Pharmacy SEO that fills your consultation room, not just the shop.

A few years ago most of your trade walked in with a prescription. Now a growing share of your income comes from private services, and people find those the same way they find a restaurant. They pick up their phone and search "ear wax removal near me" or "travel jabs Edinburgh".

If your pharmacy doesn't show up for those searches, the booking goes to whoever does. Often that's a chain, an online pharmacy or a private clinic charging twice your price. The good news is that local search rewards the pharmacy that's genuinely nearby and explains its services clearly, and that's usually you.

I don't chase vanity keywords. We start with the services that make you money and the way real people search for them in your area.

• Travel vaccinations: searches like "yellow fever vaccine near me" peak months before holidays.
• Weight management: high demand, and the wording needs real care (more on that below).
• Ear wax removal: steady searches all year and an easy service to book online.
• Pharmacy First and minor ailments: "UTI treatment pharmacy" and similar searches.
• Flu and Covid jabs: seasonal, so the pages need to be ready before the rush.
• Blood pressure checks, emergency contraception and other walk-in services.

For "near me" searches, Google shows the map results first. Getting into the top three there matters more than almost anything on your website, and most pharmacy profiles I look at are half finished.

• The right primary category, plus the services you actually offer listed one by one.
• Opening hours that are correct, including bank holidays (wrong hours lose trust fast).
• Real photos of your shop front and consultation room, not stock images.
• A steady flow of genuine Google reviews, and a reply to every one.
• Posts for seasonal services, like flu jabs in September.
• A booking link that goes straight to the right service, not your home page.

One "Services" page with a bullet list won't rank for anything. Each private service needs its own page that answers the questions people ask before they book: who it's for, what happens, how long it takes, what it costs and how to book.

These pages are written to help a nervous patient decide, not to stuff in keywords. That's exactly what Google wants to see on health topics, where it holds sites to a higher standard of expertise and trust.

Pharmacy marketing has rules that a general SEO agency often doesn't know about. Prescription-only medicines can't be advertised to the public, so a page can talk about a weight management service and a consultation with a pharmacist, but it can't promote a named injection. The ASA has ruled against several online sellers for exactly this.

I write with the CAP Code and GPhC standards in mind, and nothing clinical goes live until you or your pharmacist has approved the wording. I'm not a regulator and I won't pretend to be, but I'll make sure nothing on your site gives one a reason to call.

I look after the websites and local search for independent pharmacies in Glasgow and Edinburgh, including Carmunnock Pharmacy, Westerhailes Pharmacy and Crighton Pharmacy. You can see the work and visit the live sites on the client work page.

Send me your website and I'll come back within one working day with three things I'd fix first. No sales pitch. If it makes sense to carry on, monthly SEO starts at £299 with 30 days notice, and Growth at £699 includes your Google Business Profile.

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