LSEO Case Study / Healthcare / SEO + AI Search + Paid Media
How LSEO Helped Cawley PT Recover Page-One Search Visibility, Earn 35K+ AI Citations, and Keep Patient Acquisition Growing
A long-term healthcare marketing partnership carried Cawley Physical Therapy through a major ownership transition — rebuilding organic visibility, expanding into AI search, strengthening local discovery, and continuing to generate patient demand through paid media.
Sept. 2025 → Mar. 2026
Jan. 1 → Mar. 23, 2026
Since 2021
2026
Case Study at a Glance
A regional healthcare brand that stayed with the same growth partner through acquisition and the rise of AI search.
Cawley Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation is a multi-location outpatient physical therapy practice serving Northeastern Pennsylvania. The business has worked with LSEO since 2016 across SEO, local search, content, paid media, and — more recently — GEO and AI Search visibility.
- Industry
- Outpatient Physical Therapy + Rehabilitation
- Market
- Northeastern Pennsylvania
- Partnership
- Since 2016
- Core Services
- SEO, Local SEO, GEO / AI Search, Google Ads, Meta Ads
- Major Transition
- Joined the Ivy Rehab network in 2025
- Primary Goal
- Keep Cawley discoverable wherever prospective patients search for care
01 / The Challenge
A major ownership transition hit at the same time patient discovery was changing.
Cawley had been a recognized physical therapy brand in Northeastern Pennsylvania for years. Then the practice joined Ivy Rehab in 2025, introducing a major organizational transition just as search behavior was beginning to shift toward AI-generated answers.
The transition disrupted parts of the digital footprint. Tracking became inconsistent in places, rankings softened, and 2025 became a rebuilding year. The risk was bigger than a temporary ranking decline: patients who did not already know the Cawley name could find a competitor before Cawley ever entered the consideration set.
Meanwhile, AI systems were increasingly answering healthcare questions before a patient clicked a traditional search result. Cawley needed to recover Google visibility while also building a presence inside the answer engines shaping the next generation of discovery.
02 / The Strategy
Rebuild the search foundation while expanding into AI and protecting patient acquisition.
LSEO treated the transition as one connected discovery problem. Organic rankings, local visibility, AI citations, clinical content and paid media all had different roles — but every channel pointed toward the same outcome: help prospective patients find Cawley first.
Recover Organic Search
Reestablish technical stability, improve rankings, and increase non-branded visibility for the problems and services prospective patients actually search.
Win Local Discovery
Strengthen market-level location visibility so Cawley appears where nearby patients are most likely to choose a provider — including the Google Local Pack.
Build Answer-Ready Clinical Content
Create and optimize useful diagnostic and educational content around the questions patients ask, giving Google and AI engines authoritative pages to surface and cite.
Keep Leads Flowing With Paid Media
Run Google Ads and Meta in parallel so patient acquisition continues while the organic and AI search foundation compounds.
03 / SEO + Local Search Performance
Cawley moved from page two back to the top of page one.
The clearest signal is ranking recovery. Average position improved quickly after the rebuild, while impressions expanded and local visibility strengthened across Cawley's service area.
Organic Position Recovery
Average U.S. search position. Lower ranking number means higher visibility.
04 / GEO + AI Search
AI visibility grew from a new measurement layer into a meaningful patient-discovery channel.
LSEO began tracking Cawley's AI visibility on January 1, 2026. By March 23, the practice had already earned tens of thousands of citations across the major AI platforms — and hundreds of visitors had clicked through after encountering Cawley inside an AI answer.
Clinical content became citation-ready.
The strongest AI-visible pages are useful patient resources rather than generic service copy. Cawley's homepage and free assessment pages are joined by clinical guides around natural relief for sciatic pain, aquatic therapy, common causes of shoulder pain and other real patient questions.
That matters because AI engines need a page worth citing before they can recommend the brand behind it. The content gives those systems a clear answer while establishing Cawley as the local provider attached to the expertise.
Answer the patient's question well enough to rank, cite, and convert — then make the provider relationship unmistakable.
Seven-platform visibility.
Cawley's citations were recorded across the major AI systems LSEO tracks, showing that the gains were not isolated to a single model or search experience.
Source: LSEO AI Visibility Platform, Jan. 1 through Mar. 23, 2026.
05 / Paid Media
Paid search and social kept patient acquisition moving while organic visibility recovered.
LSEO used Google Ads as the high-intent demand-capture channel and Meta as an additional prospecting layer. The account history shows both scale and efficiency.
06 / Why It Worked
Cawley did not treat SEO, AI visibility, local search and paid media as separate programs.
Patient intent drove the content.
The strongest pages answer actual healthcare questions — the same questions that create Google rankings, AI citations and qualified patient visits.
Local relevance stayed central.
For a regional practice, visibility is only valuable if the right people see it in the markets where Cawley can actually treat them.
Paid media protected demand during transition.
Google Ads and Meta kept lead flow active while organic rankings and the broader digital footprint were being rebuilt.
“LSEO is as determined to improve my prospects as I am, and they produce great work for my company. Never content to rest past achievements, LSEO constantly looks for tactical improvements.”Frank Cawley / CEO, Cawley Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation
Measurement & Data Integrity
Every major result is tied to the platform and period that produced it.
The figures below come from the current internal LSEO case study and the underlying platforms cited in that document. Metrics with different scopes are kept separate rather than blended into a single composite result.
Average position 14.3 → 6.3 from Sept. 2025 to Feb./Mar. 2026. Year-over-year comparison: position 17.8 → 7.6 and impressions 488K → 718K from Apr. 2025 to Apr. 2026.
35,910 citations across seven platforms and 619 AI-referred clicks from Jan. 1 through Mar. 23, 2026.
Number-one map visibility reported in Scranton, Pittston, Kingston, Nanticoke, Carbondale and Factoryville.
2,318 patient leads generated since 2021 and 34.6% impression share in the local market.
Early-2026 prospecting cost per lead fell 40% month over month as lead volume increased 64%.
Long-term engagement beginning in 2016, including the practice's 2025 transition into the Ivy Rehab network.
Case Study FAQs
Questions about the Cawley Physical Therapy engagement.
How long has Cawley Physical Therapy worked with LSEO?
What happened to Cawley's organic rankings after the 2025 transition?
How much AI visibility did Cawley earn?
Where does Cawley rank in local search?
What has paid media generated?
Did LSEO continue working with Cawley after the Ivy Rehab transaction?
Related LSEO Capabilities
The services behind the work.
Real Brands. Real Results.
Can patients find — and choose — your organization across Google, AI search, local results and paid media?
LSEO combines SEO, GEO, local search and performance media to build measurable discovery systems around the way customers search today.