Local SEO for aesthetic clinics: win the client who is still deciding
Nobody impulse-books a treatment. They search — "skin clinic near me", "laser hair removal" and a town name, "hair transplant cost" — then they read your worst reviews and study your photos for weeks before they ring. We do the work that decides what they find while they decide.
What local SEO means for an aesthetic clinic
It means appearing for the treatment searches in your area, and looking like the safe pair of hands when you do. In practice: the right categories for what you actually do, every treatment listed, a portfolio published with consent, reviews arriving steadily from clients who stay anonymous if they prefer, and replies that never confirm who has had what.
Where clinics lose the booking
Six things we find on nearly every clinic profile we audit. All of them are visible to a client who has been comparing you against three other clinics for a fortnight.
Google thinks you are a beauty salon
The category decides the searches you enter. A skin care clinic listed as a beauty salon misses the medical-aesthetic searches entirely, and a laser clinic under "hair removal service" is competing with waxing salons on price.
Your last post named the drug
Botulinum toxin is a prescription-only medicine and advertising it to the public is prohibited — and the ASA has ruled that coy references to "anti-wrinkle injections" with a price count as advertising it. It is the most common compliance failure we see on clinic profiles.
The portfolio is three years old, or someone else's
Before-and-afters are how this trade is judged. A profile with none looks untested; one with stock or supplier photographs is misleading advertising, and the client who books off it arrives expecting a result you never promised.
Two hundred treatments a month, eleven reviews
Aesthetics clients are discreet — many will not put their name to a treatment review, and nobody has worked out how to ask the ones who will. So the profile sits nearly empty while the diary stays full, and a new clinic down the road looks busier than you.
The reputation belongs to someone who left
Clients follow the injector, not the premises. If your best-known practitioner has moved on, their name may still outrank the clinic on the searches that used to fill your diary — and their new employer is collecting the reviews.
Every enquiry starts with "how much"
Because the profile gives them nothing else to go on. With no treatment list, no consultation explained and no evidence of work, price is the only question left to ask — and it is rarely asked by the clients you want.
What we do for a clinic
The same engine as everything else we run, set up for a trade where the client researches for weeks and says nothing to their friends.
Categories that match what you actually do
Skin care clinic, medical spa, hair transplant clinic, laser hair removal service — the primary and secondary categories chosen against the treatments you want to be found for, with every treatment listed as its own service so Google stops guessing from your website.
What profile optimisation covers →A portfolio that passes the rules
Your own before-and-after work, photographed consistently, published with written client consent recorded, and representative of a typical result. No stock imagery, no supplier photos, nothing that promises an outcome — because the rules treat that as a claim you must evidence.
Requests built for a discreet clientele
Timed to when the client is happiest — after the follow-up, not the day of the treatment — and worded so leaving a review never means announcing a treatment. A satisfied laser client reviewing "a great clinic, lovely staff" is worth exactly the same to Google as one who names the procedure.
How the review requests work →Replies that confirm nothing
Every review answered within 24 hours, and none of them confirming that the reviewer is a client or referring to any treatment. Anything that reads like a complication or a complaint comes to you first and goes through your own clinical complaints procedure, not a public thread.
How review management runs →Clinic and practitioner listings, untangled
Your directory entries, register listings and Google profile carrying the same name, address and phone — and the practitioners listed as people where Google permits it, pointing at the clinic rather than competing with it. When someone leaves, the clinic keeps its own standing.
How the citation clean-up runs →The treatment terms tracked, month over month
Not "aesthetics" — the searches with a treatment and a budget behind them: laser hair removal, skin clinic, hair transplant, each in your town, tracked from where your clients actually are.
How map pack ranking works →The systems we connect to
Requests fire off the appointment book, so nobody on reception has to remember. These are the ones we see most in UK clinics.
Built for medical aesthetics and the most common system we meet in this trade. Completed appointments are a clean trigger.
Widely used by skin clinics and allied health. Straightforward to work alongside.
Common in med spas and laser clinics that mix aesthetic and beauty diaries.
Booking and payments in one; we work from its completed-appointment data.
If yours is not on this list it does not matter much — where a system cannot be connected we work from a weekly list of completed appointments, and the client never sees the difference.
