RESEARCH: Comparing 235 Aesthetic Clinic Websites in the United Kingdom – Scotland’s Aesthetic Companies

After the success of our Embryograph earlier this year, here at Embryo we can’t get enough of research! This time around, we’re focusing our reporting on the aesthetics of aesthetics companies.

Our research aims to tell businesses how they compare in terms of digital metrics, including domain ratings, inbound link quantity and quality and the number of keywords they rank for. We’ll be looking at what makes a great site for an aesthetics company, as well as how effectively aesthetics websites are working for their businesses up and down the country. We hope this information will give you the chance to see where your business’ digital strengths lie, and what you can do to improve any weaker areas.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be diving deep into the data to see how aesthetic companies in different areas of the UK are performing. This time, it’s the turn of Scotland’s aesthetic businesses.

Discussion of Embryo Data – Scotland’s Aesthetic Companies

The aesthetic companies featured in our report range from companies offering non-surgical treatments such as Clinetix, to surgical specialists like Mr. Ken Stewart at Dermalclinic and Dr. Darren McKeown. Skincare experts like Face & Body, and companies offering innovative women’s health procedures like Dr. Nestor’s Medical and Cosmetic Clinic were also included.Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases that a website is found for by search engines. The more keywords a site has, the easier it is for search engines like Google to find it and mark it as relevant in its searches. Having the right keywords means when people search for businesses like yours, it knows that your site is significant and should appear further up in the SERP (search engine results page) rankings. This will raise awareness of your business and help increase traffic to your site.

Companies performing well in this regard are Therapie Clinic (2,461), Face & Body (2,440), Clinetix (1,181), Essence Medical (1,045) and Dermal Clinic (941).

Companies that have considerably lower keyword results include DERMALIS (8), Surface Beauty (25), Peppermint Cosmetic Clinics (54), and Allure Aesthetics (85), all with less than 100 keywords.

DR: Domain Rating

A site’s domain rating is a metric created by Ahref’s, showing sites how strong their backlink profile is. The backlink profile refers to the quality of other sites linking to yours, and is based on the reliability of the site linking to you. Reliable sites with desirable links in the aesthetics industry would be sites like realself, consultingroom and medical or academic publications. A stronger backlink profile tells search engines that your site has authority in its field, and that it contains useful, reliable information that other sites want to source. This makes a great impression on where your site appears on SERP rankings, as well as giving your brand great exposure and referral traffic.

Companies with a good DR are Therapie Clinic and La Belle Forme, both with a DR of 26, and Elanic Clinic with a DR of 18. Companies like DERMALIS (0), Proform Aesthetic Clinic (0), Allure Aesthetics (1) and Cloud Nine Clinic (1) had somewhat lower DRs.

IP: Number of Links

While the DR shows the quality of your site’s backlinks, the IP refers to the total number of external websites linking to yours. Having a large volume of backlinks links might seem like a good thing, but poor quality links, like ones from unrelated sites, sites with far too many links and other sites that are penalised by Google can bring your site’s ranking down.

For example, a company like Clinetix has an IP of 107, but a DR of only 9, implying that the quality of some of these links are not what they should be to improve their rankings, while La Belle Forme has a DR of 26 alongside their IP of 148, showing that many of these links are of a high quality.

Our Favourite Website Features from Scotland’s Aesthetic Companies

The homepage of any site is important, but for aesthetics websites, it can be a massive opportunity to make a great first impression. If a page looks beautiful, tasteful and instantly tells clients who you are, it can make a huge difference in how positively they view you, compared to competitors with less effective sites.

Homepages that load quickly and look beautiful are key to gaining the interest and trust of your potential clients straight away. It really shows when companies put thought and care into fonts and colour schemes that are appropriate for their customer base and corporate identity, and positions them as more modern and forward-thinking businesses. Making sure your site is easily navigable, with easy to access menu bars and clear contact pages will certainly help.

We loved seeing sites that have large, high-quality images, and even some with GIFs and muted videos as the first thing you see on their homepages. Potential clients can see instantly that there has been effort put into the site and, by extension, that your business is reliable, cares about its reputation and provides high-quality services.

Building trust as quickly as possible is immeasurably important for aesthetics companies. Putting a face to a name, and making sure your site has a page dedicated to telling potential clients about your company’s team, culture and expertise can all highlight your USPs. Having high-quality images of your staff and telling readers a bit about them goes a long way to create familiarity and trust in your consumers. Taking this a step further by having a company blog can also be effective in building trust.

Putting emphasis on the qualifications of your practitioners will also make clients feel comfortable they are in safe hands, as will any testimonials and before & after images you have. Any awards, accreditations or institutions you partner with will also help raise your credibility.

Making sure your key product pages are extensive, readable and provide all the information potential clients need to make an informed decision about their care is important. Having lots of high-quality content on your site will also help improve your SEO rankings.

Making sure your site is as good as it can be isn’t always an easy task, but here at Embryo we are experts at optimising sites within the aesthetics industry. If you have any questions about the report or what we can do for your business, contact us on 0161 327 2635.