RESEARCH: COMPARING 235 AESTHETIC CLINIC WEBSITES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM – NORTHERN IRELAND’S AESTHETIC COMPANIES

If you’ve been following us on social media, you might have already heard about our new report, called, ‘RESEARCH: Comparing 235 Aesthetic Clinic Websites in the United Kingdom.’  As we discussed in our previous blog post, we want to show aesthetics businesses up and down the country how they compare when it comes to SEO-related metrics, such as the number of keywords, the domain rating and the number of backlinks from other websites. We hope that this will show companies where their strengths lie, and how to improve on their weak points.

In this post, it’s the turn of the Northern Irish aesthetic companies to see how you shape up!

Discussion of the Data – Northern Ireland’s Aesthetic Companies

The companies in our report ranged from specialists in surgical procedures like the Fitzwilliam Clinic and Cathedral Aesthetics, to skincare and non-surgical experts, including Aurora Skin Clinic Belfast, Calm Cosmetic Skin Clinic and Glow Aesthetics.

Keywords

Google and other search engines use keywords to help users find your site and determine how relevant it is to their search query. Having and ranking for lots of different keywords tells search engines exactly what your business does, and the products and/or services you offer. Google then knows to put you further up the SERP (search engine results page) rankings than less relevant companies when users search for businesses like yours. This will help increase the visibility of, and traffic to, your site.

Northern Irish sites performing well in this respect include Aesthetic Skin Clinic (1,648) and Woodford Medical (1,114), with far and away the highest number of keywords. Companies like B. Aesthetics (7), A.N. Aesthetics (2) and Glow Aesthetics (18) rank for far fewer keywords, suggesting these companies could benefit from a stronger SEO strategy.

DR: Domain Rating

The Domain Rating, or DR, of a site refers to the quality of backlinks it has. This metric, developed by Ahref’s, ranks the reliability and authority of the websites that link to yours in their content. Great, high-quality sites for the aesthetics industry are review sites like realself and consultingroom, as well as newspapers, well-known blogs and medical or industry publications. When high-quality sites link to yours, it tells search engines that you are an authority in your industry and will therefore rank your site higher than competitors with weaker backlink profiles.

Companies with good DRs are Woodford Medical (27), Aurora Skin Clinic Belfast (25) and Aesthetic Skin Clinic (21), while several of the companies in our list – The Clinic Lisburn, Hamilton Face Clinic, Glow Aesthetics, Cathedral Aesthetics and A.N. Aesthetics – had a DR of 0, showing that the quality of the links on their site is generally poor.

IP: Number of Links

As well as examining the quality of the backlinks on a site, we also ran the numbers. Sometimes, if a company has a high number of links, but a low DR, it can be doing them more harm than good, as low-quality backlinks from sites that Google penalises for being spammy, low-quality or irrelevant will actually bring you down the SERP rankings.

For example Woodford Medical (114) and Aesthetic Skin Clinic (111) have a similar IP, but Woodford Medical has a DR of 27, compared to Aesthetic Skin Clinic’s 21, implying that generally, the links they have are of a higher quality, and so will do more to boost them up the SERP rankings. Meanwhile, Aurora Skin Clinic Belfast has an IP of 18, and a DR of 25, showing that while they don’t have a huge number of backlinks, the ones they do have are incredibly valuable and of a very high quality, which is a brilliant thing for their site’s rankings.

How to Give your Website a Makeover

If after seeing our data, you want to improve your site, here are some of our top tips to give your website a makeover.

1. Get Great Images

Large, high-quality and professional looking images are vital for aesthetics sites. Adding before and after pictures, images of your team and photos of your clinic can all help to build familiarity with your users, and make your site more aesthetically pleasing.

2. Optimise your Site Speed

Poor site speed is one of the primary reasons for a high bounce rate, and it’s easily avoidable. By optimising your site speed, you’re improving customer experience, your SEO and how professional your site looks. Ideally, you should be aiming for any page on your site to load in around 2 seconds. This puts you at a huge advantage, as, shockingly, if your site loads in 1.7 seconds, it is faster than 75% of all sites on the internet, and 40 percent of visitors will leave a site if the loading process takes more than 3 seconds. This is especially true for mobile sites, where over half of visitors will leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

3. Make Sure you’re Mobile Friendly

Increasingly, traffic is becoming mobile. If your mobile site is hard to navigate, it just makes the lives of your potential clients harder than it needs to be, and by extension, they’re more likely to discount your business when looking for an aesthetic practitioner, in favour of a competitor who has a mobile-optimized site.

4. Have Strong CTA’s

Strong CTA’s (calls to action) are also an easy way to boost the amount of engagement you get on your site. CTA’s include phrases such as “contact us”, and asking people to subscribe to a newsletter or book a consultation. These phrases encourage users down the sales funnel, and make them more likely to interact with your business in a way that converts.

5. Make Your Content Valuable

Having original, valuable and great-quality information is appealing not only to users, but to search engines as well. Sites with longform, quality and creative content indicate to Google and other search engines that they are leaders in their field, improving SEO and keywords, and moving you up the valuable SERP rankings. Having a lot of useful content also shows users you know what you’re talking about, and builds trust in you as an aesthetic practitioner.

We know that this can seem a bit confusing, and sometimes you don’t know where to start to get your aesthetic business’s digital strategy off the ground. If you could do with help improving your digital presence, contact us at Embryo, and see how our experienced team can beautify your aesthetics website and boost business.