CASE STUDY
How a national behavioral health network achieved record-breaking admissions through organic search.
Client: A national behavioral health network (anonymized)
Channel: Organic Search (Google) + Direct
Engagement: August 2025 and beyond
Industry: Behavioral Health · Addiction Treatment · Detox & Residential
Organic leads per month (avg)
Location Page search (clicks)
Background
Will Do SEO was engaged in August 2025 to manage organic search for a multi-location behavioral health network operating across the U.S. The network offers detox, residential, and outpatient addiction treatment services across an expanding set of markets.
The challenge wasn’t to fix a broken program. It was to scale it through a period of expansion while maintaining admission volume and lead quality across both established and newly launched locations.
What made this challenging:
The network operated across more than several locations, each competing in its own local market. New locations were launched during the engagement period, requiring organic traction with no existing search presence. At the same time, the work had to sustain lead quality and conversion rates while growing total volume.
Two external factors added further complexity. A seasonal demand cycle created predictable but significant swings in traffic and admissions. In September 2025, an industry-wide SERP measurement change required adjustments to how performance was tracked and reported. Behavioral health is also a YMYL vertical, meaning Google applies heightened scrutiny to rankings and content quality throughout.
Strategy & Approach
Will Do SEO’s engagement focused on three core pillars: brand authority consolidation, local search presence development, and data integrity, so performance reporting reflected actual patient and family behaviour, not search engine artifacts.
1. Brand Authority & Local Search
For a behavioral health network, brand trust is the primary conversion driver. Families seeking treatment are not browsing. They are searching for a name they have already heard. Organic strategy focused on reinforcing brand search and local signals so every location appeared prominently for both brand and local queries.
2. Multi-Location Local Presence
Each facility requires its own organic footprint: location-specific content, structured data, and Google Business Profile optimization. As new markets launched, organic strategy was deployed in parallel with facility openings, allowing new locations to generate measurable organic leads within their first months of operation.
3. Data Integrity & Honest Reporting
In September 2025, Google removed the &num=100 URL parameter used by rank-tracking tools. This caused industry-wide impression drops and artificial position improvements in Search Console data across virtually all websites. Will Do SEO identified this immediately and communicated it to the client so the data distortion was not misread as an organic performance change. Clicks, leads, and admissions were used as the primary performance metrics throughout, keeping reporting tied to the outcomes that actually drive revenue.
Results
Admissions: Consistent Performance
Organic admissions have remained stable throughout 2025 and into 2026 across an expanding network. Multiple single-month records have been set since the engagement began.
Leads: High Volume, Sustained Across All Locations
Organic calls, messages, and form submissions have averaged approximately 8,600 per month across the network since the engagement began. Volume has remained consistent across all locations, setting new network highs.
Conversion Rate: Quality Held Firm
Across the engagement period, the organic channel has maintained a lead-to-admission conversion rate between 2.5% and 3.5%. For a network of this scale, that is a tight band. The consistency indicates organic search has been attracting high-intent leads throughout: people actively seeking treatment, not casual browsers. That rate has held through new location launches, seasonal dips, and the September 2025 SERP measurement change, confirming that traffic quality has not eroded during the growth period.
Local SEO: Organic Presence Built Market by Market
A multi-location network ranks location by location, against local competitors, in local SERPs. Each facility requires its own organic footprint: location-specific content, structured data, and a fully optimized Google Business Profile. Will Do SEO built and maintained that infrastructure across every active market while launching new locations in parallel.
The results are visible in the location page data. Across seven active markets, location pages have consistently attracted high-intent organic clicks throughout the engagement period, with click-through rates running between 10% and 20%. That range indicates organic search has been surfacing the right pages to the right searchers, not generating incidental traffic.
Click volume grew across every established market between the first half of the engagement and the second half, with gains ranging from 12% to 50% depending on market maturity and competitive density. Location 7, launched mid-engagement, generated 278 clicks in its first months of operation. A structured local SEO strategy at launch can meaningfully shorten the time between a facility opening and its first organic lead.
New Market Activation
Two new locations were launched during the engagement period and incorporated into organic strategy from day one. Both generated measurable organic search volume within their first full months of operation, cutting the typical lag between a facility opening and its first organic leads.
| Market A | Market B |
| The first location generated over 100 organic leads in its opening month and recorded an admission within the first 30 days. It has continued to grow since, establishing a stable organic presence in a competitive new market. | The second location generated over 100 organic leads in month one, with lead volume nearly doubling in month two and its first admissions following shortly after. Early traction has continued to build. |
Key Takeaways
This engagement demonstrates what a well-managed organic search program looks like for a multi-location behavioral health network. Not a turnaround or explosive growth, but sustained, high-volume performance while the network expanded.
Organic search can be the primary admission-driving channel for a behavioral health network at scale. Local SEO compounds over time: every established market generated more organic traffic in the second half of the engagement than the first. Brand search growth is a measurable proxy for offline marketing effectiveness. Conversion rates held steady throughout, confirming that volume growth did not come at the expense of lead quality. New markets generated organic leads within their first month when local SEO was built in parallel with facility opening. When industry-wide measurement changes occur, identifying and communicating them quickly ensures clients make decisions based on real performance data.
Let’s Talk About Your SEO
If you are a behavioral health provider who wants organic search to be a real growth channel, not a line item that never delivers, I would like to hear about what you are working on.