How to Build a Keyword List for Your Clinic That Is Based on Demand, Not Guesswork

Most clinic owners who set up Google Ads pick keywords the same way. They think of a few phrases that sound right, type them in, and start spending. "Clinic near me." "Weight loss injections." "Travel vaccines." It feels logical. But it is not a strategy. It is a guess.

A professional agency does not guess. They build a keyword list from data. They start with what you offer, check what patients actually search for in your area, measure the volume, and sort the results into groups that become campaigns. The process takes an afternoon, not weeks. And it is the difference between a campaign that fills your diary and one that drains your budget.

Table of Contents

1. Why guessing keywords does not work
2. Start with your services, not with Google
3. Add your location to every keyword
4. Check the search volume for each combination
5. Remove the keywords nobody searches for
6. Separate research keywords from booking keywords
7. Group keywords by service, not by theme
8. Account for the words patients use, not the words you use
9. The finished keyword list in practice

Why guessing keywords does not work

When you guess, three things go wrong.

First, you pick keywords that are too broad. "Weight loss" gets millions of searches, but almost none of them are from someone ready to book a clinic appointment. They are looking for diets, recipes, apps, and Reddit threads. You pay for every click and convert almost none of them.

Second, you miss keywords that actually work. "Private weight loss clinic Sheffield" might get 480 searches a month in your area, but you would never think to bid on it because it is too specific. Specific is exactly where the bookings are.

Third, you put everything into one campaign. Travel vaccines, ear wax removal, and weight loss all competing for the same budget. Google cannot optimise when it is trying to serve three different audiences from one pot of money.

A data-driven keyword list fixes all three problems before you spend your first pound.

Start with your services, not with Google

Open a blank spreadsheet. In the first column, list every service your clinic offers. Not the broad categories. The specific services a patient would search for.

If you run a pharmacy with private services, your list might look like this:

• Travel vaccinations
• Ear wax removal
• Weight loss injections
• Vitamin B12 injections
• Blood tests
• Flu vaccinations
• Pharmacy First consultations

If you run an aesthetics clinic:

• Botox
• Dermal fillers
• Lip fillers
• Anti-wrinkle injections
• PRP facial
• Chemical peels
• Skin boosters

Write down every service, including the ones you think are too niche. You will let the data decide which ones are worth advertising. Your job at this stage is just to list them.

Add your location to every keyword

A clinic is a local business. Nobody drives an hour for a flu jab. Your keywords need to include the locations patients will search from.

Take each service and add your town, city, or area. For a pharmacy in Birmingham offering travel vaccines, the keyword variations are:

• Travel vaccines Birmingham
• Travel clinic Birmingham
• Travel vaccinations near me
• Travel jabs Birmingham
• Yellow fever vaccine Birmingham

For each service, write three to five location variations. Include your city name, your borough or district if you are in London, and the "near me" version. Google treats "near me" as a location keyword based on where the person is searching from.

You now have a list that might be 30 to 60 keywords long. That is not too many. That is the raw material.

Check the search volume for each combination

Google Keyword Planner is free. You need a Google Ads account to access it, but you do not need to run a campaign or spend any money. Create an account if you have not already, then navigate to Keyword Planner under the Tools menu.

Enter your keywords in batches. Set the location to your city or a radius around your postcode. Google will return the average monthly searches for each keyword.

Here is what you might see for a clinic in Leeds:

These numbers tell you where the demand is. They are not opinions. They are records of how many people typed that exact phrase into Google last month in your area.

Remove the keywords nobody searches for

Some of your services will have strong search demand. Others will not. That is not a problem. It is information.

If "vitamin B12 injection Leeds" gets 110 searches a month, there is still enough demand to run a small campaign. If "phlebotomy Leeds" gets 10 searches a month, there is not. Ten searches a month means roughly one person every three days. Even with a perfect ad and a perfect page, you might get one booking a month. That is not worth a campaign.

The rule is simple. If a keyword gets fewer than 50 monthly searches in your area, remove it from your paid advertising list. It is not gone forever. It goes on your content list instead. A blog post or service page can rank for low-volume keywords for free, over time, without a daily budget.

Your keyword list should now contain only the services with enough local demand to justify paid spend. For most clinics, that is five to eight services. Not 20. Not two. The data decides.

Separate research keywords from booking keywords

Not every search is equal. Someone typing "what is microsuction" is researching. Someone typing "ear wax removal near me" is ready to book. These two searches look similar, but they convert at completely different rates.

