How should a fertility clinic do local SEO across a whole metro area?
Short answer
Build prominence rather than proximity. Google says local results rest on relevance, distance and prominence, and distance is the one a clinic cannot change. Fertility patients do weigh location heavily, at 62% in the HFEA's 2024 survey, but the HFEA measures access on a 25km radius. That is a catchment, not a suburb.
Key points
Google states that local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
Google defines prominence as how well known a business is, and distance as how far the business is from the person searching.
In the HFEA's National Patient Survey 2024, location was the most important factor when choosing a clinic at 62%, up from 50% in 2018. Success rates came second at 51%.
The same survey found clinic websites are the most common source of fertility information at 81%, ahead of social media at 60% and the HFEA's own website at 58%.
HFEA analysis measures clinic access on a 25km radius, and found nearly a fifth of local authorities had no fertility clinic within that radius.
Around 5.4 million women in the UK live in areas with no or limited availability of NHS-funded IVF services.
Priorities differ sharply by group. Cost mattered more to Black patients at 47% against 29%, and to single patients at 50% against 25% for opposite-sex couples. For female same-sex and gender-diverse couples, a clinic specialising in supporting LGBTQIA+ patients was the second most important factor at 52%.
What does Google actually rank on locally?
Google publishes the shape of it rather than the detail. Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well a profile matches what someone searched. Distance is how far the business is from the person searching. Prominence is how well known the business is. Google adds one line worth quoting to anyone selling you a shortcut: there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.
Of those three, a clinic controls relevance completely, prominence slowly, and distance not at all. You cannot move the building, and you cannot be the closest clinic to everybody in a city. For most local businesses that is a mild constraint. For a fertility clinic it is the whole problem, because there may be only one or two other clinics in the entire metro area and none of you is close to most of the people searching.
Do fertility patients actually ignore distance?
No, and this is where most advice about this sector goes wrong, including the version we expected to find before checking. The HFEA's National Patient Survey 2024, which ran to 1,500 respondents, found that location remains the most important factor for patients when choosing a clinic, at 62%. That is up from 50% in 2018. Success rates came second at 51%.
So location matters more to these patients than to most, not less. The thing that differs is the unit. When the HFEA measures whether a patient has a clinic nearby, it uses a 25km radius, and on that measure nearly a fifth of local authorities have no fertility clinic at all. Around 5.4 million women live in areas with no or limited availability of NHS-funded services.
Twenty-five kilometres is not a suburb. It is most of a city. A patient choosing on location is choosing between the three clinics in their half of the metro area, not the nearest one to their street. That is the catchment a clinic is competing in, and it is far wider than the radius a map result is drawn from.
Where does the decision actually happen?
On the clinic's own website. The same survey found clinic websites are the most common source of fertility information at 81%, ahead of social media at 60%, fertility tracking apps at 59% and the HFEA's own website at 58%.
That figure should change how a clinic splits its budget. The map result gets you considered. The website is where a decision that takes months actually gets made, and we have written separately about why fertility patients take so long to choose. A clinic that pours everything into ranking in a suburb it does not serve, while its treatment pages go unrevised for three years, has the split backwards.
What should the site be built around instead of suburbs?
Around the catchment and around the decision, in that order.
One clear statement of where patients travel from, written as the region rather than a list of suburbs. A page per suburb across a metro area is the pattern Google's spam policies describe as doorway abuse when the pages funnel to one place, and it is a poor fit for a service with a single site anyway.
Practical travel detail, because a 25km journey is a real cost. Parking, public transport, how many visits a cycle typically needs and which ones have to be early morning. Nobody else publishes this and every patient wants it.
The differentiators the survey actually names, rather than the ones clinics assume.
Pages that survive the months-long comparison: what happens at each stage, who you will see, what it costs and what is not included.
Which pages does the survey suggest building?
The subgroup findings are the most directly useful part of the HFEA data, because they name what different patients are weighing.
Cost mattered more to Black patients, at 47% against 29% for other groups, and to single patients at 50% against 25% for opposite-sex couples. For female same-sex and gender-diverse couples, a clinic that specialises in supporting LGBTQIA+ patients was the second most important factor at 52%. Those are three distinct pages that most clinic sites do not have, and each answers a question the survey says a real group is asking.
The one to build carefully is success rates, which came second overall at 51%. It is also the most heavily regulated thing a fertility clinic can publish, and the rules govern how the figure must be expressed rather than whether you may mention it. We have set out what a fertility clinic may and may not say about success rates rather than repeating it here.
What does prominence look like for a clinic?
Prominence is the factor Google names and does not define in any actionable way, which leaves the field open to people selling certainty. What can be said honestly is that it is built from things that exist off your own website as well as on it: being listed accurately in the regulator's own clinic finder, being referenced by patient organisations, being cited when somebody writes about fertility care in your city.
None of that is fast and none of it is buyable. It is also the only one of the three factors that is genuinely open to a clinic that cannot move closer to its patients, which makes it the one worth the patience.
How do the two playbooks differ?
Standard local playbook
Fertility clinic
Catchment assumed
A suburb or a few kilometres
A metro area, measured by the regulator at 25km
Main lever
Proximity and volume of nearby searches
Prominence and the depth of the website
Where the decision lands
The map result and a phone call
The clinic website, used by 81% of patients
Decision length
Minutes to days
Months, with repeat visits to the same pages
Pages that matter
Service and location pages
Stage-by-stage treatment, cost, and the subgroup pages the survey names
What not to build
n/a
A page per suburb, which is thin here and risks the doorway pattern
Related questions
Should we build a page for every suburb in our city?
No. Patients are choosing across a 25km catchment rather than by suburb, so the pages have nothing distinct to say, and multiple near-identical pages targeted at locations that funnel to one booking path is the pattern Google's spam policies describe as doorway abuse. One clear statement of the region serves the patient better.
If location is the top factor at 62%, does that not favour whoever is closest?
It favours whoever is in the patient's half of the city. The HFEA measures access on a 25km radius, and in much of the UK a patient has one clinic inside that radius or none. Location is a filter that narrows the field to a handful of clinics, after which the website does the rest.
Does UK data apply to our clinic in Australia or the UAE?
The percentages are UK figures from a UK regulator and should be quoted as such. The structure travels further than the numbers: a wide catchment, a long decision, and a website that carries most of it. If your market publishes equivalent data, use that instead and say where it came from.
What is the fastest thing we can change?
The website, because it is where 81% of patients are already going and it is the only one of Google's three factors you control outright. Distance cannot be changed and prominence takes years. Relevance, which is how well your pages match what someone searched, can be improved this quarter.
Can we publish our success rates on the site?
In most markets yes, with strict rules on how the figure is expressed, which period it covers and what it is a percentage of. It is the second most important factor to patients at 51%, so it is worth getting right rather than avoiding. The rules differ by market and we have written them up separately.