Patient enquiries up 2.8x for a Kolkata hospital, now reaching across Bangladesh.

The challenge

A Kolkata multi-specialty hospital treated patients from across the eastern states and, increasingly, from Bangladesh, where limited advanced care at home sends patients across the border for treatment. Almost every one of those patients arrived through a doctor referral or a medical agent working the Bangladesh side of the corridor.

Families researching a procedure, whether from a district town in Odisha or from Dhaka, wanted to know the cost, the recovery time and the specialists involved before they committed to travel. The hospital's site listed departments but said little about any specific procedure, so that research happened everywhere except on the hospital's own pages. Every patient routed through an agent, particularly from across the border, came with a commission attached that a direct enquiry would not have cost.

The approach

Webzenia's research split the hospital's catchment two ways: Ahrefs and Google Search Console data separated the procedure and condition searches run from district towns across the east from the cost and travel questions specific to patients considering Kolkata from Bangladesh.

The team built procedure and condition pages naming the specific treatments the hospital offered, alongside cost-of-treatment content addressing what a family from outside the city actually needs before committing to travel: indicative pricing, stay duration, and what the visit involves. Each page was written for someone deciding whether the trip is worth it, not a local patient booking a routine visit.

Local SEO and Google Business Profile work strengthened the hospital's presence for regional searches across the eastern catchment, while technical SEO cleared page-speed and indexation issues that were holding the procedure pages back from ranking at all.

For the cross-border audience, the team optimised the cost and process content specifically for the searches Bangladeshi patients run when comparing care options, so the hospital's own pages, not a referral agent, answered the question first.

The results

Patient enquiries grew 2.8x over nine months. Families who once reached the hospital only through a doctor's referral began enquiring directly, after researching the procedure themselves.

31% of enquiries now come from Bangladesh and NRI patients, a channel that used to run almost entirely through cross-border agents. The cost and process content built specifically for that audience gave them a direct route to the hospital instead.

29 procedure terms reached the top three results. Ranking for the specific treatments patients search, rather than only the hospital's name, meant enquiries arrived with a real idea of what they needed.

Cost per enquiry fell 48% against what the hospital paid on health portals. That gap holds because organic enquiries need no per-lead fee, unlike the portals and agents the hospital relied on before.

The stack behind it

• AhAhrefsSearch
• GSGoogle Search ConsoleSearch
• GAGA4Analytics
• CTCall trackingReporting
• GBGoogle Business ProfileLocal