From compliance gap to second location for a ketamine + mental health clinic in Oregon.
A mental health, psychiatry, and ketamine clinic in Oregon came in with three compounding problems: no LegitScript certification (so ketamine ads couldn't run compliantly on Google or Meta), no local-SEO architecture (service pages named "Ketamine," not "Ketamine Treatment [City], Oregon"), and a Google Ads account stuck on a thin brand campaign and a wasteful broad match campaign. We fixed it in sequence — compliance first, website + SEO second, paid ads third. The clinic now ranks on page one for ketamine treatment searches across multiple Oregon cities, has a second location under renovation, and is running provider-hiring Meta campaigns to staff the expansion.
Page 1
Ketamine Rankings
multiple Oregon cities
2
Locations
second under renovation
3
Channels Live
Google · Meta · SEO
Hiring
Provider Meta Ads
to keep up with demand
Snapshot
Client snapshot.
- Location
- Oregon (multi-city service area)
- Practice type
- Mental health · psychiatry · ketamine treatment clinic
- Service mix
- Ketamine therapy, psychiatric evaluation + med management, talk therapy
- Compliance status at engagement
- No LegitScript certification
- Ad state
- Thin brand campaign + wasteful broad match campaign
- Engagement scope
- Compliance + website + SEO + Google Ads + Meta Ads
The Problem
Three barriers stacked in the wrong order to be solved independently.
Ketamine clinic marketing has all the usual structural problems — wrong campaign architecture, weak landing pages, mis-aimed keyword strategy — plus one that sits upstream of all of them: compliance. Without LegitScript certification, Google and Meta will restrict or reject ketamine advertising no matter how well the campaigns are built. An agency that doesn't know this builds the campaigns, watches them get flagged, and has no explanation for why.
This clinic had all of it stacked. The Google Ads account ran a brand campaign that barely spent and a broad match campaign that burned what it did spend. The website said what the practice did in general terms but said nothing about what it did for patients in specific Oregon cities — service pages were named after treatment categories instead of search-aligned phrases. And LegitScript wasn't in place, so compliant ketamine advertising on Google and Meta was off the table entirely.
None of these problems could be fixed independently. They had to be sequenced — compliance first, website + local SEO second, paid ads third — because paid advertising built on top of a broken website produces poor conversion rates, and ketamine advertising without LegitScript produces policy violations no matter what.
From the Field
“When we audit a ketamine clinic's ad account and find campaigns that won't run or get flagged for policy violations, the first question isn't keywords or bidding. It's LegitScript. Most clinics that come to us either don't have certification or don't know they need it. Getting that right before building anything else saves months of wasted effort.”
Mike Funkhouser
Founder, Practice Growth Co
Audit Findings
What we found in the first audit.
The structural failures upstream of every campaign decision.
No LegitScript certification
Required by both Google and Meta to advertise ketamine treatment. Without it, ketamine ads are rejected at submission or flagged after launch — regardless of how well the campaigns are built. The clinic didn't know certification was required.
Google Ads stuck on broad match + thin brand
Brand campaign barely spent. Broad match campaign produced clicks from "what is ketamine" and unrelated mental health searches with no negative-keyword structure and no intent segmentation across ketamine, psychiatric eval, and talk therapy.
Service pages named for categories, not searches
"Ketamine" instead of "Ketamine Treatment [City], Oregon." A patient searching by city couldn't reliably find the clinic because no page on the site was built to rank for that query.
Site performance suppressing both rankings and conversions
Slow page speed and weak technical SEO fundamentals — title tags, header hierarchies, internal linking. Both Google rankings and ad-campaign conversion rates were paying the tax.
Website + SEO Rebuild
Service pages rebuilt around city × treatment combinations, not generic categories.
The highest-leverage SEO change was rebuilding service pages around specific city × treatment combinations. "Ketamine" became "Ketamine Treatment [City], Oregon." Each major service — ketamine therapy, psychiatric evaluation, medication management, talk therapy — got its own city-specific pages targeting the Oregon markets the clinic serves.
This is the SEO equivalent of campaign intent segmentation. A page built specifically for "ketamine therapy for depression [city] Oregon" ranks for that query. A generic "Ketamine" page does not. We rebuilt the site around story and conversion at the same time — why the practice exists, what providers believe about mental health care, what a first visit looks like — so the same pages that compete in local search are also the pages converting paid traffic.
Before
Generic service-category site
- • Pages named "Ketamine," "Psychiatry," "Therapy"
- • No city-level architecture
- • No page-one rankings for treatment searches
- • Weak title tags, header hierarchy, internal linking
- • Page speed hurting both rankings and conversions
Page-one treatment rankings
0
After
City × treatment architecture, conversion-ready
- • City + treatment service pages ("Ketamine Treatment [City], Oregon")
- • Distinct pages per service × city the clinic serves
- • Page one on ketamine treatment searches across multiple Oregon cities
- • Optimized titles, structured headers, internal linking
- • Rebuilt for story, conversion, and page speed
Page-one treatment rankings
Multiple Oregon cities
Three-Phase Build
Compliance → Website + SEO → Paid Ads.
Sequence is the strategy. Each phase unlocks the next, and skipping the order is what produces the failures we keep getting hired to fix.
Phase 1 — LegitScript certification
Documentation of physician oversight, treatment protocols, and clinic credentials. 4–8 week process. Until it's complete, compliant ketamine advertising on Google and Meta isn't possible. We started this in week one.
