A clinic known by its name, not its specialities
Your site comes up when people type the facility's name. On “shoulder surgery” followed by the town, it's absent, because no page covers that subject in full.
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SEO for private clinics: get found for every speciality, not just by your name.
A patient who needs an operation doesn't type your clinic's name first. They search for a procedure, a surgeon, a town, then read for several days. If none of your pages answers those searches, they find a directory, a booking platform or a hospital group's facility that's better organised online than you are.
- Rattle your competitors.
- Overtake them.
- Protect you from their attacks.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroThe detail of this page
Seven results, only one local clinic
A patient is looking for hand surgery in Angoulême. The first six lines are platforms, directories and group websites. Your page is seventh. Move it up.
- A booking platform · rendez-vous.exempleHand surgeons in Angoulême: book an appointment
- A practitioner directory · annuaire-sante.exempleHand surgery Angoulême: list of practitioners
- A clinic group · groupe-1.exempleHand surgery | Our facilities in France
- A health information site · info-sante.exempleHand surgery: everything explained
- Another directory · avis-praticiens.exempleHand surgeons near Angoulême, with reviews
- A second group · groupe-2.exempleHand and wrist surgery | Find a clinic
- Youvotre-clinique.exempleHand surgery in Angoulême: consultations, emergencies, day surgeryThree named surgeons, how the procedure goes and the secretariat's number.
Your position: 7
Fig. 1. Seven results for a procedure. Six lead to a list or a national website. (The patient wanted an address and a name. They were offered six lists.)
What this means for you. I don't promise the top spot. I write the page the lists can't write: your practitioners, your patient pathway, your hours.
What is SEO for a private clinic?
SEO for a private clinic means getting a healthcare facility found in the searches made by patients and their families: a speciality, a procedure, a practitioner, a department, practical information. It relies on one page per speciality and per common procedure, on practitioner pages, on several carefully maintained Google Business Profiles and on signed, dated content. What sets it apart is the framework: everything published must remain fair information, compliant with the rules governing healthcare communication.
The problem
Where private clinics get stuck.
Practitioners ranking better than the facility
Every private practitioner has a profile on a booking platform and sometimes their own website. The patient books there, and the clinic knows neither where they came from nor what they read beforehand.
Groups and directories across the whole first page
Clinic groups publish hundreds of pages built on the same template. Practitioner directories do the same. A single facility won't beat them on volume. It can be more precise than them about its own services.
An audit, for real
What I see in thirty seconds on a clinic's website.
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
https://votre-clinique.exemple
CLINIC V.The facility · Our specialities · Patients · Contact
Your health, our commitment
Attentive teams and a modern technical platform for high-quality care.
Find out moreFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
- 1A title that says welcomeIt should name the facility, the town and its main specialities. It's the line Google shows first.
- 2An “Our specialities” section that leads to a listThe patient is looking for a specific procedure. You need one page per speciality and per common procedure, two clicks away.
- 3A slogan any clinic could sign“Your health, our commitment” matches no search. The clinic's name, the town and three specialities are more informative.
- 4A bought stock photo, unrelated to your premisesThe patient wants to see the entrance, the reception, a room. Real photos, lightweight and described, help them find their way before coming.
- 5Practitioners reduced to a name and one wordExact speciality, procedures performed, consultation days, booking: without these, a search for the practitioner's name leads to a directory.
What your customers type
How people search for a clinic.
These six searches are plausible examples, not measurements. Each corresponds to a different moment in the journey and calls for a different page.
- 1“knee replacement clinic” followed by the town
- The person has a diagnosis and a planned or likely procedure. They want to know who operates, how the stay goes and when they go home. They need a page on that procedure in your facility, reviewed by the team that performs it.
- 2“doctor” followed by a surgeon's name
- Their GP gave them a name. They're checking who this practitioner is and where they consult. A page per practitioner, with their speciality, consultation days and how to book, stops them stopping at a directory.
- 3“day surgery what happens”
- They have a date and are worried about how it'll go. A practical page, written with your nursing staff, describes the day step by step. It answers that worry and cuts calls to the secretariat.
- 4“maternity unit” followed by the town, then “reviews”
- Parents-to-be compare for months. They read reviews, look at the rooms and look up how to register. The department's page and its Google Business Profile should give this information straightforwardly.
