One Campaign Across 26 UK Newspaper Titles
Vera Clinic is an Istanbul hair transplant and cosmetic surgery provider competing for UK and international patients. Absolute Digital Media built a digital PR programme around dental and hair health research with named in-house clinicians, doubling the referring domain profile from 561 to 1,137.
What did Absolute Digital Media achieve for Vera Clinic?
Absolute Digital Media's Digital PR campaign for Vera Clinic delivered 26 UK newspaper titles from one dental campaign (all live), +103% referring domains (561 to 1,137), 12 named clinician placements at an average DR of 88 and 279 AI citations across 124 pages (UK, seven platforms).
An overseas clinic that British patients had to be persuaded to trust
Vera Clinic is a hair transplant, cosmetic surgery and dental aesthetics provider based in Istanbul, Turkey, treating international patients from more than 40 countries through contracted hospitals and medical centres in the city. The clinic operates a multilingual patient services team covering English, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian.
Alongside hair restoration, the business runs a dental aesthetics arm covering cosmetic dentistry and the Hollywood Smile treatment category. Those two service lines were the commercial focus of the programme, and the landing pages behind them were the specific targets the campaigns were built to support.
One campaign, 26 titles, all still live
Authority figures from Ahrefs Site Explorer and the Ahrefs backlink index, veraclinic.net, subdomains mode, measured from programme start to peak. Highest-authority placements are Yahoo Style and DrBicuspid, both DR 94, with 10 placements at DR 89 or above. The organic traffic and ranking results Vera Clinic holds are shared with the SEO retainer and reported in full on the Vera Clinic SEO case study.
A multi-award-winning agency
Integrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026
Best Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026
Standout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026
Best Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026
Best New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025
Best Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024Integrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026Best Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026Standout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026Best Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026Best New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025Best Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024 Britain is where medical tourism marketing is hardest
The choices that shaped the programme
Build campaigns around named in-house clinicians
Every campaign and every reactive placement carried a named, credentialled Vera Clinic clinician as the expert voice, with the dental campaigns fronted by the clinic’s in-house dentist, Dr Selin Kılıç. Journalists were given a real specialist with a checkable background rather than a brand statement. What was rejected: unattributed brand commentary and agency-written spokesperson quotes. UK health and lifestyle desks will not run medical commentary without a named clinician behind it, and the attribution is also what makes the coverage extractable later.
Target the landing pages, not the homepage
Campaign topics were reverse-engineered from two specific commercial pages, cosmetic dentistry and Hollywood Smile, rather than pointed at the homepage for brand links. Halloween sugar content was built for the cosmetic dentistry page; celebrity smile analysis was built for the Hollywood Smile page. What was rejected: homepage-only branded link building, the default in medical tourism because it is easy to sell and easy to measure. Authority pointed at the homepage improves the domain. Authority pointed at the page that converts improves the business.
Write about British consumer habits, not about Turkish clinics
Campaign subjects were chosen from what UK readers search and UK journalists publish: sugar content in supermarket confectionery, celebrity smiles, viral social media health trends. Nothing about medical tourism, prices or procedures. What was rejected: content about hair transplants in Turkey. That material places on comparison sites and offshore PR wires, reaches an audience already deep in the funnel and does nothing for the credibility gap that keeps British patients out of the funnel in the first place.
Build for syndication rather than for a single hit
Campaign data was structured so that a regional desk could localise or lift it without rewriting. The confectionery study ranked brands by teaspoons of sugar above the recommended daily allowance, a format that reads instantly and travels intact across a newspaper group’s shared network. What was rejected: bespoke exclusives pitched to one national title. An exclusive produces one link. A syndicable asset produces twenty-six.
Who ran what
Campaign strategy and ideation, led by Ben Austin
The named-clinician attribution model, the decision to reverse-engineer campaign subjects from the two treatment pages, and the syndication-first construction of every asset.
Expert positioning and clinician briefing
Building Dr Selin Kılıç and the clinic’s other specialists into quotable media assets, with credentials journalists could check and commentary they could run without rewriting.
Data research and asset production
The confectionery sugar analysis against NHS guidance (which sits between 19g and 30g depending on age) and the celebrity smile ranking, each structured so a desk could publish it directly.
UK and international outreach
Placement across the UK regional newspaper network, national health and lifestyle desks, US health publishers and European titles in Spain and the Netherlands.
Who worked on this account
Jack Hawtin leads the outreach team at Absolute Digital Media, running link building and outreach strategy mainly for iGaming clients, alongside adult industry brands, interior design, and a smaller portfolio…
Alex is Head of Content at Absolute Digital Media, overseeing content production and ideation for regulated-sector clients in iGaming, finance, and healthcare. He specialises in creating content that performs reliably…
Shane Fox is Lead Designer at Absolute Digital Media, responsible for the agency’s creative output and for the design of everything a client actually sees: campaign creative, brand systems, landing…
Lewis Esson is Head of SEO at Absolute Digital Media, leading a team of seven across organic strategy for gambling, lending, adult and regulated ecommerce brands. He joined ADM as…
A campaign construction outcome, not an outreach volume one
Referring domains doubled across the programme, from 561 to 1,137, with almost every earned placement carrying a link rather than an unlinked mention. The verified named-clinician layer runs to 12 placements at an average Domain Rating of 88, led by Yahoo Style and DrBicuspid at 94, and the confectionery study added 26 regional newspaper links to a single commercial page from one release.
