How Absolute Digital Media built a GPhC-registered online pharmacy to 62,704 monthly organic sessions, ranking on the UK’s largest medicine terms against the national chains.
Absolute Digital Media's SEO campaign for PostMyMeds delivered 62,704 monthly organic sessions (from 1,425), 2,031 keywords in the top three (from 7), 2,388 keywords in positions four to ten (from 68) and +692% organic search visibility.
PostMyMeds is a UK registered online pharmacy, competing against Superdrug Pharmacy, Lloyds Pharmacy and the established online-only operators for patients who would rather order a treatment than book an appointment to collect a prescription.
The competitive set defines the task. Those brands carry high street recognition, national advertising budgets and authority accumulated over decades, and health content is judged against expertise and accuracy standards that commercial categories are not. PostMyMeds set out to hold the largest medicine search terms in the UK against that field, as a specialist.
Traffic and keyword figures are from Ahrefs Site Explorer, UK database, measured from campaign start to peak. From the client’s reporting on the first campaign period: organic search visibility up 692%, top-three positions up 371%, organic traffic up 681%. The two sources agree on direction and scale.
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 
The decision that shaped everything, made by SEO strategy lead Ben Austin, was structural. Every medicine page was built to sit within the condition it treats rather than as a standalone product listing. A pharmacy providing prescription-only medicines through a consultation service has to present those medicines within a clinical context rather than as products for sale, so the condition-led structure is the compliant form. It is also how patients actually search. The rejected alternative, a product catalogue with medicines as items, handles neither.
The outcome: position 6 on orlistat, 51,000 monthly searches, held by a specialist against the chains. The sumatriptan page holds position seven on 48,000 monthly searches. The mometasone nasal spray page holds position four on 15,000.
More than 7,000 crawl errors and a large body of orphaned pages meant the site was not being read properly, and no amount of content or authority work would have changed that. Orphaned pages are the most commonly missed issue on a large ecommerce build. A page with no internal links pointing at it may exist, may be perfectly written, and will not be found. Resolving the internal linking structure did two jobs: it made the pages discoverable, and it made every existing link work harder.
A full backlink analysis was run and the spam removed before any acquisition began, followed by blogger outreach to build quality placements. In health categories the sequencing is not a preference. Building authority on top of unresolved toxicity means every earned placement is offsetting damage as well as earning position. Clearing first meant every subsequent placement counted once, at a controlled rate appropriate to a pharmacy domain.
Every article produced was reviewed by the medical professionals and pharmacists working at PostMyMeds before publication. This is the part most agencies skip because it slows delivery, and it is the part that decides whether health content performs. A page that has been through clinical review reads differently from one that has not. It also protects the client, because for a registered pharmacy, clinical accuracy is a regulatory matter before it is a marketing one.
The content audit across the top-level category pages mapped the overlap between similar categories and subcategories, and those pages were rebuilt and reassigned before the blog programme scaled. On a treatment estate covering dozens of conditions with overlapping symptoms and medicines, cannibalisation is the default state. Adding content into that overlap multiplies it rather than growing the visibility, so the resolution came first.
Ben Austin set the structural call the account ran on: put every medicine inside the condition it treats, which satisfied the regulatory constraint and matched patient search behaviour with one architecture. The sequencing followed from it: crawl first, disavow before acquisition, cannibalisation resolved before content scaled. That order is why traffic could grow from 1,425 to 62,704 monthly sessions and hold.
Alex Stott led the condition-led content estate: category pages rebuilt and reassigned out of overlap, medicine pages written in clinical context, and a blog programme with every article reviewed by the pharmacy’s own pharmacists and medical professionals before publication. That clinical review is what lets health content clear the expertise and accuracy bar, and the estate now holds 2,031 top-three keywords, up from 7.
Jack Hawtin led the off-site sequence: full backlink analysis and disavow first, then blogger outreach building quality placements in a category where scrutiny is at its most severe. Clearing before acquiring meant every earned placement counted once, and the profile that resulted supports medicine pages ranking against national pharmacy chains on the largest terms in the category. See our link building service.