How it runs
One call and one handover from whoever manages the clinic. Nothing about it touches treatment time.
A 15-minute audit
Your profile as a researching client sees it — categories, portfolio, the reviews they will read first, and which clinics are above you on the treatment searches. Yours to keep either way.
Profile, portfolio, listings
Categories corrected, every treatment listed, the consultation explained, consented before-and-afters published properly, and listings tidied so nothing contradicts the profile.
Reviews at the right moment
Requests run on completed appointments, timed to the follow-up rather than the treatment day, and worded for discretion. The back catalogue is worked in batches — a clinic jumping from eleven reviews to two hundred in a fortnight looks like exactly what it would be.
One report
New reviews, rating, response time, and from Growth up where you rank on each treatment term and how many calls came from Google. One page, no login.
What we won't publish for a clinic
This trade is advertised under stricter rules than almost any other we work in, and most clinics break at least one of them without knowing. These are the ones that catch clinics out.
The full policy, and the law behind each rule, is published.
Read the full compliance policy →What it costs
The same two plans as everything else we run. One booked treatment a month usually covers the fee; the work is making sure the client researching you tonight finds something worth booking.
Proof that reviews come in — cheaply, and with no risk.
- Google Business Profile set up & optimised
- Automated review requests, with photo mechanic
- Every review replied to within 24 hours
- Customer Feedback System
- Monthly report
Where "trust us" becomes "here are the calls you got."
Priced on your market, your ad spend and how fast you want to move.
Foundation covers the profile, the portfolio plan, the review engine and replies. Growth adds weekly posts, treatment-term rank tracking, call tracking and citation clean-up. Priced per clinic, ex VAT — a group prices per site, with one consistent name, address and phone across every listing. No contract — cancel any month. Compare all three plans in full.
Questions we get asked
The big oneCan we advertise anti-wrinkle treatments on our Google profile?
Not by naming or implying the medicine. Botulinum toxin products are prescription-only medicines, and advertising a POM to the public is prohibited in the UK — the ASA has ruled that indirect references with a price or offer attached count as advertising. What can be advertised is the consultation: a prescriber-led assessment for lines and wrinkles, described without the drug. That is how we write it, everywhere it appears.
DiscretionOur clients do not want to admit they have had work done. How do we get reviews?
By asking at the right moment and making it easy to say something general. Most happy clients will review "the clinic", "the team" and "how I was looked after" even when they would never name a treatment — and Google values that review exactly the same. The request never mentions the treatment, the timing avoids the treatment day itself, and nobody is ever asked twice. Discretion is a reason to ask properly, not a reason not to ask.
PortfolioCan we put before-and-after photos on our Google profile?
Yes, with conditions. The client must have consented in writing, the photos must be your own work, and they must be representative — same lighting, same posture, no filters, no exceptional results presented as typical. A compliant portfolio is the strongest asset a clinic profile can have; a non-compliant one is an ASA complaint waiting for a competitor to make it.
CategoriesWe are a med spa, a skin clinic and a laser clinic. Which category do we pick?
The one that matches the searches worth most to you, with the others as secondary categories. Google decides which searches you enter largely from the primary category, so a clinic earning most of its revenue from laser hair removal should usually be listed as one — not as a beauty salon, which is what we find most often. The audit shows what the clinics currently outranking you are using.
TimingHow quickly does a clinic see anything?
Reviews move first: a clinic treating a couple of hundred clients a month, asking properly, usually has a visibly different profile inside two to three months — slower than a salon, because discretion lowers the response rate, and that is normal. Map pack movement on competitive treatment terms takes longer still. On the audit call we will tell you which you are looking at before you pay anything.
Honest answerWe are a new clinic with no reviews. Can you get us to fifty quickly?
Not quickly, no — and be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. There is no legitimate shortcut: bought reviews and incentivised ones are unlawful under the DMCC Act, and a burst of them is exactly the pattern Google filters. What we can do is start the engine on day one so every client from now on is asked properly, and fix the profile so the few reviews you have are read alongside strong categories, a real portfolio and clear treatments. That is how a new clinic actually catches up.
Related services
Fifteen minutes on your clinic
What a researching client finds tonight — your categories, your portfolio, the reviews they will read first — and the three things we would change before anything else. Free, and yours whether or not you hire us.