Learn how we reversed a downward trend in Harley Street Skin Clinic’s organic traffic, taking the aesthetics clinic to record-breaking numbers of treatment enquiries.
The Client.
The Harley Street Skin Clinic is an award-winning aesthetic and medical clinic that boasts a roster of high-profile and celebrity clients, as well as TV appearances and decades of expertise in providing high-quality, personalised treatments to its clientele.
Founded in 2004 by Dr. Aamer Khan and Lesley Reynolds, and now led by their daughter Sophie, the clinic has a reputation built on a foundation of trust, precision and dedication to patient wellbeing. Alongside its surgical and non-surgical treatment offerings, the clinic has become a leader in skincare innovation, providing tailored solutions to patients that are right for them.
The Brief.
In early 2024, the team from Harley Street Skin Clinic approached Digitaloft with a problem. Organic traffic had been on a significant decline for the last few years; in just four years, visibility for local-intent keywords had dropped by 90% to just a handful of clicks.
The SERPs were changing, and Harley Street Skin Clinic was struggling to keep up.
Their organic strategy needed a whole refresh; Google’s results pages had changed a lot during this period of decline. The site needed an expanded keyword footprint, more considered keyword targeting, and an increased brand presence in order to win.
From June 2024, Harley Street Skin Clinic appointed Digitaloft as its dedicated SEO agency, undertaking a combination of on-page and technical tactics alongside digital PR to increase authority and drive growth.
The Strategy.
Digitaloft’s organic strategy began with a month of intense SEO: finding and fixing growth-blocking factors, before then introducing content creation and digital PR to the mix.
From there, we could build out a holistic approach to organic growth that drove results in line with Harley Street Skin Clinic’s ambitious goals.
Increasing local visibility
The initial brief had been clear: visibility for local-intent keywords had all but disappeared in recent years. Regaining rankings for keywords such as “botox London” – which had dropped to position 33 – was vital.
The approach to increasing local visibility involved identifying and understanding how users were searching for their cosmetic procedures. On-site treatment pages were re-worked to provide maximum value to users, while integrating that local element within content – page titles, meta descriptions and copy were all updated to target these local-intent keywords.
Aside from the on-page optimisations, we couldn’t ignore how much the SERPs had changed in recent years for these local searches. Searches for “botox London” returned map packs above all else, so we also worked alongside the Harley Street Skin Clinic to optimise their Google Business Profile, improve review quality and clean up their citations (which needed a big tidy following a change in premises).
Demonstrating expertise
One of Harley Street Skin Clinic’s strengths as a business is the wealth of expertise within the team. As an SEO and digital PR agency, having doctors and other practitioners at our disposal was an E-E-A-T dream. In an industry where patients are parting with thousands of pounds and entrusting the Harley Street Skin Clinic team with their bodies, building that trust was a non-negotiable.
Showcasing this expertise to the world – via both on- and off-page E-E-A-T signals – was a top priority. Through our digital PR activity, we’ve offered expertise from Harley Street Skin Clinics doctors and wider team, securing coverage across high authority and relevant titles. Each piece of coverage allows us to position Harley Street Skin Clinic and its people as authorities in the world of skincare and cosmetic surgery, building trust with potential customers and increasing brand awareness.On the Harley Street Skin Clinic itself, we took a number of actions in line with our 100-point E-E-A-T audit checklist. This included building author profiles, enhancing “meet the team” and “about us” pages, and improving the quality of informational content.
Expanding the site’s keyword footprint
The journey towards booking a cosmetic procedure is a long one – involving a long consideration and comparison phase. For this reason, it was important for Harley Street Skin Clinic to have on-page content to support potential customers at every stage of their journey. Are they searching for a specific procedure? Information around cost, aftercare or downtime? Or perhaps they’re searching around a specific issue they want to address, such as wrinkles or loose skin?
Digitaloft’s content strategy involved creating a number of carefully-planned new pages – including treatment pages, “symptom” or “condition” pages, and informational content. This has enabled Harley Street Skin Clinic to bring in traffic from all stages of that buyer journey, all while showcasing their expertise and trustworthiness.
Alongside this, staying on the pulse with the latest trends in skincare and cosmetic surgery (and there have been a lot!) have allowed Harley Street Skin Clinic to stay ahead of the competition – with pages for newer treatments such as baby botox and Cinderella lifts.
A successful site migration
Prior to onboarding with Digitaloft, the Harley Street Skin Clinic team already had big plans for a new website that would better showcase the business’s expertise, professionalism and trustworthiness. When the time for the migration came, Digitaloft’s SEO team played a key role in managing that transition – ensuring no negative impacts were felt.
By working closely with the Harley Street Skin Clinic team, Digitaloft reviewed the new site, ensuring all content, page titles, schema, and redirects were carried over. Through this thorough and collaborative approach, Harley Street Skin Clinic launched its new website with minimal disruption to organic performance.
Digital PR that gets people talking
A core part of this organic strategy has been digital PR, which involves strategically earning links in high-authority, relevant publications that position Harley Street Skin Clinic as experts in their field.
This strategy combines a creative campaign-led approach with an always-on reactive and proactive strategy, including product PR. On the campaign side, we’ve seen incredible success for the Ageing Jobs Calculator, which has received over 50 links to date, across publications such as the New York Post, Tyla and MSN. The on-site campaign page has been viewed over 70,000 times, with enquiries increasing 1900% following the campaign’s launch and the calculator has been discussed on radio too!
(P.S. Want to know more about this campaign? Read our Ageing Jobs Calculator case study)
On the reactive side, we’ve positioned the Harley Street Skin Clinic team at the heart of key conversations around skincare and cosmetic surgery. Whether they’re discussing using beef tallow as moisturiser or salmon sperm facials (this is really a thing!), the team showcases Harley Street Skin Clinics’ expertise and reinforces their status as authority figures in the industry.
The Results.
Across the first 10 months of working with Harley Street Skin Clinic team, the clinic has seen:
- Monthly sessions up 155% YoY
- Organic conversions up 429% YoY
- 212% increase in top 3 ranking keywords
- 244 pieces of coverage with an average DR of 74
- 293% increase in branded search
Some of the site’s standout rankings achieved to date include:
- #1 for ‘Anal lightening’
- #1 for ‘Non surgical neck lift’
- #1 for ‘Glutathione IV drip’
- #1 for ‘Botox for hooded eyes’
- #1 for ‘Sculptra London’
- #1 for ‘Brazilian butt lift London’
- #1 for ‘Jaw filler London’
- #1 for ‘Penis enlargement London’
- #1 for ‘Facial clinic London’
- #2 for ‘Mesotherapy London’
- #3 for ‘Botox London’
- + Many more