From No Website to #1 on Google with 3-4 New Patient Calls Per Day in Dallas, TX

If you’re a physician looking to attract more patients and increase revenue, Dr. John Hibbitts’ story will show you exactly what’s possible – and how you can achieve the same results. My name is Chuck Siegel, founder of Rule Your Kingdom. We specialize in delivering measurable results for medical practices, and I’d like to share the true story of one surgeon’s remarkable journey.

Dr. John Hibbitts was an orthopedic surgeon with 21 years of experience, referred to us by another satisfied client, Eric Steinke, owner of Precision Sports Physical Therapy in the Dallas area (his case study is here). Dr. Hibbitts was a skilled healer of knees and shoulders – but in early 2021, he faced a daunting problem: virtually no one could find him online. He had recently moved to Sunnyvale, Texas (a suburb in the ultra-competitive Dallas, Texas marketplace) to start an independent practice (Sunnyvale Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center) and had no website, no social media, nothing. “I really don’t… I have an account for Facebook. I’ve never gone on it,” he admitted to me during our first call. He wasn’t even listed on his hospital’s website. This talented doctor was essentially invisible to new patients on the internet.

Worse yet, Dr. Hibbitts was on a ticking clock. A major hospital system had recruited him to Sunnyvale and offered a one-year financial guarantee to help him set up his practice. After that, he’d be on his own. In his words, “I was wanting to build up the business as best as I can… and, you know, social media is the way to go”. That was his perception. He knew that relying solely on word-of-mouth referrals wouldn’t be enough to grow a thriving clinic in a new town, especially in one of the nation’s top-10 most competitive metro areas. While his previous group practice could afford billboards and TV ads, “since I’m solo that ain’t happening,” he joked. Dr. Hibbitts needed a cost-effective, high-impact way to get his name out to potential patients – and fast.

Emotionally, he was torn between confidence in his medical skill and the anxiety of being unknown in a digital world. “How important is it that people find you on the internet?” I asked. “I mean, that’s the whole point of doing it,” he said immediately. He wasn’t looking for a vanity website to just list on a business card – he wanted to be found. His dream was to have a steady stream of patients coming in, not just from doctor referrals, but from the web: people in his community searching on Google for the services he offers and finding him at the top.

We started with a deep competitive audit of the orthopedic market around Sunnyvale. We looked at the online presence of nearby hospitals and clinics to answer key questions: Who were Dr. Hibbitts’ competitors in Google search? What were those competitors doing online? How much content did they have, and how many backlinks (external links) pointed to their sites?

We discovered a golden opportunity: while big hospital systems (like Baylor Scott & White) had massive marketing budgets, they weren’t targeting specific niche search terms in this region. As I explained to Dr. Hibbitts, “they’re not spending a ton of money specifically to rank well for total hip replacement in Mesquite, Texas… but if we focus like a laser on certain very specific services in very specific geographic areas, then you can out-rank even them”. In other words, by being more targeted and strategic, his small practice could appear above the giants in Google results for the exact treatments he offers. This insight became the foundation of our strategy.

Next, we conducted extensive keyword research to find out what potential patients in the area were Googling. We didn’t guess – we went straight to the data. Using professional tools (and Google’s own information), we identified every relevant search query people might use when looking for orthopedic and sports medicine care.

In fact, we fed Dr. Hibbitts’ service list into Google’s database and it spit back between 20,000 and 40,000 related search phrases! These included everything from broad terms like “knee pain doctor Dallas” to very specific queries like “best surgeon for ACL tear in Dallas TX.” We then narrowed it down to the most valuable 100+ keywords – those with high search volume and strong intent (meaning the searcher likely wants to book an appointment, not just read an article).

Finally, we grouped those keywords by topic (knees, hips, shoulders, etc.) to map out exactly what pages the new website needed. This keyword blueprint ensured that every service Dr. Hibbitts offers would be easily found by someone searching online. If people in his area were looking up, say, “rotator cuff tear treatment,” we made sure Dr. Hibbitts would have a page on his site optimized for that term, positioning him as the answer to their query.

With the keywords and content plan in hand, we built Sunnyvale Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center’s new website from scratch. Our focus was twofold: make it Google-friendly and patient-friendly.

On the Google side, we structured the site meticulously. We created dedicated pages for each major service and condition – knee replacements, hip pain, sports injuries, fracture care, you name it – and populated them with informative content that answered patients’ questions and highlighted Dr. Hibbitts’ expertise. We explicitly “told” Google through this content what Dr. Hibbitts does (e.g. “total hip replacement surgery in Sunnyvale, TX”) so that the site would rank for those services. We ensured the site was authoritative and comprehensive, aiming to be better than any competitor’s site for those topics.

On the patient side, we made sure the design was clean, professional, and fast-loading, with clear calls to action. We integrated online appointment requests and prominently displayed the phone number. If a prospective patient landed on the site, they would immediately see how to contact the office or schedule an appointment, which is exactly what Dr. Hibbitts wanted. We also included patient education elements: detailed FAQs, procedure explanations, and even prepared a section to host videos from Dr. Hibbitts in the future, so visitors could “meet” him virtually and build trust. The site wasn’t just a brochure; it was a 24/7 digital front desk and educational hub for his practice.

While launching the new website was a huge milestone, we knew that great content alone wasn’t enough. In SEO, content is only ~15% of the battle – the other 85% is your site’s authority in Google’s eyes. So, we initiated an aggressive but white-hat link-building campaign.

Over the next year, my team worked on acquiring high-quality backlinks to Dr. Hibbitts’ site. We reached out to relevant medical directories, local business listings, orthopedic news sites, and even wrote guest articles on health blogs – all with links pointing back to sunnyvaleorthopedics.com. Each link was like a “vote” for his site’s credibility.

But quality mattered more than quantity: we focused on authoritative websites that Google respects (no spam). Many of the sites we got links from have high domain ratings (DR) themselves – think of DR as a 0–100 score of a site’s trustworthiness. By the end, we had earned links from 41 domains with DR over 40, including 30 domains with DR over 50 (very powerful sources). This rapidly boosted the domain authority and digital credibility of Dr. Hibbitts’ site, setting it up for the results that were to come. In plain terms, we built Dr. Hibbitts an online reputation in the eyes of search engines, to match his real-life reputation as a top surgeon.

We didn’t stop at the website. We also set up and optimized Dr. Hibbitts’ Google Business Profile (the listing that appears on Google Maps and local search). We made sure his practice address, hours, and phone number were consistent across the web. We implemented a review generation strategy, encouraging happy patients to share their feedback on Google.

The result? His Google profile blossomed from 0 to 273 Google reviews (with an average rating of 4.9 stars!). This flood of positive reviews not only boosts his local SEO (Google loves seeing an active, well-rated business) but also builds immense trust with anyone who finds him online. A prospective patient sees nearly five stars across hundreds of patients – that social proof is priceless. It helps convert those website visitors into actual appointments.