Meridian Natural Medicine is a Portland, Oregon-based natural health practice. It specializes in Applied Kinesiology, Neurofeedback and Nutritional Consulting, among others.

Meridian came to Enter The Net seeking improved results on the search engines. The firm’s owner, Dr. Noel Thomas, was skeptical at first.

“I wasn’t sure how Enter The Net could do it, but I decided to give it a try,” says Dr. Thomas. “Rob explained it to me, especially about how we need to attract the search engine spiders to my site. Now that the spiders would rather hang out at my site than with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, my site has become the Temple of Boom!”

How Did We Do It?

Our first step was to work with Dr. Thomas to generate a thorough list of targeted key word combinations. These included terms that describe the services she provides, combined with “Portland Oregon” to keep the internet marketing focused on clients she can reach. Because Dr. Thomas offers a unique healthcare experience, she also selected a handful of terms that are not limited to the Portland area.

“Rob did a good job of explaining to me that the non-limited terms would take quite a while to produce results, but we decided it is worth the shot,” says Dr. Thomas.

After the list of key word combinations was generated, Enter The Net used a variety of tools to narrow the list down to the most relevant and most popularly-searched combinations.

The brand new site was then optimized for the entire list of key word combinations. This involved working with the meta tags on each page, editing the on-page text and structuring the site to be successful.

The site was then added to the Enter The Net link exchange to help it attract spiders and build search engine-recognized popularity.

Results!

Almost immediately, the site shot up the rankings for the Portland-based terms. Progress on Google and Yahoo was more gradual, while MSN displayed its usual volatility. [You may click on the image to enlarge it.]

Percent Top 20 Rankings for Meridian-ND.com

Over time, the site rankings on Google and Yahoo and the search engine-recognized incoming links have sustained quite well. The overall number of Top 20 rankings displays some fluctuation entirely due to the volatility of MSN. [You may click on the image to enlarge it.]

MSN.com results have varied over time.

Search engine-recognized links have improved gradually over time and maintained healthy levels due to the Enter The Net link exchange system and Dr. Thomas’s efforts to post on blogs and other networking sites. [You may click on the image to enlarge it.]

Incoming links to the site have increased.

Traffic to the site comes largely from the search engines. Dr. Thomas reports that she frequently is contacted by potential patients who “found her on the search engines.”

Over 78% of site traffic comes from the search engines.

Some live results:

Portland Functional Medicine on Google

Portland Natural Medicine on Yahoo

Portland Joint Pain on MSN

What’s Next?

Meridian Natural Medicine participates in the Enter The Net monthly marketing and maintenance program. In addition to receiving regular reports on the site’s progress, Dr. Thomas will also be consulted on potential changes to the site to help it maintain and improve search engine results. As of October 2008, the main objective is to find ways to refresh the content of the site on a regular basis. Search engines love new content.

Please leave comments or questions in the comments section below. Enter The Net will strive to answer questions quickly and thoroughly.