- 5“clinic emergency open now”
- The decision is made in a few minutes, on a phone. You need accurate hours, a precise access address, a number that answers, and a clear sentence on what the department does or doesn't accept. A mistake on the profile sends the person to the wrong place.
- 6“clinic private room price”
- They're preparing their admission and want to know what they'll have to pay themselves. A page on formalities, documents to bring and hotel-type services, written in line with the rules applying to price information, reassures them before they arrive.
What works
What gets a clinic found.
One page per speciality, then per procedure
Orthopaedics, ophthalmology, digestive surgery: each speciality has its page, and each common procedure has its own. It says who performs it at your facility, how to prepare for the stay and whom to call. That's the foundation, and it's often what's missing.
Complete practitioner pages
Practitioners are searched for by name. Their page should give their speciality, areas of practice, consultation places and days, with the information their professional body's rules allow. It links their name to your facility in Google's eyes.
Several Google Business Profiles, properly organised
A clinic often has a profile for the facility, others for emergencies, maternity or imaging, and practitioners sometimes have their own. Without a common rule, they contradict each other on hours and phone numbers. I list them and set out who maintains what.
Signed, reviewed and dated content
On health topics, Google expects to know who wrote it, who reviewed it and when. So every medical page carries the name of the practitioner or senior nurse who approved it, and an update date. It's a requirement of the search engine and a guarantee for the reader.
Practical information
Access, parking, admission, documents, visiting, discharge. These pages are heavily read the day before a hospital stay. Done well, they appear directly in the results and take the pressure off your switchboard.
What costs dearly
Common mistakes on a clinic website.
A single “Our specialities” page with a list
Twenty disciplines in twenty lines answer no search. Each line deserves a page, even a short one to begin with.
Deleting the page of a practitioner who leaves
Their name keeps being searched for months. Keep the page, state that they no longer practise with you and present the team now covering the speciality.
Letting the group website decide everything
When your facility is a section of a national website, the templates are imposed. There are almost always free fields left. Filling them with your local information changes what patients read about you.
Writing promises instead of facts
Words of praise and prestige phrases describe nothing and may be a problem under the rules on healthcare communication. The number of operating theatres, the specialities practised and how a stay unfolds are more informative.
The method
Four workstreams for a clinic.
I'm not a clinician and I don't write any medical content alone. The facts come from your teams, and so does the approval. My job is to make them findable and readable.
- The inventory. Pages, practitioners, Google Business Profiles, platforms: I list everything that talks about you and everything that contradicts itself.
- The specialities. One page per discipline and per common procedure, written with the department concerned and approved by it.
- The profiles. A simple rule for the facility, departments and practitioners: same names, same hours, same numbers.
- The tracking. Calls, appointment requests, pages read before an admission. We look at what brings in patients, department by department.
One-minute test
Is SEO right for you?
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
SEO you can count in euros.
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 700 searches a month for a procedure in your town, 3% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €1,500 per customer. Click-through rates by position are ballpark figures, and they have been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your figures
What your page could bring in
Ticket no. 10th · worked example- Searchesper month, for a procedure in your town
- 700
- Estimated visitsclick-through rate: 1.5%
- 0
- Potential enquiries3% of visitors
- 0
- Possible customersone enquiry in three
- 0
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
Private clinics in Charente.
In Charente, patients don't search the same way depending on where they live. In Angoulême, they type the name of the procedure and the town. In Cognac or a village, they first look at the distance and travel time. So your SEO has to answer two questions: what can be done at your facility, and how to get there. I don't quote any local figures here; I work with yours.
The patient in Angoulême and its surrounding area
They live near the facility and search by speciality. They need precise procedure pages and accurate Google Business Profiles, department by department.
The patient in Cognac, Jarnac or Barbezieux
They'll have to drive, whichever direction they choose. Giving travel times, parking and outreach consultations where they exist helps them choose.
The patient in villages and rural areas
They come from far away and often with someone. Information on transport, accommodation for a relative and day surgery matters to them as much as the surgeon's name.
Beyond Google
When an AI points people to a clinic.
The questions asked to AI tools resemble those asked to a relative: “I need cataract surgery near Angoulême, where can I go and what happens?”. The answer describes the process in general terms, then names two or three facilities. It relies on what it finds written down, dated and consistent.
To be named, your clinic must state clearly which specialities it practises, with which practitioners and in what setting: full hospitalisation, day surgery, emergencies. This description must be identical on your website, your Google Business Profiles and official directories. An AI can't guess a department exists if no page describes it. Nor should it read on your site a promise you're not allowed to make.
