the clinic, the patient and the doctor before stuffing this page with mindless content.
In part three, we’ll wireframe the invisalign page. You’ll clearly see why our team is truly one of the best digital marketing teams in North America.
Final thoughts
We now have a better understanding of our backlink strategy, predicted where we would be if we did nothing for the next twelve months, studied the backlink gap analysis, went over a quick copy strategy and talked about how we can increase the credibility of our Invisalign page.
This process must be repeated on every single page if we want to succeed and why we only work with serious clients who take a proactive approach to their digital marketing campaigns. Without them, we can’t succeed.
In the next post we’ll wireframe our Invisalign page, go over a content calendar and examples of links we can acquire to increase the authority for Clear Advantage Orthodontics.
Thank you for reading. Until next time, catch you all on my next post.
