SEO for Healthcare Clinics: YMYL Compliance + Local Visibility (BD-Aware)

Healthcare SEO is Your-Money-Your-Life (YMYL) territory — the category where Google demands the highest E-E-A-T thresholds and where AI engines refuse to cite weak sources. A clinic that nails medical authorship, local schema and Bangla-aware content can dominate both the Map Pack and AI Overviews while compliance keeps it safe from manual actions.

Table of contents

1. What makes healthcare a YMYL category? · 2. Author + reviewer credentials that move rankings · 3. Local visibility: GBP, schema, citations · 4. Bangla-aware content for BD clinics · 5. AI citation playbook for medical content · 6. The compliance traps that get pages demoted · 7. FAQ

What makes healthcare a YMYL category?

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) is Google's classification for content that can affect a reader's health, finances or safety. According to Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines, YMYL pages are held to the strictest E-E-A-T standards — meaning the author's medical qualifications, the reviewer's credentials, and the source of every claim are evaluated before the page can rank for symptom, treatment or medication queries.

Author + reviewer credentials that move rankings

Every clinical article needs a named author with a medical degree, a separately named medical reviewer (BMDC-registered for Bangladesh, board-certified abroad), date of last medical review, and Person + MedicalWebPage schema linking to authoritative profiles. **A symptom page without a credentialed reviewer will not rank in 2026, no matter how well-written it is.** Cite peer-reviewed studies (PubMed, WHO, NICE) inline rather than linking to other clinic blogs.

Local visibility: GBP, schema, citations

For clinics, the highest-leverage local moves are: a fully completed Google Business Profile categorized as the specific specialty (not 'Hospital' generically), MedicalBusiness + MedicalClinic schema with department and specialty, doctor pages with Physician schema, and citations from BD health directories like daktarbhai.com, doctorola.com, and Praava.

Bangla-aware content for BD clinics

Most BD patients search symptoms in transliterated Bangla ('jor er ousud', 'pet betha kano hoy'). Publishing parallel Bangla pages with hreflang='bn-BD' and Bangla MedicalCondition schema captures a market that English-only competitors miss entirely. Use plain Bangla — not the formal medical register — because that's how patients actually phrase their searches.

AI citation playbook for medical content

ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews apply an extra trust filter on YMYL queries. Pages cited consistently share four traits: a credentialed author block at the top, a 40–60 word direct answer below each H2, citations to .gov, .edu or peer-reviewed sources (not other blogs), and a clear last-reviewed date within 12 months. **AI engines will not cite a medical page older than ~18 months even if it ranks #1 organically.**

The compliance traps that get pages demoted

Promising guaranteed cures, suggesting prescription medicines without 'consult a doctor' framing, AI-generated symptom content with no human medical review, and missing 'this is not medical advice' disclaimers all trigger YMYL demotions. The March 2024 and subsequent core updates wiped out clinics that had scaled AI-generated content without medical sign-off — and the pattern has repeated every core update since.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a clinic outrank a hospital with a smaller team?

Yes — Map Pack and long-tail symptom queries reward specificity. A focused dermatology clinic with a credentialed author, complete GBP, MedicalClinic schema and 30 locally-cited symptom pages routinely outranks a generic hospital page on those queries.

Are AI-written medical articles automatically penalized?

Not for being AI-written, but for lacking medical review. Google's policy is helpful-content-first regardless of authorship. AI drafts reviewed and signed off by a credentialed clinician are acceptable; AI content published without medical oversight is what gets demoted.

What's the single highest-impact local move for a BD clinic?

Categorizing GBP as the specific specialty (e.g., 'Dermatologist', not 'Doctor') and adding doctor-level Physician schema to each practitioner page. This combination unlocks the specialty Map Pack and is still under-implemented across BD.

Should I publish symptom or treatment pages first?

Symptom pages — they capture problem-aware traffic earlier in the journey and are easier to rank because the long-tail is less commercial. Treatment pages convert better but face heavier competition from established hospitals.

How do I prove medical reviewer credentials to Google?

Add a Person schema block on the reviewer's bio page with hasCredential, alumniOf and sameAs links to their BMDC registration, hospital affiliation and LinkedIn. Cross-link reviewer to article via reviewedBy in the Article schema. This gives Google a verifiable entity, not just a name.