Question asked to an AII need cataract surgery near Angoulême. Which facility can I go to?
Answer
Three facilities describe this procedure:
- Our client— private clinic: cataract surgery as day surgery, named practitioners, the day's process described on a signed, dated page.
- — public hospital, ophthalmology department, organisation of the stay not described online.
- — group facility, generic page, little local information.
Clinic websiteGoogle Business ProfileOfficial health directory
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
Three clinic scenarios.
These are typical cases, invented to show my first actions. None describes a real facility.
An independent multidisciplinary clinic
It's well known locally, but its website presents the specialities as a single list.
- Create one page per speciality, approved by a lead practitioner.
- Update practitioner pages and link them to their specialities.
- Align the Google Business Profiles of the facility and its departments.
A facility belonging to a group
It occupies a section of the national website and has no control over the structure.
- Fill in all the local fields left empty in the group's template.
- Take back the Google Business Profiles, which the facility manages.
- Give head office a short list of missing pages, with the matching searches.
A clinic specialising in one discipline
It performs few different procedures, but performs them often, and patients come from other départements.
- Write a full page per procedure, from the first call to discharge.
- Add access and stay information for patients coming from far away.
- Publish answers to the questions the secretariat hears every day.
In practice
What you get.
- A page plan by speciality, procedure and practitioner
- An inventory of your Google Business Profiles, with a maintenance rule
- A medical page template: author, reviewer, date, sources
- A list of points for your management and practitioners to approve
- Tracking of calls and appointment requests by department
Pricing
How much does an SEO consultant cost?
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
- The size of the site: ten pages or ten thousand
- The competition on your queries
- What you can do in-house, and what needs producing for you
- The pace you want
Fancy a game?
Insert a coin.
The copycat, the price-slasher, the big chain: they all want your spot. Grab the piece and slide it into the slot.
Slide it into the machine
SERP KOMBAT
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Credit: 0
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds, five opponents, only one first place.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
Your SEO consultant: a business owner, not just an SEO.
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
SEO and private clinics: your questions.
Can a clinic work on its SEO without overstepping the rules?
SEO is about making accurate information easier to find. What's regulated is the content and how it's presented. I propose factual texts, and you have them approved against the framework that applies to your facility and your practitioners.
Our practitioners are self-employed. Who decides what's published about them?
They do. I prepare a page template, and each practitioner completes and approves it, with the information their professional body's rules allow. The clinic provides the common framework, so all pages look alike and link to the specialities.
Can we get ahead of booking platforms and directories?
Rarely on the bare name of a speciality in a big city. More often on a specific procedure, a practitioner's name or a practical question. And nothing stops the patient from reading your page then booking on the platform you already use.
We depend on the group website. What can you do?
Work on what's still in your hands: the template's local content, Google Business Profiles, practitioner pages, news. I also prepare a short brief for head office, with the missing pages and the searches they would capture. A well-argued request is better received than a complaint.
How should we handle negative reviews on the Google Business Profile?
With a short, courteous reply with no detail about the person or their care. You don't even confirm they were a patient. You invite them to contact the department in charge of patient relations. I give you reply templates to have approved internally.
Can we ask our patients for reviews?
That's a point to settle with your management and practitioners, because the rules may differ between a facility and a health professional. Where it's possible, the request must stay neutral, without filtering and without any incentive. I don't organise any collection before that approval.
Should we publish our quality indicators?
If official indicators exist for your facility, patients will find them anyway. Better to present them yourself, with their source and date, and explain what they measure. I help you do it without risky comparisons with other facilities.
How long before we see an effect?
Corrected Google Business Profiles work within a few weeks, because wrong hours and phone numbers cost calls straight away. Speciality pages take several months to settle in. I don't commit to any ranking; I commit to the work delivered and clear tracking.
Can the website also help us recruit?
Yes. Nurses, healthcare assistants and practitioners also search on Google before applying. A page per job, describing the departments, schedules and life at the facility, can bring in applications that job sites don't send you.
Who writes the medical content?
Your teams provide the substance; I take care of the form and structure. In practice, I interview the practitioner or the department's senior nurse for half an hour, I write, they correct and sign. No health page goes out without a named reviewer.
See also
Other industries
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Support services
SEO consultant in Charente
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