Shofiur Rahman led the remediation of more than 7,000 crawl errors and the rebuild of the internal linking structure that brought the orphaned pages into the index and distributed link equity across the treatment estate. On an estate this size that work is the foundation everything else stands on: the medicine pages that now hold positions two to seven on the UK’s largest medicine terms were only findable because of it.
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…
Shofiur Rahman is Head of Technical at Absolute Digital Media, leading the team responsible for everything the agency builds and runs: client websites, internal applications, infrastructure, AI systems and the…
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…
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…
Organic traffic grew from 1,425 to 62,704 monthly sessions, an increase of more than forty times, measured in Ahrefs from campaign start to peak. Keywords in the top three grew from 7 to 2,031, and positions four to ten from 68 to 2,388. On the client’s reporting for the first campaign period, organic search visibility rose 692%, top-three positions rose 371% and organic traffic rose 681%, and the two sources agree on direction and scale.
The orlistat page went from 15 monthly sessions to 5,821 and from 17 ranking keywords to 118. The sumatriptan page went from 3 sessions to 1,448. Those are two of the largest medicine search terms in the UK, held by a specialist pharmacy against the national chains.
| Page | Lead keyword | Volume | Pos. | Before | After |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orlistat | orlistat | 51,000 | 6 | 15 | 5,821 |
| Sumatriptan | sumatriptan | 48,000 | 7 | 3 | 1,448 |
| Mometasone nasal spray | mometasone nasal spray | 15,000 | 4 | 16 | 3,076 |
| Colgate Duraphat | colgate duraphat | 2,300 | 2 | 0 | 3,597 |
| Acid reflux | indigestion tablets | 2,700 | 4 | 12 | 1,102 |
| Aciclovir | acyclovir tablet | 1,600 | 4 | 0 | 1,339 |
| Derbac-M | derbac m liquid | 2,000 | 4 | 0 | 709 |
| Desogestrel | desogestrel 75microgram tablets | 1,300 | 4 | 0 | 1,491 |
| Azithromycin | azithromycin 500 | 2,100 | 7 | 12 | 836 |
| Homepage | post my meds | 1,200 | 1 | 889 | 2,035 |
Source: Ahrefs Site Explorer, UK. Before and After are monthly sessions to each page; pages showing 0 held no rankings when the campaign began.
This programme is delivered through our healthcare SEO and ecommerce SEO services, run by our SEO agency team.
By building the medicine page within the condition it treats rather than as a standalone product listing. That structure provides the clinical context a registered pharmacy needs and matches how patients search. On this account the orlistat page reached position six on a term carrying 51,000 monthly searches.
Prescription-only medicines cannot be promoted to the public in the UK, which is why an ordinary product catalogue approach does not work for a registered pharmacy. Presenting medicines within a condition and consultation context is the structure that satisfies the requirement, and it happens to be the structure that performs.
Pages with no internal links pointing at them. They may exist and be perfectly written and will not be discovered or ranked. On a large estate they are common, invisible in most reporting, and fixing the internal linking usually returns more than the next tranche of content.
Where the profile carries low-quality links from previous practice, and before starting any acquisition. Health content is assessed more severely than any other category, so building on an unresolved profile means each new placement offsets damage rather than adding position.
Substantially in health categories, because content is assessed against expertise and accuracy criteria. On this account every article was checked by the pharmacy’s own pharmacists and medical professionals before publication. It also removes the regulatory exposure of publishing inaccurate clinical information.
By auditing and reassigning before scaling content. Conditions, symptoms and medicines overlap heavily, so competing pages are the normal state rather than an occasional fault, and publishing into that overlap multiplies it.
Organic traffic grew from 1,425 to 62,704 monthly sessions and keywords in the top three from 7 to 2,031, with positions four to ten up from 68 to 2,388. Medicine pages including orlistat and sumatriptan now rank on the largest medicine search terms in the UK against the national pharmacy chains.
Technical remediation shows nothing on its own and must come first. Content and structural work typically produce movement within two quarters, and the compounding continues for years. The largest gains here arrived several years into the programme rather than in the first.
If your category restricts how you can present your product, the structure of the site is usually where the answer is. Book a consultation and we will show you where the biggest gains are.
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