Keywords are an integral part of search engine optimisation (SEO), helping you climb the search engine results pages (SERPs) and generate more leads and traffic. As a business, it’s essential that you rank highly on the SERPs for the key treatments, services and skin care products you offer at your clinic or practice – with greater visibility comes greater interest and conversions.

Many businesses find it challenging to identify the keywords they need to rank for. In this post, we’ll share some ways of identifying these – with clever methods that are completely free.

Before you begin…

Bear in mind that delving into the world of keywords may throw up some surprising results. For example, you might have an unexpected page ranking highly for a particular keyword. Or you might be surprised by some of the keywords attracting a high volume of clicks. You can also glean information about which keywords rank highly on Google in general.

1) Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a way to ‘monitor, maintain and troubleshoot’ how your website ranks in the search results. Amongst other things, it helps Google crawl and index your website, gives data about search traffic and can alert you to problems with your website, such as mobile usability, spam or indexing issues. Handiest of all, Google Search Console can show which search queries people are using to find your website – in other words, identifying the keywords you need to incorporate as part of your SEO strategy. 

To access this information, log in to your Google Search Console account, then click performance > queries, which gives a general list of keywords people have used to find your website. You can also go to pages > select page > queries > to see which keywords resulted in a visit to a specific webpage.

2) Ubersuggest

This clever tool helps generate keyword ideas, from head terms (the most popular keywords with high volume and high competition) to long-tail phrases (which use several keyword phrases, which can be more specific to your treatments).

There’s no need to sign up for the service to use Ubersuggest – simply visit Ubersuggest and type the keyword or key phrase to find other suggestions, as well as a guide to the monthly searches for it, the cost per click (if you decide to advertise with the keyword using Google Ads) and even how competitive the term will be amongst other Google Ads or other organic SEO.

One of the real highlights of Ubersuggest is that not only does it give you ideas for keywords and key phrases, but it also lists the webpages using them, to help generate your own and to give an insight into what your competition’s doing.

3) Google Ads Keyword Planner

Using data from Google Ads (rather than organic SEO, keyword planners can divulge a wealth of information, showing which keywords and key phrases generated the most clicks and how highly specific ones ranked on Google. There’s even the option to search for historical keywords (from monthly searches to costs over time).

All you’ll need to do to access it is log in with expert mode and ensure your account is set up (including billing information – though you can pause campaigns to ensure you’re not charged, hence ‘for free’).

From the main menu of Keyword Planner, you’ll have two options:

Find keywords – here, you can find relevant keywords that people are using to search for your product or service. This is ideal if you’re looking for a fresh idea – all you need to do is type a word, phrase or URL linked to your business. You’ll then see the average monthly searches for each, how competitive that keyword is, and the bid range. You can even enter up to 10 keywords/phrases at a time!

Get search volume and forecasts – check metrics for your current and historical keywords, and find forecasts for how they might perform in the future. This is great for existing keywords that you want to find data for – simply enter them, and see what the clicks and impressions are for each. Google will even give you estimated costs and CTR. 

One really great tip is to enter a competitor’s URL to see what suggestions Google recommends.

4) Ahrefs

Ahrefs’ keyword generator with a database built around over 8 billion queries making it a powerful SEO tool for discovering, analyzing, and prioritizing keywords. It helps users find valuable keyword opportunities, assess competition, and understand search volume, making it an essential resource for improving website rankings.

5) Long-tail keywords

A really easy method for finding potential long-tail keywords is to start typing your initial keyword into Google and see what auto-fill suggestions come up in the list underneath. Not only can this give you new and alternative keyword ideas, but also some potential blog topics.

You might want to try clearing your search history or carrying out these searches in an Incognito window in Chrome so that Google doesn’t give you auto-fill suggestions based on your past searches.

Build on your content

When writing any content on your website, it’s likely that you’ll be naturally incorporating some of the keywords that potential clients are using to search for your treatments. For example, if you’re writing a web page or blog article about teeth whitening, this may well be one of your keywords. Google is also sophisticated enough to ‘understand’ many of the nuances of language and can find content and keywords that are related to, or mean the same as, some of the ones you’re already using.

Always bear in mind that all your content needs to be relevant in order for it to be effective.

Other ideas

There are lots of other ways to find your keywords for free. For instance, there are various browser extensions that can show you SEO elements on a web page – the MozBar toolbar is one of our favourites.

Another great tip is to view the page source (right-click on any web page > view page source) to display the coding, and search for the meta properties (such as page title and meta descriptions) to glean what others have used.

Call In The Professionals

Of course, developing an effective keyword strategy can be time-consuming, or you might find yourself drowning in a world of data and jargon. It can be difficult to determine which words to use and which to ignore – especially when building a strategy from the ground up.

At Cosmetic Digital, our experts know that any effective marketing strategy needs to consider SEO. We combine the design skills needed to create stunning-looking websites with years of SEO experience and insights into the cosmetic medical industries to help your clinic and treatments target those who want your services – boosting your business over time.

Need help with keyword planning for your clinic website? Give us a call at Cosmetic Digital on 0115 9140 640 or via our contact form for advice tailored to your needs.