Research keywords include:

• "What is [treatment]"
• "How does [treatment] work"
• "[Treatment] side effects"
• "[Treatment] cost UK"
• "Do I need [treatment]"

Booking keywords include:

• "[Treatment] near me"
• "[Treatment] [city name]"
• "Private [treatment] [city name]"
• "Book [treatment] [city name]"
• "[Treatment] clinic [city name]"

A professional campaign spends the majority of its budget on booking keywords. These are patients who have already done their research and are ready to act. They know what they want. They are looking for where to get it.

Research keywords are better served by blog content. A post answering "what is microsuction" ranks for free, educates the patient, and links to your booking page. You do not need to pay £4 per click for someone who is not ready to book yet.

In your spreadsheet, add a column for intent. Mark each keyword as "booking" or "research." Your paid campaign uses the booking keywords. Your content strategy uses the research keywords.

Group keywords by service, not by theme

This is where most clinic owners go wrong. They put all their keywords into a single campaign and let Google figure it out. Google cannot figure it out. It has no idea that "travel vaccines Leeds" and "weight loss clinic Leeds" need different ads, different landing pages, and different budgets.

Create a separate group for each service. In Google Ads, these are called ad groups. Each ad group should contain:

• The keywords for one specific service
• An ad written specifically for that service
• A landing page built for that service

For a clinic with five advertisable services, the structure looks like this:

1. Travel vaccines group: travel vaccines Leeds, travel clinic Leeds, travel jabs near me
2. Ear wax group: ear wax removal Leeds, microsuction Leeds, ear wax clinic near me
3. Weight loss group: weight loss clinic Leeds, weight loss injections Leeds, Mounjaro clinic Leeds
4. Blood tests group: private blood test Leeds, blood test near me, health check Leeds
5. Botox group: Botox Leeds, anti-wrinkle injections Leeds, Botox near me

When someone searches "ear wax removal Leeds", they see an ad about ear wax removal. They click through to a page about ear wax removal. They book an ear wax removal appointment. Everything matches. That is how a professional campaign converts.

When everything is lumped together, a patient searching for ear wax sees a generic ad about "our clinic." They land on a homepage that mentions 12 services. They leave. You paid for that click and got nothing.

Account for the words patients use, not the words you use

Patients do not use clinical language. They use the words they know. This creates gaps in keyword lists that clinicians write themselves.

Here are common mismatches:

If you only bid on "microsuction Leeds", you miss every patient who searches "ear wax removal Leeds." That is not a small number. "Ear wax removal" typically gets five to ten times the search volume of "microsuction" for the same service.

Check every keyword against what a patient who has never visited a clinic before would type. Use Google's autocomplete to see what phrases come up. Type the first few words of your service into Google and look at what it suggests. Those suggestions are the most commonly searched completions.

Add every patient-language variation to your keyword groups. Missing one variation means missing the patients who use it.

The finished keyword list in practice

After this process, you have a spreadsheet with:

• A list of services with proven local demand
• Monthly search volumes for each keyword
• Keywords grouped by service
• Intent marked as booking or research
• Patient-language variations captured

For a typical clinic with six advertisable services, the final list might contain 40 to 60 booking-intent keywords, split across six ad groups. Each group has its own budget allocation based on the search volume and expected return.

Here is what that looks like for one service:

Service: Travel vaccines Location: Leeds Monthly demand: 590 searches

Keywords:

• Travel vaccines Leeds (320/month)
• Travel clinic Leeds (170/month)
• Travel vaccinations near me (included via location targeting)
• Yellow fever vaccine Leeds (70/month)
• Travel jabs Leeds (30/month, borderline but grouped in)

Landing page: A dedicated page titled "Travel Vaccines in Leeds", showing prices, destination guidance, and a booking button above the fold.

Budget: £300 to £500/month, based on £4 to £6 cost per click and a 6 to 8% expected conversion rate. That predicts 10 to 20 bookings per month.

Repeat that for every service group, and you have a campaign built on evidence. Not a single keyword was chosen because it "felt right." Every one earned its place with data.

Stop guessing. Start with the data.

The difference between a clinic that wastes £1,000 a month on Google Ads and a clinic that generates 40 bookings from the same budget is not luck. It is preparation. A keyword list built on real search data, grouped by service, filtered by intent, and checked against patient language is the foundation every successful campaign is built on.

You can do this yourself with Google Keyword Planner and a spreadsheet. The process takes an afternoon. Or you can work with a team that does this for clinics every week and already knows where the volume sits for your services.

Get a keyword strategy built for your clinic

We build Google Ads campaigns for clinics and pharmacies across the UK. That starts with local keyword research for your specific services in your specific area, before any budget is spent.

Book a free discovery call and we will show you exactly what patients are searching for near your clinic, which services have enough demand for ads, and which need a different approach.