skip to content
Google SERP showing top-ranked infographic for brain tumor symptoms
Healthcare SEO  ·  2024

Ranking High-Competition
Keyword Clusters with
Infographic Images on Google SERP

How a leading Bangalore hospital secured top Google positions for competitive healthcare search terms — using infographic image optimisation as the primary SEO lever.

#1
Google Image SERP Position
Brain Tumor Symptoms Cluster
5
Optimisation Pillars Deployed
Keyword Research → Schema → Speed
Top 3
SERP Positions Secured
High-competition healthcare terms
01 — Brief

The Opportunity

Visual search as a competitive moat in high-stakes healthcare SEO.

A leading hospital in Bangalore — providing global standards of healthcare and surgical excellence — operates one of the most comprehensive medical content libraries in the region. Their blog covers a wide range of health topics, including complex conditions such as brain tumours, attracting patients, caregivers, and researchers seeking authoritative information.

Despite building strong organic text rankings, the hospital's content team recognised that image search remained an untapped channel. Google's SERP increasingly surfaces image carousels and infographic panels at the very top of results for medical queries — yet most healthcare publishers treat images as decoration rather than rankable assets. First Launch was engaged to change that.

The mandate was clear: develop and execute an image SEO strategy capable of placing the hospital's infographic content at the top of Google SERP for competitive keyword clusters around brain tumour symptoms — using visual content as a precision SEO instrument.

Client
A leading hospital in Bangalore providing global standards of healthcare and surgical excellence
Vertical
Healthcare · Medical Content SEO
Year
2024
Primary Goal
Rank high-competition keyword clusters via infographic image optimisation on Google SERP
Delivered by
First Launch — SEO & Content Strategy
02 — Challenge

Two Barriers to Break Through

Cracking Google Image SERP for medical terms requires solving for both algorithmic trust and technical precision simultaneously.

Barrier One
Competing Against the Internet's Most Authoritative Health Publishers
Medical search terms like "brain tumor symptoms" carry some of the highest competition in organic search. Major health publishers, government health bodies, and established hospital networks dominate page one. Breaking into top image positions required a strategy that combined keyword precision, content authority, and technical edge — not simply good design or strong brand recognition alone.
Barrier Two
Images Invisible to Google Despite Strong Underlying Content Authority
The hospital's existing blog images lacked structured data, carried unoptimised file sizes that slowed page load, and were not aligned with the keyword clusters driving the most relevant search demand. Without proper alt text, Image Object schema, and an infographic strategy built around search intent, even exceptional medical content was invisible to Google's image crawlers — a wasted opportunity sitting on pages with genuine E-E-A-T signals.
03 — Approach

The Five-Pillar Image SEO Framework

Every decision was mapped to a specific ranking signal. Nothing was decorative.

01
Keyword Research
Used Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs to map the full search cluster around brain tumour symptoms — identifying high-volume targets, separating primary terms from long-tail variants, and validating image search demand before any creative work began.
Research
02
Image Optimisation
Wrote precise, keyword-rich alt text for every image, incorporating primary and secondary terms. Compressed files to the smallest viable size using JPEG and PNG formats, ensuring fast load without quality loss — a direct signal to Google's image crawlers and a Core Web Vitals input.
Technical
03
Infographic Creation
Designed infographics that translated complex medical information into visually engaging, shareable assets. The creative direction was guided entirely by search intent and CTR improvement from image panels — not aesthetics alone. Content accuracy was validated against clinical sources.
Creative
04
Schema Markup
Implemented Image Object structured data across all target blog posts. This gave Google explicit signals about image subject matter, improving relevance scoring and increasing the probability of rich result appearances in image carousels for high-competition healthcare queries.
Structured Data
05
Speed & Delivery
Reduced image file sizes further, implemented caching mechanisms, and optimised server response times. Page speed improvements fed directly into Core Web Vitals scores — a confirmed ranking factor that compounded every other image SEO signal already deployed.
Performance
The Outcomes
#1
Google Image SERP Position
Top 3
SERP Positions Secured
5×
Optimisation Pillars Deployed
↑ CTR
Click-through from Image Panels
04 — Results

SERP & Search Console Evidence

Rankings verified across Google Image Search and organic SERP panels — cluster-level dominance, not a single-keyword anomaly.