Phase 2 — Website + city-level SEO
City × treatment service pages, rebuilt copy that tells the practice's story, page-speed fixes, and the technical SEO fundamentals (titles, header hierarchy, internal linking) the previous build was missing.
Phase 3 — Google Ads, intent-segmented
Ketamine, psychiatric eval + med management, and general mental health split into distinct campaigns. Low-funnel keyword strategy — "ketamine treatment near me," "psychiatrist accepting new patients" — not research-phase queries. Negative-keyword list built to filter mismatched intent.
Phase 3 — Meta Ads, two objectives
Patient acquisition campaigns targeting adults in Oregon service areas. Plus a second objective: hiring. As demand outgrew provider capacity, we launched Meta campaigns targeting licensed psychiatric NPs and therapists to staff the expansion.
Honest Attribution
What we report when conversion tracking is broken.
The clinic's scheduling system runs on a separate domain from the main site, which breaks standard Google Ads conversion tracking. We don't fabricate a CPL through a broken funnel.
Appointment-volume trends reported directly by the clinic as the primary ROI signal
Search-term relevance and impression share on high-intent queries
Position data on the keywords most correlated with booked appointments
Lead quality reviewed against the clinic's ICP for each campaign
Data flow
Cross-domain conversion tracking can be implemented; it's flagged as a Phase 4 infrastructure improvement.
Results
Page-one rankings. Second location. Hiring to keep up.
Page 1
Ketamine Rankings
multiple Oregon cities
2
Locations
second under renovation
3
Channels
Google · Meta · SEO live
Hiring
Meta Campaigns
psych NPs + therapists
Why This Matters
“Consistent demand growth, location capacity constraint, expansion investment, provider recruitment. That sequence is a more durable proof of ROI than any single CPL number. It means the marketing is working at a level that has changed the business.”
Mike Funkhouser
Founder, Practice Growth Co
What Carries Over
Four lessons that generalize beyond ketamine clinics.
Compliance is the first audit question, not the last
If your campaigns are getting flagged or rejected, the answer is rarely in the keywords. For ketamine, LegitScript is the gate. For other regulated specialties, there are equivalents. Audit compliance before tuning the account.
Service-page architecture is the SEO equivalent of campaign segmentation
A single "Ketamine" page can't rank for "ketamine treatment [city] Oregon." A single ad group can't convert ketamine therapy patients and psychiatric eval patients with the same copy. Both fixes are the same idea applied to different surfaces.
Sequence the build to match how patient demand actually compounds
Compliance unlocks the channels. Website + SEO converts the traffic. Paid ads scale demand. Doing them in a different order — or in parallel without sequencing — wastes the spend that comes downstream.
Honest attribution beats inflated metrics
When tracking is broken, we say so and orient optimization around the signals we trust — appointment-volume trends and low-funnel keyword quality. A defensible CPL we can't compute is better than a fabricated one we report anyway.
If your ketamine or mental health ads aren't running cleanly
We'll audit compliance and account structure before any engagement begins.
If your ketamine clinic, psychiatry practice, or mental health center isn't reaching patients through search, or if your ad campaigns are being flagged for policy violations, the issue is almost always structural — and it usually starts upstream of the account. Book a strategy call and we'll audit compliance and account structure before any engagement begins.
Continue exploring
Related work and reading.
Services
Related services
Healthcare Google Ads
Capture high-intent searches and convert them into booked consults.
Healthcare SEO
Build organic visibility around procedures, specialties, and patient intent.
Meta Ads
Create demand for cash-pay and specialty healthcare services.
Conversion Optimization
Tighten the path from inquiry to consult to confirmed appointment.
Specialties
Related specialties
Case Studies
Outcomes from similar engagements
A cash-pay behavioral health practice cut CPL from $150 to $35 in 30 days.
A cash-pay behavioral health provider in Toronto offered autism assessments, couples therapy, and individual therapy at premium rates. The Google Ads account had been running on broad match for months with no negative-keyword structure, sending traffic from people who would never pay her rates to a landing page that described services without speaking to anyone in particular. We rebuilt the campaigns around a high-income-professional ICP, separated her three services into distinct campaigns, and launched fast, purpose-built landing pages on Cloudflare — outside her bloated existing site — that positioned the practice for the patient she actually wanted. Same budget, 77% lower CPL, 3–6× the qualified lead volume, in 30 days.
How a 20+ doctor network reached $40K/month in managed ad spend and 75% organic growth in six months.
The multi-doctor network needed to scale acquisition across 20+ providers in multiple specialties without making each doctor a one-off project. We built individual websites, procedure-specific landing pages, per-doctor CPL benchmarks, and a documented onboarding system for new providers. The network now runs $40K+/month in ad spend with 75% organic traffic growth and standardized per-doctor performance reporting.
How a cancer clinic in Mexico cut Google Ads CPL from $325 to $95 in 60 days.
A cancer treatment clinic in Tijuana was spending real money on Google Ads and getting leads that didn't convert. Within 60 days of rebuilding the landing page around the emotional reality of a patient evaluating international cancer treatment, and restructuring campaigns by keyword intent rather than running everything together, cost per lead dropped 71%, lead volume tripled on the same budget, and the lead-to-consultation rate exceeded 50%.