Most “healthcare SEO” advice is written for clinics: map listings, reviews, “doctor near me”. If you are a manufacturer, a health publisher, a hospital group or a patient organisation, the question is a different one: who holds the page for a treatment query, and is there a place for you on it? I looked at 24 results pages, eight conditions in three markets, to find out.
Two jobs under one name
Healthcare SEO is one of the most searched and least contested phrases in the field. In the United States, Ahrefs puts “healthcare SEO agency” at 3,800 searches a month, “healthcare SEO” at 3,400, “medical SEO” at 2,200 and “SEO for healthcare” at 1,800, all at difficulty 7 or below. Much of that demand comes from practices looking for an agency, and the first page reflects it: LinkedIn posts, Reddit and Quora threads, a clinic’s own blog and a few small agencies. A site rated 21 with no referring domains holds seventh place.
That is a thin results page, but it answers a narrow question. A brand needs a different one, and this note is about the second job: ranking for what patients and clinicians search, not for what agencies sell.
Who holds the top ten for a treatment query
On 3 October 2026 I took the top ten organic results for eight conditions in the United States, Germany and Spain, in each market’s language: type 2 diabetes, psoriasis, migraine, eczema, high blood pressure, asthma, allergic rhinitis and osteoporosis, each as a “treatment” query. For every result I worked out who runs the site.
| Who runs the result | United States (54) | Germany (61) | Spain (60) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Institutions: hospitals, universities, medical societies, patient groups, public bodies, insurers | 39 (72%) | 38 (62%) | 32 (53%) |
| Publishers and journals | 10 (19%) | 12 (20%) | 20 (33%) |
| Manufacturer-run sites | 1 (2%) | 8 (13%) | 4 (7%) |
| Q&A and video | 3 (6%) | 1 (2%) | 0 |
| Other, or owner not confirmed | 1 (2%) | 2 (3%) | 4 (7%) |
The numbers in brackets are the organic slots counted, excluding shopping, video carousels, forums and “people also ask”. Three things stand out.
In the United States the field is nearly closed to anyone who is not an institution. Seven of every ten slots belong to hospitals, universities, societies and public bodies. Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic is among the sources of the AI Overview for all eight queries. A brand does not get into that set by publishing a better article.
Germany and Spain are more open, for different reasons. In Germany the public insurers TK and AOK together hold five slots, and manufacturers hold eight, through disease sites whose companies sit in the imprint, a result of how German law treats advertising for prescription medicines. In Spain journals and publishers take a third of the slots, led by Elsevier’s elsevier.es with six.
Language does not stop a foreign institution. Mayo Clinic’s Spanish-language pages hold six of the 60 Spanish slots, as many as Elsevier and more than any Spanish hospital (Clínica Universidad de Navarra has five). A Spanish brand is competing with American institutions’ translations, not only with local ones.
What it means for a brand
- Pick the market before the topic. The same condition is a different contest in each country. “How do I rank for asthma?” has three answers.
- Be realistic about the US treatment layer. If you are not a hospital, a university or a patient organisation, the explainer for a common condition is not where the opening is. Product, brand and professional queries are yours to win; I did not measure them here.
- Look where the field is thinner. A third of the slots in Germany and 40% in Spain go to publishers, journals and brands, which is where a new entrant has a chance.
- Judge it per query, not per condition. Within one market the mix changes: German diabetes and hypertension results had no manufacturer-run site, while migraine and eczema each had two or three.
A plan in six steps
Decide which job you are doing
Practice or clinic SEO is a local-search problem. Brand or organisation SEO is the one described here. They need different keywords, different pages and different people.
Measure the results page in each market before commissioning content
Ten queries per condition, top ten per query, and a column for who runs each result. An afternoon of work, and the local SERP checker shows each market as its searchers see it.
Choose the layer where your kind of site can rank
Institutions take condition explainers. Manufacturers can take disease information in markets where the law allows it. Publishers take reference. Match the page to the layer, not the other way round.
Make credibility legible
Named authors, a named medical reviewer and a review date, in markup an engine can read. Healthcare SEO across countries covers it, including why medical review is a scheduling constraint.
Check that the crawlers can reach you
In the crawler check of 94 healthcare sites, none of the 43 readable pharma and medtech files blocked any AI crawler, while 10 of 23 health publishers blocked at least one AI search crawler. Access is an opening for brands that leave it open, provided the firewall agrees: the robots.txt tester covers the file, and your WAF is a separate question.
Measure what AI answers cite
Search Console’s generative AI reports give impressions without clicks; what they can and cannot tell you is worth reading first. Add a manual check: the same ten questions, each market, each month.
What I did not measure
Eight conditions, one query each per market, one date. Treatment queries only, so nothing on symptoms, professional searches or product names. Results as Ahrefs records them for each country, not for a city. And ownership was confirmed from the site’s own domain, footer or imprint; where I could not confirm it, the result sits in “other”. The pattern is strong, but it is eight queries per market, and your conditions may differ.
Sources
- Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and SERP overview, 3 October 2026: search volumes for “healthcare SEO” and related terms in the US; top-10 organic results and AI Overview sources for 24 treatment queries in the US, Germany and Spain.
- Site ownership from each domain, footer or imprint; the method and the German and Spanish manufacturer-run sites are in Pharma SEO across markets.
/robots.txtof 94 healthcare sites, requested once each on 3 October 2026 with this site’s robots.txt fetcher.