Search Console Performance
Search Console results showing ranking performance and click growth for brain tumor symptom keyword cluster
Search Console data confirming impression and click growth for the target keyword cluster following full deployment of the five-pillar image SEO framework.
SERP Position — Image Carousel
Google SERP showing hospital infographic ranking in image carousel at position one for brain tumor symptoms
Hospital infographic appearing in Google's image carousel at position #1 for high-competition brain tumour symptom queries — the primary target achieved.
SERP Position — Extended Cluster Coverage
Google SERP showing additional top positions secured across related brain tumor keyword variants demonstrating cluster-level dominance
Additional SERP coverage showing top-3 image positions secured across related keyword variants in the brain tumour cluster — demonstrating that the strategy achieved cluster-level dominance, not an isolated single-keyword win.
"
Images are rankable assets, not decoration. When you treat an infographic with the same strategic rigour as a page — keyword alignment, structured data, technical performance — it competes at the very top of Google like any other piece of content.
First Launch  ·  Healthcare SEO Strategy  ·  2024
Work with First Launch
Ready to turn your content into a top-ranking SERP asset?
Get in touch View all case studies
05 — FAQ

Questions About This Engagement

Common questions about image SEO strategy, technical implementation, and the results achieved for this healthcare client.

Want results like these?
We reply within one business day.
Get in touch
  • Image SEO is the practice of optimising visual assets — infographics, photos, diagrams — so they rank in Google's image search results and image carousels on regular SERP pages. For healthcare websites, where users actively search for visual explanations of symptoms, conditions, and procedures, ranking in image carousels can drive significant qualified traffic that text-only SEO misses entirely.
  • We used a combination of Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs to map the full search cluster around the target topic. This meant identifying not just the highest-volume head terms, but the secondary and long-tail variants that share the same searcher intent — ensuring the infographic content and its alt text, file naming, and surrounding copy were aligned with every significant search entry point in the cluster.
  • Image Object schema is a type of structured data (JSON-LD) that gives Google explicit, machine-readable information about an image — its subject, URL, dimensions, and relation to the surrounding content. When implemented correctly, it improves relevance scoring for image search queries and increases the likelihood of the image appearing in rich result carousels, knowledge panels, and featured image positions at the top of the SERP.
  • Google's image index typically refreshes faster than its standard web index. After deploying the full five-pillar framework — including schema markup, alt text optimisation, file compression, and featured image setup — we began seeing movement in image search positions within a few weeks, with top-3 placements confirmed in Search Console data shortly after.
  • Yes — the five-pillar framework (keyword research, image optimisation, infographic creation, schema markup, and page speed) is topic-agnostic. Any health condition or medical procedure with strong visual search demand is a candidate. The key variables are the quality of the underlying content, the search volume and intent of the target keyword cluster, and the level of technical implementation applied to each image asset.
  • Page speed affects both user experience and Core Web Vitals scores — both of which are confirmed Google ranking factors. Large, uncompressed images are one of the leading causes of slow page load, directly harming LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) scores. By compressing images, implementing caching, and optimising server response times, we improved the technical foundation that underpins all other SEO signals on the page.

Explore More Case Studies

Take a look at First Launch case studies for tips & tricks on how to improve your own brand performance

 
Featured SEO

SEO for Interior Design Companies: From Invisible to Page 1 in 3 Months

A Bangalore interior design and construction studio went from zero search visibility to Page 1 rankings and 5.2x more impressions...

 
Social Media

Social Media Marketing Engineered for Saves — 2.2× Instagram Growth in Six Weeks

One content system change took Line of Thought from 105 to 235 followers — with 39% of the audience in...

 
Performance Marketing

How structural discipline built a US audience acquisition engine at $8.19 per course sign-up — from zero

A greenfield Google Ads build for a US health-tech education platform. First 30 days. 148.5 course sign-ups. 24.79% conversion rate....

View Case Studies