CFRU SITE REFRESH

Design | Build | Web Master | SEO

The Center for Reconstructive Urology (CFRU) at the UC Irvine Medical Center is a tertiary referral center dedicated to the treatment of disorders of the male urethra and genitalia. In addition to patient care, its mission includes clinical and laboratory research and teaching. Its Director, Dr. Joel Gelman, is known worldwide as a leading expert in male urethral reconstructive surgery.

CFRU's website is an important source for new patient leads. When first built in 2010, the website was state of the art design and led in search for many keywords relating to reconstructive urology. Over the years, the site suffered from neglect. As a result its search ranking slipped as competitor sites took advantage of the latest in search-friendly design and SEO best practices. I was brought in to give the website a bright, modern look, manage upgrades to the dedicated server, and lead efforts to improve on-page SEO.

Defining a New Look

The website was in desparate need of a fresh new look. The 2010 design was dark and moody. It failed to convey a positive outlook. My goal was to leverage a few existing design elements but to redefine the look to be fresh, clean and optimistic. The old site provided no sense of the UCI medical facility. I changed that by adding video to the homepage and location photos to most of the page headers. The new look restores best in class status to CFRU's website and helps it compete favorably with competitor sites.

Creating an Impression With Video

It was important to make the homepage stand apart from the competition and leave a strong first impression. We discussed options, then concluded that video provided the best opportunity to give a strong sense of the medical facility and show Dr.Gelman in action. B-roll footage from a previous marketing campaign was provided. I edited clips together to create a looping video for use on the homepage with an overlay of messaging.

SEO and Ongoing Improvements

Because the website had been neglected for many years, its ranking in search for important keywords fell to unacceptable levels. Turning that around requires ongoing commitment to off-page and on-page SEO. The old site had a single page dedicated to outreach. I turned that into a news blog where Dr. Gelman can, with minimal effort, create posts about his many trips to help disadvantages communities around the world. These posts, linked to from social media, give off-page SEO a boost. For on-page SEO, as a start, I evaluated the Urethral Stricture section of the site and provided direction on how to finesse content and metadata to improve ranking for longtail key phrases.