From no website at all to outranking Doctoralia and Top Doctors on transactional queries
A medical professional started from an extreme position: no website, facing competitors with years of SEO work behind them and established sites, plus Doctoralia and Top Doctors dominating the SERP. The strategy focused on building entity and topical authority from scratch until he outranked both the competitors and the aggregators on genuinely transactional keywords.
The challenge
Building an SEO presence in healthcare for a doctor starting from absolutely nothing:
- No website of his ownat the start of the project.
- Direct competitorswith sites already ranking and years of accumulated SEO work.
- Aggregators (Doctoralia, Top Doctors)dominating the sector’s transactional queries.
- A YMYL sector (Your Money Your Life):Google demands strong E-E-A-T signals; content alone isn’t enough.
How we approached it
Since we were starting from zero, the strategy focused on building the 4 pillars of E-E-A-T at the same time as laying the site’s technical SEO foundation. Without a strong entity, no content would have ranked in this sector.
Entity and E-E-A-T building
Publishing his own book on Amazon, creating a Wikipedia profile and methodical work on the professional’s E-E-A-T pillars (qualifications, speciality, experience, authority). Converging signals that Google associates with the entity.
Topical authority through clusters
Topic clusters with consistent internal linking. Every sub-topic of the medical speciality in its own silo, avoiding cannibalisation and building clear signals of “who is an expert in what”.
Citations in sector media
Appearances in relevant healthcare media and portals (publications, interviews, citations in specialist articles). Quality backlinks plus external authority signals, both essential in YMYL.
Everything else was executed on top of that foundation: an initial audit, keyword research, benchmarking against competitors and aggregators, crawl and indexation monitoring, a solid technical base and a blog oriented towards transactional categories to guide users towards the services.
Visual results
Organic traffic and ranking keyword growth over the course of the project (Ahrefs screenshots, client brand anonymised):
Organic traffic went from practically zero (~500-1,000 visits/month) to more than 13,500 organic visits a month. On keywords, the project came close to 18,000 ranking at its peak, consolidating around 4,500 in the top 20 (the positions that actually bring in patients). The pattern is clear: volume first, then consolidation in the positions that convert.
What we achieved
- Rankings on transactional queries.Ranking above Doctoralia and Top Doctors on highly transactional keywords — the ones that actually convert into patients.
- A recognised entity in Google.Recognition as a professional entity backed by Wikipedia, a published book, media citations and topical authority built from scratch.
- Overtaking established competitors.Overtaking professionals with years of prior SEO in their niche, which shows an organised strategy can make up for a lack of seniority.
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