SEO

Is flat the new up with SEO?

Six months ago, I shared that our search-driven traffic had dropped 17% in the prior 6 months.

The root cause? AI.

It was driving me nuts.

SEO and especially non-branded terms had helped to drive 10X growth in website traffic since 2020

There seemed to be two significant factors behind this – both are AI-related.

  1. Search Generative AI (SGA) takes up half the real estate on the first page in many Google search results. SGA, aka AI Overviews in Google, took up half the first page of the first page of Search results. The other half were expanded paid results. So when HLP web pages ranked in the top 3, they were pushed to the second page of search results.
  2. Using AI to write content hurts search rankings. I had been using Claude a little too liberally to help write blog posts. Many SEO experts told me that Google is better at spotting when someone has used AI and penalized the rankings.

To counteract this, I did several things:

  • Stopped using AI to write posts. While I use it in researching, analyzing, and creating outlines, I don’t use it to write anymore.
  • Doubled down on social: Over the last six months, we have increased our presence on LinkedIn and YouTube and gone all out on the podcast.
  • Focused on our Superpowers – Healthtech and ABM expertise. We have gone all in on creating educational content for healthtech marketing leaders with a big focus on strategy.

So what happened?

We have stopped the decline. It looks like our search-driven traffic is now flat.

It’s a bummer that SEO-driven traffic growth rates have not returned to pre-AI days, but I will take flat for now.

The good news is that:

Inbound opportunities continue to come in and continue to account for 1/2 our new account wins

And our content are appearing in Perplexity search results. We even had one new business meeting that originated from Perplexity.

Overall….

Progress not perfection.

What are you finding? Is AI impacting your SEO?

Posted by Ian Schnepf
Posted in AI and Marketing, Blog, Marketing to Healthcare on January 24, 2025

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About the Author Ian Schnepf

Hi, I am Adam Turinas, Health Launchpad's founder. I am passionate about helping healthtech firms succeed through better sales and marketing. I have hard-earned experience in healthcare technolgy as I started two healthcare businesses in the US, the first with zero healthcare experience. We sold the second business to a strategic buyer seven years later. Over 9 years building a healhtech businesses, I have learned how to sell and market effectively to healthcare organizations. Prior to this, I spent two decades in digital marketing across healthcare and other consumer industries where I sold over $100 million in products and services to corporations and healthcare orgs. I would love to talk with you. You can book a call with me on the right hand side. Best Adam (This is page 0 of many)Enter your text here...

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