DENTAL CLINIC CASE STUDY

The client backgound

Tomas Dental Clinic is a private dental practice in Manchester offering orthodontics, cosmetic dentistry, implants, and general dental services. Before engaging Go Mungo, their marketing presence was minimal: they relied heavily on word-of-mouth and had a basic informational website with low traffic and few online enquiries.

Objectives & challenges

• Primary goal: Increase new patient enquiries through organic search.
• Secondary goal: Improve visibility specifically for individual service pages (e.g. “dental implants Manchester,” “invisalign Manchester”).
• Challenges:
   1. The website had limited content and weak structure, meaning they ranked poorly even for mid-tier keywords.
   2. The site had remnants of “black hat” SEO (e.g. over-optimised anchor texts, spammy links, keyword stuffing) that were penalizing rankings.
   3. They needed a migration to a better site architecture, which risked losing existing rankings if not handled carefully.

Strategy & execution

Here’s how we approached the campaign (April 2024 → April 2025) to achieve the objectives:

1. Technical & SEO Audit

• A full technical audit uncovered issues such as crawlability, broken links, duplicate content, slow page speed, poor internal linking, and indexing errors.
• They also audited the backlink profile, identifying harmful/spammy links (remnants of black hat tactics) to be disavowed or removed.

2. Content strategy - pillar & cluster model

• They established pillar pages (e.g. “All You Need to Know About Dental Implants”) that broadly cover a topic, and cluster content pages (smaller, more specific articles) that link into the pillar.
• Each service page (implants, veneers, whitening, etc.) was treated as a pillar or cluster, optimised for semantic keywords, patient intent, FAQs, before/after photos, etc.
• They also created blog content targeting long-tail, informational patient queries (“how much do implants cost Manchester,” “difference between veneers and crowns,” etc.).
• Internal linking was used deliberately to bolster authority of service pages via the blog/cluster pages.

3. Clean-up of Black Hat SEO & Backlink Detox

• We systematically removed or disavowed toxic backlinks.
• They also cleaned up over-optimised anchor text and ensured that link acquisition going forward followed white-hat best practices (diversified anchor text, high relevance, quality sources).

4. Website Migration & Rearchitecture

• Based on recommendations, the clinic’s site was migrated to a new structure (URL hierarchy, site layout, navigation) optimised for SEO.
• During migration, redirections (301s) were carefully mapped to preserve link equity and avoid broken links or traffic loss.
• We oversaw the migration, verifying that meta tags, internal links, canonical tags, and structured data were correctly transferred.

5. Ongoing On-page SEO & Optimisation

• Titles, meta descriptions, headers (H1, H2s), URL slugs, alt tags, schema markup (e.g. medical/dental schema) were optimised.
• Page content was enhanced with better readability, patient-centric language, call-to-actions (CTAs), and conversion elements (e.g. “book a consultation,” contact forms, trust signals).
• Technical SEO maintenance (speed improvements, mobile optimisation, structured data validation, core web vitals) was ongoing.

6. Authority & Local Link Outreach

• They built quality, relevant links from dental, local Manchester, health blogs, dental directories, local news websites, and related high-authority domains.
• They also leveraged PR / press releases around dental clinic news, case studies, awards, or clinic events to garner more mentions and links.

7. Monitoring, Analytics & Iteration

• A custom dashboard tracked organic traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rates, bounce rates, time on page, and conversion/enquiry rates.
• Monthly reviews identified pages underperforming, and content was iterated (expanded, optimised, refreshed) accordingly.
• They continuously scaled up content that performed well, doubled down on high-impact topics, and pruned low-performing pages.

Results (12-month outcomes)

• Organic search traffic increased by 155% over the 12 months.
• The increased visibility translated into a significant rise in enquiries (new patient leads) through the service pages (though no absolute number is disclosed).
• The site now ranks for many more service-related keywords in Manchester and surrounding areas (improved keyword breadth and depth).

Lessons & key takeaways

• Don’t ignore content architecture — a pillar/cluster model helps focus topical authority and internal linking.
• Backlink clean-up is as important as link building — leftover black hat tactics can hold back growth.
• Migration must be handled with surgical precision — losing rankings during migration is a real risk.
• Content is not “write and forget” — continual optimisation, refreshing, pruning, and iteration are vital.
• Track conversions, not just traffic — increased traffic is valuable only if it leads to enquiries.
• Local relevance matters for clinics — linking from local domains, targeting local keywords, and optimising for “near me” search queries is essential in the dental niche.
• Patience is key — SEO compound growth takes time; 12 months is a realistic window for seeing major lifts.