The confectionery study ran as “10 worst sweets and chocolates for sugar intake” across 26 UK newspaper titles including the Eastern Daily Press, Oxford Mail, The Northern Echo, Glasgow Times and Bournemouth Echo. Every placement links to the cosmetic dentistry page, and all 26 remain live. The celebrity smile study placed with DrBicuspid, the leading US dental industry publication, with a direct citation to the Hollywood Smile page: professional peers rather than lifestyle desks doing the citing.
Attribution and page targeting in combination is what made the difference. Naming a real clinician got the coverage; pointing that coverage at the treatment pages rather than the homepage converted it into commercial ranking movement. Most clinic PR does the first and skips the second, which is why most clinic PR produces domain authority and no revenue.
| Publication | DR | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Yahoo Style | 94 | Best skincare for adult acne |
| DrBicuspid | 94 | Top ten most attractive celebrity smiles |
| Healthline | 92 | Expert skincare and cryotherapy guidance |
| MSN | 92 | Dangerous social media beauty trends |
| Mashable | 91 | Hair loss treatment guidance |
| Elle Spain | 90 | Hairstyle and hair health feature |
| Verywell Mind | 90 | Named clinician commentary on health and wellbeing |
| Harper's Bazaar Netherlands | 89 | Most requested hairstyles |
| The Sun | 89 | Clinicians warn against a viral social media hair trend |
| Everyday Health | 89 | Scalp and hair health guidance |
| The Everygirl | 77 | How to whiten teeth naturally |
| Tyla | 67 | Why you should not brush your teeth immediately after breakfast |
Named clinician commentary verified in the Ahrefs backlink index. Separately, the confectionery sugar study syndicated across 26 UK newspaper titles (Eastern Daily Press, Oxford Mail, The Northern Echo, Glasgow Times, Bournemouth Echo, Bradford Telegraph and Argus, East Anglian Daily Times, The Argus, South Wales Argus, Worcester News, Swindon Advertiser, Ham and High, Dorset Echo, Hampshire Chronicle, News Shopper, Watford Observer, Somerset County Gazette, Your Local Guardian, Ipswich Star, Hereford Times, Norwich Evening News, The Bolton News, Bucks Free Press, News and Star, The Westmorland Gazette and Your Local Gazette), each linking to the cosmetic dentistry page, all still live.
What clinics and medical tourism brands should take from this
What Vera Clinic say
Digital PR for clinics, answered
How much does digital PR cost for a clinic or medical tourism brand?
Cost is driven by the depth of the expert layer and the number of markets targeted, not by outreach volume. Building named clinicians into quotable media assets takes work before it produces coverage, and each additional territory needs its own media list. Absolute Digital Media scopes retainers against the treatment pages they are built to support.
Why attribute coverage to a named clinician rather than the brand?
Because it is the difference between being published and being ignored, and later between being cited and being invisible. UK health desks will not run medical commentary without a named specialist behind it, and AI systems extract expertise in the same shape: a claim, a named expert, an institution and a source. Vera Clinic’s campaigns were fronted by its in-house dentist, Dr Selin Kılıç, which is why they placed on Healthline, Verywell Mind and Everyday Health.
Can healthcare brands run digital PR under advertising restrictions?
Yes, provided the campaign subject is not the treatment. Compliance exposure comes from claims about outcomes, safety or efficacy, none of which appear in consumer research on sugar content, celebrity appearance or social media trends. Vera Clinic earned coverage across 26 UK newspaper titles without a single campaign about its procedures.
What kind of content gets clinics coverage in national and regional media?
Data about consumer habits, with a named clinician interpreting it. Sugar content in everyday products, celebrity appearance, seasonal health behaviour and viral social media trends all place with UK health and lifestyle desks. Vera Clinic’s most syndicated campaign analysed the sugar content of British confectionery against NHS guidance.
How do you get one campaign into multiple newspapers?
By designing the asset for syndication before you pitch it. Regional desks within a newspaper group share content, so a study structured to be lifted without rewriting travels across the whole network. Vera Clinic’s confectionery study ran across 26 titles from a single release, each carrying a link to the same treatment page.
Should digital PR links point at the homepage or at landing pages?
At the pages that convert, wherever the campaign topic makes it credible. Homepage branded links improve domain authority and rarely move commercial rankings. Vera Clinic’s campaigns were reverse-engineered from the cosmetic dentistry and Hollywood Smile pages, which is why the ranking movement followed the coverage.
Does digital PR help with AI search visibility for healthcare brands?
Directly, and attribution is the mechanism. Language models assemble health answers from publishers such as Healthline, Verywell Mind and Everyday Health rather than from clinic websites, and they extract commentary attributed to a named expert far more reliably than commentary attributed to a brand. Vera Clinic’s clinicians are cited by name across all three, and the domain holds 279 AI citations in the UK.
How do you measure the results of a digital PR campaign?
Against the authority earned and where it points, then against the commercial rankings that authority supports. For Vera Clinic the digital PR measures were referring domain growth of 103%, twelve named-clinician placements at an average Domain Rating of 88, and 26 syndicated links to a single treatment page. Placement counts are an input. They are not the result.
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