Why is AI SEO important?
Visibility is everything for allied health websites. Any physiotherapy or chiropractic clinic stuck on the second page of Google is relying solely on advertising spend or word-of-mouth referrals to generate business.
But ranking in Google is no longer the whole game. For high-intent searches, someone in pain looking for a “chiropractor near me” right now, Google increasingly serves an AI-generated answer above the traditional results. If your clinic isn’t the source that answer draws on, you’re losing the most valuable patients to competitors who are, no matter how well you rank on the rest of the page.
Traditional SEO still matters and we still do it (and do it well). But ranking on page one isn’t the whole game when an AI is summarising page one for the patient and they only ever read the summary. The clinics that win from here are the ones the AI trusts enough to name.
Why use HMDG?
We’re a specialist healthcare marketing agency, and AI SEO (you’ll also hear it called GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation, or AEO, Answer Engine Optimisation) is no different to the rest of what we do. No one fully understands the inner workings of these AI models, and plenty of agencies will use that as cover to charge you a fortune and promise nothing for 18 months. We’re different.
When you optimise as many healthcare websites as we do, you have more data than anyone else on what actually gets clinics cited and recommended. We don’t need to guess what works for a TMJ clinic versus a sports injury clinic. We’ve already got the data. AI models are deliberately cautious about health, and they favour sources that show genuine clinical expertise and trust. That’s a disadvantage if you’ve never been set up for it, and a real opportunity if you have.
What's included?
AI visibility audit: how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews currently see, describe and recommend your clinic
Content structured so AI models can read, understand and quote you accurately
Trust and authority signals built across your site and the wider web (the things AI weighs heavily for healthcare)
Clear, machine-readable treatment, condition, location and credential information
Schema and structured data mark-up
Ongoing monitoring of how the major AI platforms describe and recommend your clinic, with corrections where they get it wrong
Performance monitoring and plain-English monthly reporting
Our SEO results
Below you can find out more about some of our current customers and how SEO has helped them grow their businesses.
Your questions answered
Here are some answers to the common questions we get asked about AI SEO!
What actually is AI SEO?
It’s the work of making your clinic the source that AI tools trust, cite and recommend when someone asks them a health question. Where traditional SEO is about ranking your website on Google, AI SEO is about making sure that when a patient asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI “who’s the best physio in my area”, your clinic is the answer it gives. The two work hand in hand.
Is this not just SEO with a new name?
There’s plenty of overlap, and good SEO foundations help enormously. But there are real differences in how you structure content, signal trust and earn citations for AI models versus a traditional search ranking. Treating them as the same thing is exactly why most clinics aren’t showing up in AI answers yet.
How do you track results?
Same as everything else we do: with data. We monitor how the major AI platforms describe and recommend your clinic over time, track the visibility you’re gaining, and report on it monthly. As ever, we care about patients and revenue, not vanity numbers.
How much does it cost?
We understand healthcare margins are tight, so as with all our services we’ll suggest starting sensibly, gaining traction, and reinvesting from there rather than asking you to gamble a big budget up front. Have a chat with us and we’ll talk you through what makes sense for a clinic your size, often alongside your existing SEO.
Is it worth doing this now, or should I wait?
The clinics that get this right become the default answer in their area before their competitors realise the game has changed. Once a model has learned to trust and recommend a competitor, catching up is harder. Early is cheaper.
Do I need a good website for this to work?
Yes. As with traditional SEO, a slow, badly structured or poorly coded website will hold you back. If your site needs work we can talk about that too, and we have web and SEO packages that work nicely together.
Who else do you do this for?
We work with hundreds of clinics across the UK. You can see who we work with on this page or read their stories on our case studies page.