Private healthcare · SEO

SEO for private healthcare

Patients research symptoms, treatments and clinics long before they book. Many of those searches are local. Arête builds clinic SEO around the questions patients type into Google, the clinics they can reach and the credentials health content needs to show. The aim: when they're ready to book, the clinic they've been reading about is yours.

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From £349 per month, fixed fee

The situation

Why your customers are searching.

Google holds health content to a high standard of accuracy and expertise. Pages with no named author, credentials or sources struggle against hospital groups and established health publishers. Local clinic searches are a different game. They're decided largely by Google Business Profiles and location pages. Your SEO has to cover both: credible condition and treatment content, and a strong local presence for every site.

What sends them looking

An NHS waiting time longer than they're prepared to wait.
A GP or consultant referral, or an insurer authorising treatment, that sends them looking for a recognised clinic.
A sports injury, bad back or recurring pain that hasn't settled on its own.
A milestone birthday, a wedding or a change in confidence that starts the research into aesthetic treatment.
A house move, and the need for a private GP or physio near home or work.

The problem

What costs private healthcare work.

Where the work slips away

Explaining a treatment well enough to reassure, without drifting into outcome claims the ASA would treat as unsubstantiated.
Promoting aesthetic services when the injectable itself is a prescription-only medicine you can't promote to the public.
Putting each practitioner's registration and experience where patients look for it. The footer doesn't count.
Handling self-pay, insured and referred patients separately, because each arrives with different questions and a different route to booking.
Keeping every clinic location accurate on your website and on Google, each with its own practitioners, hours and services.

What makes customers hesitate

What the treatment will cost in total, beyond the first appointment.
Is this practitioner properly qualified and registered for the treatment?
Whether their insurer covers it, and whether they need a GP referral first.
What happens if the treatment doesn't help, or something goes wrong afterwards.

How it helps

What SEO changes.

Condition and treatment pages planned from search data, so they answer what patients ask. Not what the clinic assumes they ask.
Every page names who wrote or reviewed it, with their registration and a review date. It's the kind of signal patients and search engines both look for.
Every clinic location gets its own optimised page and Google Business Profile, with consistent name, address and phone details.
Speed, structured data and indexing get fixed first, so new content has a sound base to build on.

What you get

Search research by treatment and condition

A map of the searches patients make for each service, grouped into pages by intent, from symptom questions to clinic comparisons.

Clinically reviewed content

Condition and treatment pages drafted by Arête and reviewed by your practitioners before publishing, with named reviewers and dates.

Location pages and Google Business Profiles

A page and profile for each clinic, with services, practitioners, opening hours and accessibility information kept consistent.

Technical SEO and structured data

Fixes to speed, crawling and indexing, plus medical clinic and practitioner structured data where it's appropriate.

Patient review process

A simple way to ask every patient for a Google review after an appointment, without incentives or asking only the happiest patients.

Monthly visibility and booking report

Visibility for priority treatments, organic bookings and calls per clinic, and a note of what was done and what comes next.

Measurement

The enquiries that count, tracked properly.

What counts as an enquiry

A first consultation or assessment booked online, logged against the clinic and practitioner.
A call from your website or an ad that lasts long enough to be a proper enquiry.
An enquiry form that sends self-pay, insured and referred patients straight to the right person.
A callback request for a higher-value treatment, where the patient wants to talk before booking.

What gets tracked

Organic consultation bookings and calls per clinic location.
Visibility for priority treatment and condition searches in each clinic's area.
Google Business Profile calls, direction requests and website clicks per location.
How often condition pages lead a visitor on to a booking page.

Worth knowing

What customers check, and the rules to follow.

What customers look for before they call

Practitioner profiles with registration details (GMC, HCPC, NMC or similar) and relevant experience.
Your CQC registration and current rating, where the service is registered and has been rated.
Prices or price ranges, including exactly what the first consultation covers.
Authentic patient reviews on Google and independent review platforms.
Plain-English explanations of what a treatment involves, how long recovery takes and the realistic alternatives.

Rules worth knowing

In England, if your service is registered with the CQC and has been rated, the rating must be displayed on your website as well as at the premises.
The CAP Code expects health and efficacy claims to be backed by evidence, and prescription-only medicines, including botulinum toxin, cannot be advertised to the public.
Google Ads and Meta both restrict healthcare advertising, including prescription medicine terms, audiences based on health conditions and ads that imply knowledge of a person's health.
Ads for cosmetic interventions must not be directed at under-18s, so Arête sets audiences and placements to match.

Straight answer

Is it right for you?

Worth it for the long run, as long as your practitioners can review content. Run paid search alongside while visibility builds.

Made for

Clinics with a defined set of treatments and practitioners willing to check content for accuracy.
Multi-site practices that need each clinic to be visible in its own area.
Clinics wanting a steadier source of self-pay enquiries alongside, or eventually instead of, paid search.

Not for

Clinics that need bookings within weeks, where Google Ads is the quicker route.
Practices unable to spare practitioner time to check health content before it's published.
Services whose appeal depends on claims that cannot be supported by evidence.

Starting price

From £349

per month, fixed management fee

What moves the price

How competitive the market is
The current site's technical health
How much content is planned each month
Whether local search and maps are in scope

Your ad budget is separate. It goes straight to the platform and is never marked up.

See all starting prices

Questions

SEO for private healthcare: your questions answered

Who writes the health content, and who checks it?

Arête writes, your practitioners check. Each page is drafted from search research and your clinic's own information, then reviewed for clinical accuracy by one of your practitioners before it goes live. Their name, registration and review date appear on the page, giving patients a visible reason to trust it.

Can each clinic location rank in its own area?

It can, provided each location has a physical address, its own Google Business Profile and a page with local detail: the practitioners, parking and services offered there. Copy one page across locations with only the town name changed and it tends to perform poorly. Arête builds each location page from what makes that clinic different.