Keyword Research for Med Spas: The Terms That Actually Book Treatments

July 1, 202411 min readBy the GlowRank Team

Most keyword research tutorials tell you to find high-volume keywords with low competition and target those. For most industries, that advice is fine. For med spas, it's incomplete at best and actively misleading at worst.

The reason: in aesthetics, search volume and commercial intent don't line up cleanly. A keyword with 2,000 searches a month may be a research query that never converts. A keyword with 90 searches a month may be worth more than your homepage traffic combined. This post walks through how to tell them apart.

The four types of keywords a med spa should care about

Not all keywords serve the same purpose. Before you start researching, it helps to know which bucket a term falls into.

Bucket 1: Treatment + location (the money keywords)

These are the searches where a patient is in-market and looking for a provider right now. "Botox Scottsdale." "Lip filler in Mesa." "Microneedling near me." These have high commercial intent. Someone typing this is typically weeks or days away from booking.

These should be the primary target for almost every page on your site. Every treatment you offer should have a page targeting the treatment name plus your city (and sometimes your neighborhood).

Bucket 2: Treatment questions (the middle-funnel keywords)

"How long does Botox last?" "Does microneedling hurt?" "Is coolsculpting safe?" These are research queries. The patient is trying to decide if the treatment is right for them, not choosing a provider yet. The volume on these is high. The commercial intent is lower.

These are good blog post territory. Not landing-page territory. A blog post that answers a specific treatment question can rank well and pull in patients in the consideration phase, who you then nurture toward a consultation.

Bucket 3: Comparison keywords (the decision-stage keywords)

"Botox vs Dysport." "Microneedling vs chemical peel." "Morpheus8 vs Fraxel." These are patients who have decided to do something and are trying to pick between options. Commercial intent is moderate to high. They're close to booking, just unsure which treatment to book.

These are excellent blog topics for most med spas, and they're under-served in most local markets. A thoughtful comparison post written by (or reviewed by) your actual provider often ranks within weeks.

Bucket 4: Brand and branded-near-me keywords

Your practice name plus city. Competitor names. "Best med spa [city]." "Top-rated med spa [city]." These typically have lower volume but extremely high intent. Anyone searching "[your practice] [city]" is almost certainly going to book. You just have to not fumble the website experience.

How to build your keyword list

Forget the $100/month SEO tools for now. A surprisingly good first-pass list comes from three free sources.

1. Google autocomplete and "People Also Ask"

Start typing "Botox [your city]" into Google. Don't hit enter yet, look at the autocomplete suggestions. Every suggestion is a real search people type frequently. Do this for every treatment you offer. You'll have a list of 50+ terms in twenty minutes.

After you hit enter, look at the "People also ask" boxes. These are the questions Google thinks are related. Each one is a potential blog post if the search volume makes sense.

2. Your own intake forms and consultation notes

Patients often describe treatments in the same language they'd use to search. If every other consultation form says "I want to get rid of my jowls," you have a keyword, "how to get rid of jowls" or "treatment for jowls [city]." Most practices have this language sitting in their CRM and never mine it.

3. Google Search Console

If your site has any traffic at all, GSC will tell you exactly what searches bring people to your site. And, crucially, what searches show your site but don't get clicks. Those are gap keywords. Targeted correctly, they can double your click-through rate from the same rankings.

How to prioritize what you found

Your list is probably 100+ keywords long now. You can't target all of them at once, and you shouldn't try. We use a simple priority score based on three variables:

1. Commercial intent. How likely is someone searching this to book? (Bucket 1 and brand keywords score highest.)
2. Realistic rankability. Is the current top-3 in your market beatable with 1,000–1,500 words of well-executed content, or would you need a domain-level authority you don't have?
3. Your margins on the treatment, a keyword for a $1,500 treatment is worth more than one for a $250 treatment, all else equal.

Rank each keyword 1–5 on each of these. Multiply the three scores. Start with the highest-scoring keywords and work down the list.

The keywords most med spas miss

A few recurring gaps we see in the keyword strategies of practices we audit:

• Neighborhood-level terms. "Botox downtown Phoenix" gets much less volume than "Botox Phoenix," but it's also much less competitive. A practice downtown can rank #1 for it in weeks and pick up patients who specifically want someone nearby.
• Concern-based terms. Patients often search symptoms, not treatments. "How to get rid of marionette lines." "Treatment for dark circles." These intercept patients earlier in the funnel and let you educate them toward the right treatment.
• Brand-versus terms. If there's a national franchise in your area, people search "[franchise] vs independent med spa" type queries. A thoughtful page on why an independent practice is often a better choice can rank and pre-qualify patients toward you.
• Aftercare terms. "Botox aftercare." "Microneedling recovery day 3." These don't look like booking keywords, but people searching them almost always already had the treatment. Ranking for them builds authority, helps your existing patients, and often brings them back for follow-ups.

What to ignore

A few keyword categories to deprioritize or skip entirely:

• National informational terms. "What is Botox" has huge volume and near-zero commercial intent. Healthline and WebMD own it anyway. Don't bother.
• Celebrity treatment speculation. "Did [celebrity] get filler" is a high-volume search type that drives low-quality traffic and almost never books. Leave it to the entertainment blogs.
• Extremely broad terms. Ranking for "med spa" by itself is not realistic unless you're a national brand. Ranking for "med spa Scottsdale" is. Stay local.

Putting it together

Good keyword research for a med spa is less about finding hidden gems and more about systematically covering the treatments you offer with pages that match how real patients search. Most practices don't have a keyword-research gap, they have a treatment-page gap. They know what their patients search for; they just haven't built pages for it.

If you've done the research and you need help actually building out the pages, that's what we do. Otherwise, start with your top-five treatments, build a page for each, and expand from there as you see which ones gain traction.