SEO Case Study: Digital Agency Bangkok Builds Authority for The London Cosmetic Clinic

Executive Summary

The London Cosmetic Clinic is a London aesthetic clinic offering a wide range of cosmetic dermatology and non-surgical treatments.

When Digital Agency Bangkok (DAB) began work in December 2025, the site had a Health Score of 51/100, a Domain Rating of 26, and declining organic performance. Over the following months, DAB implemented an integrated SEO, AEO, and GEO strategy that strengthened the site's technical foundation, expanded keyword visibility, and established its presence in AI search. A planned website relaunch in May 2026 caused a temporary decline in rankings and traffic during Google's re-indexing process

* AI Overview citations softened in May alongside the broader migration-driven dip, consistent with the temporary contraction across all Google-dependent metrics during re-indexing. New citation presence on Gemini and Grok was established for the first time during this period

28-Day Search Performance (Google Search Console)

The May contraction in clicks, impressions, and average position aligns directly with the website relaunch and is consistent with typical post-migration recovery patterns, discussed in detail in Section 

Performance Before

Performance After

Client & Challenge

About The London Cosmetic Clinic

The London Cosmetic Clinic offers a wide range of non-surgical aesthetic treatments, including dermal fillers, Aqualyx, Alluzience, Morpheus8, Ultherapy, FaceTite, PRP/vampire facials, exosome therapy, laser hair removal, and piercing hole removal. The clinic's patient base is overwhelmingly UK-based, with the United Kingdom consistently accounting for the large majority of organic traffic, alongside smaller international segments from the United States, Egypt, Russia, and Saudi Arabia

The London Cosmetic Clinic  https://www.thelondoncosmeticclinic.co.uk/

Starting Position (December 2025)

At onboarding, the site was already showing signs of organic decline prior to any DAB intervention, which shaped the initial phase of the engagement:

The campaign focused on reversing declining organic performance in a highly competitive cosmetic treatment market while preparing the site for a planned website relaunch. Competitor analysis confirmed that strengthening technical SEO and domain authority—not simply publishing more content—was the key priority

Strategy

DAB applied the same three-pillar SEO + AEO + GEO framework used across its medical and aesthetic clinic campaigns, adapted to The London Cosmetic Clinic's two-phase reality: stabilise and grow the existing site through Q1 2026, then protect and rebuild authority through a planned site relaunch in May 2026.

SEO — Technical Recovery and Foundation Building

With a Health Score of 51/100 and 514 crawl errors at onboarding, the first priority was technical remediation rather than new content. DAB's technical workstream included:

•       Resolving broken links, orphan pages, and 404 errors flagged across 451 URLs with errors
•       Reducing blocked and uncrawled URLs (298 blocked by robots.txt, 671 uncrawled at baseline)
•       Title tag and meta description optimisation across high-impression, low-CTR treatment pages
•       Mobile page speed improvements, building on a strong 95/100 desktop baseline
•       Systematic internal linking to connect treatment pages, blog content, and commercial landing pages into a coherent topic graph

This work lifted the Health Score from 51 to 95 over the course of the engagement — a foundation that proved critical heading into the May relaunch, since a technically sound site recovers from migration far faster than one carrying unresolved errors.

AEO — Answer Engine Optimisation

In a crowded, commercially competitive aesthetics category, DAB prioritised structuring content so AI answer engines could confidently cite the clinic for specific treatments rather than generic queries. Measures included:

•       FAQ and treatment-specific schema markup across key service pages (Aqualyx, Ultherapy, FaceTite, vampire facial, exosome therapy)
•       Entity-rich content development clearly defining treatments, mechanisms, and patient suitability
•       Content restructuring around the specific grounding queries AI engines use when answering cosmetic treatment questions
•       Citation and credibility signals strengthened to support AI evaluator trust

This produced first-time citation presence on Gemini and Grok during the campaign, expanding the clinic's AI surface coverage from three platforms (Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity) to five.

GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation

•       AI-crawler-friendly robots.txt and crawl budget configuration
•       Structured data and content density optimised for zero-click AI answer consumption
•       Internal content graph strengthened ahead of the relaunch, so AI and search crawlers could re-establish topical coherence quickly post-migration
•       GEO infrastructure groundwork designed specifically to minimise AI citation loss during the planned site transition

Managing the May 2026 Website Relaunch

The website relaunch in May 2026 was a planned, major transition rather than an unplanned outage. DAB's pre-relaunch technical and internal linking work was designed explicitly to preserve as much ranking signal as possible through the migration. Standard relaunch risk factors — URL structure changes, internal linking adjustments, reindexing delays, and technical SEO reassessment — were anticipated, and DAB shifted focus during May to monitoring re-crawl behaviour and resolving emerging post-migration issues rather than publishing new content

Execution Timeline

Results

Website Health & Technical Authority

Two metrics moved in different directions during May, and the distinction matters: Domain Rating and organic keyword count contracted as Google re-evaluated the new site, while referring domains and backlinks continued to grow throughout the same period (+31 domains, +2.6K backlinks). This pattern — link equity holding or growing while keyword rankings temporarily soften — is consistent with a migration-driven re-indexing dip rather than a loss of underlying site authority.

