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Scholarship Program Delivers Knockout SEO Success for Healthcare Software Development & Consulting Agency

See how Elxo's scholarship program significantly boosted SEO performance, domain authority, and brand reputation.

Location

Pasadena, CA

Company

Elxo Inc.

Industry

Healthcare Consulting and Software Development

Our Services

Marketing Strategy, Web Design, SEO, Scholarship Program

Situation

A Startup in Search of a Fighting Chance

Standing out among the many consulting agencies and software developers serving healthcare organizations is like being in a dogfight. You have the big bruisers who are well-known and have been in the game a long time, the scrappy middleweights who challenge the big dogs’ dominance and compete among themselves to be crowned the next champion, and the little guys and new contenders who have to get creative to stand out.

The key to success for those smaller, newer players is creating awareness for their brand and demonstrating their expertise in a specific niche.

As a custom software development company and consultancy founded on the principles of enhancing patient empowerment and simplifying complex care, Elxo has mastered the art of creating unique solutions to some of the industry’s biggest challenges. Still, as a relative unknown in the healthcare space, it needed help to expand its visibility and establish an authoritative presence as a competitor. Its leaders collaborated with Spot On to find the right approach.

Solution

Capitalizing on an A+ Opportunity

Spot On began work in the fall of 2023 on a number of marketing initiatives to support Elxo as it scaled its operations.

Elxo is very much a startup, and we helped build their website from the ground up. There was an opportunity to also build content and domain authority and backlinks. The idea for a scholarship program was initially proposed in preparation for one of our quarterly planning sessions because, while we were already employing pillar pages to drive traffic and search rankings, that’s a long-term strategy that takes some time to show results.

Madeline Cathers, Account Manager

The scholarship program, a frequent recommendation for Spot On clients that’s been highly successful in supporting stronger SEO, is intended to bestow one or more financial awards to an individual or individuals studying in a field relative to what the company does, while that company ideally gains a reputational/PR boost, supports the future of the healthcare industry, and sees an increase in backlinks from colleges, universities, and scholarship listings sites, as well as a boost in domain authority.

The idea was first pitched to Elxo’s Chief Executive Officer, Andre Ahuja, in early 2024 before quickly becoming a priority.

Implementation

Two Partners Put It All Together

After some initial discussion, Elxo elected to offer one $1,500 undergraduate scholarship and one $3,000 graduate scholarship for the 2024-25 school year to students pursuing a career in healthcare technology or a related field. Applicants would be judged based on numerous qualities and an essay, with a focus for graduate applicants on how they were studying the use of AI to solve patient challenges.

Elxo Scholarship Landing Pages

Andre was very intentional about the essay prompts, the requirements from students, and the criteria. I do think that goes a long way and adds a lot of extra value to align the program with Elxo’s brand, messaging, and mission.

Madeline Cathers, Account Manager

“Scholarships are not just financial aid; they're a catalyst for innovation in healthcare technology. By supporting students today, we're shaping the future of patient care tomorrow,” says Ahuja.

Spot On and Elxo collaborated on logistics in preparation for the start of the program, setting up a landing page, creating an announcement blog and social posts, and gathering a diverse outreach list of schools and aggregate sites to send scholarship information to.

Backlinks began to rise at a good clip before ramping up exponentially after the official scholarship kickoff in April. Still, applicants were hard to come by in the first few months of the program. (Spot On recommends running scholarship programs for a minimum of three months.)

“I attribute that to Elxo being largely unknown, and their specific program and prompt were pretty niche,” says Cathers, pointing to the AI component of the graduate essay being particularly specific. “Getting awareness and engagement through social media was also difficult due to Elxo’s small footprint.”

The solution? Cathers dug in and compiled multiple contact lists that were refined into a more targeted second round of outreach in August that drew many applicants. This extra legwork was crucial not only to ensuring that the scholarship information was reaching the right audience, but also to sustaining and building on early momentum in SEO growth.

After the application deadline in August, Elxo selected the scholarship recipients over the course of several weeks, then announced them in an October blog.

Results

Impressive Outcomes More Than Make the Grade

It didn’t take long for positive results to come rolling in, with backlinks rising from 66 to 89 between March and April as the scholarship program was just commencing. Those numbers then skyrocketed 73% from April to May. Over the course of 2024, from January to December, Elxo saw an eye-opening 290% increase in backlinks, going from 59 to 230.

Backlinks

290

Domain Authority

117

Referring Domains

129

The credibility established through the two teams' hard work, combined with a 65% increase in referring domains from January through the end of the program in August and an almost 130% rise from January to December, also had a dramatic impact on the Elxo website’s domain authority score, which more than doubled from the beginning to end of 2024, increasing from 6 to 13. And in December, backlinks and referring domains continued to rise.

“If you look at the impact, like the year-to-date increases, that's phenomenal growth. It super-exceeded my expectations,” says Cathers.

The success of our scholarship program proves that investing in education can yield remarkable returns, not just for students, but for our company's visibility and credibility in the healthcare space.

Andre Ahuja, Elxo’s Chief Executive Officer

The beauty of the scholarship program, Cathers explains, is that it’s a “feel-good initiative” with low investment but high reward. Companies can start with the lowest dollar amount and Spot On handles most of the implementation, though engagement from partners throughout the process is obviously encouraged and aids in reaching the right students, identifying the best promotional opportunities, and delivering on the program’s goals.

Depending on personal preferences and progress, the program can be extended for several months, and though backlinks will eventually fall off as sites take the scholarship information down, domain authority improvements tend to remain, and results are even better when scholarships are offered year after year. In a relatively short period of time, the program has become a signature Spot On offering that companies of all sizes can benefit from, with particularly impressive results for the “little guys” that give them a fighting chance.

“A well-executed scholarship initiative is like a one-two punch in marketing,” says Ahuja. “It boosts your SEO performance while simultaneously strengthening your brand's reputation and industry impact.”