Monday, November 21, 2005

Healthcare Marketing Blog Revisited

It's been several months since my last post and I've had a number of new business projects come online in the medical search marketing space since then, so I thought I'd get back into the swing of things by discussing them.

The most interesting of these new projects has been Healthline, a new consumer health search engine that launched in this October. Healthline is interesting in that it's the first vertical search engine in the medical space to use a medical lexicon to route users from vernacular type searches ("sore throat") to the most likely corresponding medical term ("pharyngitis"). This is incredibly handy to those of us not familiar with medical terminology (read: most of us) as it allows users to skip the time-consuming research process of learning the correct terminology - instead allowing them to jump directly to the information they need.

Healthline contracted my company FirstRanked Healthcare to provide online marketing services and development support. To date we've provided them with two very successful Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns, mapped out a long-term link development strategy, initiated a long-term search engine optimization program, and generated several innovative new ideas for future Healthline site features. Healthline is an interesting company with a well-positioned product and I'm looking forward to continuing working with them as they mature into a major force in the online health area.