Search Performance (Google Search Console, 28-Day View)

Click-through rate improved consistently across every period measured — from 0.7% at baseline to 0.9% in the most recent 28 days — even as the site absorbed a major structural change. This indicates that, despite ranking volatility, the titles, meta descriptions, and listings Google continued to surface remained relevant and compelling to searchers.

Top and Trending Content

Trending-up content in the most recent period shows the clinic gaining visibility for newly emphasised treatment areas, even during the relaunch transition:

•       Vampire Facial (PRP Microneedling) — from zero to 223 clicks, the strongest new entrant
•       Piercing Hole Removal/Closure — +900%, +207 clicks
•       Aqualyx London (Fat-Dissolving Injections) — +1,021%, +194 clicks
•       Ultherapy London — +786%, +173 clicks

At the same time, several previously top-performing pages — including the same Piercing Hole Removal, Vampire Facial, Aqualyx, and Ultherapy pages — also appear in the trending-down report with -100% changes on a different comparison window, reflecting the URL and indexation volatility typical of a mid-migration measurement period rather than a genuine loss of patient interest in these treatments

Traffic by Location

UK traffic share rose sharply through the campaign, reflecting both the clinic's core commercial market and a natural compression of international long-tail traffic during the post-relaunch indexation period.

Keyword Intent & Backlink Profile (Baseline Detail)

At onboarding, organic keywords by intent skewed heavily informational (707 keywords) and non-local (519), with comparatively limited transactional coverage (26 keywords) — a clear opportunity area DAB targeted through the campaign's content and internal linking work. The baseline backlink profile (DR 26, UR 13, 7.7K backlinks, 580 referring domains) trailed category leaders such as free.fr (DR 91) and direct competitors drleah.co.uk and facecliniclondon.com, both of which carry substantially higher keyword overlap with the clinic and remain priority benchmarks for the next phase

Analysis & Key Learnings

Reading the May 2026 Dip Correctly

The decline in clicks (5,490 to 4,210), impressions (727K to 488K), and average position (14.6 to 18.5) during the most recent 28-day period is directly attributable to the website relaunch, not a breakdown of the underlying SEO strategy. When a site undergoes a major structural change, Google must re-crawl the updated architecture, reprocess internal links and page hierarchy, re-evaluate page relevance and authority, reindex updated URLs, and transfer historical ranking signals to the new version of the site. Each of these steps introduces temporary measurement noise.

Two signals support a positive read on the transition. First, CTR improved through the dip (0.8% to 0.9%), indicating that the listings still being shown remained relevant and well-optimised to searchers — a metric that degrades, rather than improves, when a site's underlying relevance has genuinely declined. Second, referring domains and backlinks grew throughout May (+31 domains, +2.6K backlinks) even as keyword rankings softened, showing that off-site authority signals continued to accumulate independently of the on-site re-indexing process.

Pre-Relaunch Technical Investment Paid Off

Lifting the Health Score from 51 to 95 before the relaunch was a deliberate sequencing decision. A technically sound site — with broken links resolved, orphan pages connected, and a clean internal linking structure — re-establishes its crawl and indexation footprint considerably faster after a migration than one still carrying hundreds of unresolved errors. The technical groundwork laid across January through April is the primary reason the team expects a comparatively swift stabilisation rather than a prolonged recovery period.

AI-Native Platforms Validate the AEO/GEO Strategy

Because Gemini and Grok index independently of Google Search, their growth during the same period that Google AI Overview citations softened is a meaningful signal. The clinic's first-ever Gemini citations and a strong 15-citation Grok debut occurred in the same month that Google-dependent metrics dipped, confirming that the GEO infrastructure investment is functioning as designed and is not solely reliant on Google's re-indexing timeline.

The Competitive Gap That Remains

Despite the DR improvement from 26 to a peak of 60, The London Cosmetic Clinic still trails category leaders such as omniya.co.uk and drderme.com on organic traffic value, and competitors drleah.co.uk and facecliniclondon.com on keyword overlap. Closing this gap remains the central objective of the next phase, particularly as transactional keyword coverage (26 keywords at baseline, against 707 informational keywords) represents a significant untapped opportunity relative to competitors with broader commercial keyword footprints

Conclusion

The campaign focused on building a strong technical and authority foundation to support a major website relaunch. Over six months, DAB improved the site's Health Score from 51 to 95, increased Domain Rating from 26 to 60, expanded backlinks and referring domains, and established the clinic's first AI citations across Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, and Copilot.

Although the May 2026 relaunch caused a temporary decline in clicks and rankings during Google's re-indexing process, the strengthened technical foundation, growing authority, and improved CTR positioned the site for a faster long-term recovery.