Subject: SEO Report April 2026 Sent: 2026-05-07T16:16:16Z ยท From: vezia.alexis@gmail.com (Alexis) ยท To: emrah.cinik@drcinik.com, burcu.ozyalin@drcinik.com, sera@drcinik.com Dashboard: https://dashboard.tomassous.com/dr-cinik/april-2026 --- Hello everyone, ๐Ÿ“Š Full interactive April 2026 dashboard with all data, charts and keywords: https://dashboard.tomassous.com/dr-cinik/april-2026 April was difficult: 291 SEO leads (-18.5% vs March). We now understand why and have taken action. Two main causes: the Google Core Update (March 27 to April 8) and a Facebook Ads issue we resolved on May 5. ๐Ÿ“ฐ SEO News March 2026 Core Update completed April 8 (12 days). Aggregator and comparison sites lost visibility, authoritative first party sites gained. Second wave of volatility around April 23. Google did not announce anything, but tracking tools all picked up movement. Likely Google still adjusting. Environment remains unstable. Homepage drop on "hair transplant turkey" diagnosed, see below. ๐Ÿ” The Facebook Ads issue The homepage lost position 4 on "hair transplant turkey" on March 28 and never recovered. After ruling out every SEO cause (only the homepage was dropping while every other page held), we identified two Facebook Ads campaigns (allworld and romania_muti) sending 11,000+ unqualified sessions to the homepage since March 28. Mostly Sub Saharan Africa and Romania, 91 to 95% bounce rate, 10 to 15 second sessions. Why this hurts SEO: Google's NavBoost system watches user behavior on pages and re-ranks based on it, regardless of traffic source. Thousands of users bouncing within seconds means the page gets demoted. NavBoost was confirmed under oath at the 2023 US antitrust trial and in the May 2024 Google API leak. Campaigns paused May 5. The other Meta campaigns convert at 9.5% and continue running, only these two were the problem. The full technical analysis we shared with Burcu is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YEGAYc7eCPMGc-0Y_Z6CQya0S3O-O_-r1aAyuEdoAKM/edit?usp=sharing . Important rule going forward: no paid campaign (Meta, Google Ads, or any other channel) should point to indexed SEO pages of the website. All paid traffic must use dedicated non-indexed landing pages, as Google Ads campaigns already do. ๐Ÿ“Š Lead Performance Market April March Change ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง English 210 260 -19.2% ๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ท French 42 55 -23.6% ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡น Italian 20 29 -31.0% ๐Ÿด London 19 13 +46.2% Total 291 357 -18.5% London grew +46% on lower traffic. Italy continues the demand softness flagged since February. ๐Ÿ“ Markets ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง English. Biggest hit. "Hair transplant turkey" 2 โ†’ 8 (FB Ads impact). Dedicated pages held: "beard transplant turkey" stayed #1. ๐Ÿ‡ซ๐Ÿ‡ท French. Best signal of the month: +41 Semrush top 1-3 keywords, biggest gain of the year. Should translate into more leads in May/June. ๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡น Italian. Still difficult, 17 declined / 2 improved. Core Update + demand softness. ๐Ÿด London. +46% conversions, multiple #1 on local PRF keywords. ๐Ÿ‡น๐Ÿ‡ท ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡ธ ๐Ÿ‡ญ๐Ÿ‡ท Turkish, Serbian, Croatian. Stable. Serbian holds 40+ keywords at #1. ๐Ÿค– LLM Traffic 402 sessions (+9.8%), 11 leads at 2.74% conversion (well above SEO average 0.75%). Channel diversifying: Perplexity +30.9%, Gemini +26.7%, Copilot +200%. ๐Ÿ› ๏ธ Actions taken in April Hero homepage redesigned (EN/FR/IT): authority positioning, sport partnership prominent, "as seen in" media band reputation widgets Internal linking optimized on the 3 head pages Content depth review on the main commercial pages Competitive benchmark completed across the leading clinics in our space, to identify what is now considered standard for ranking on these queries โœ๏ธ Content, PR & Links All April content published. Link building continued as planned. See in the dashboard for more. ๐Ÿš€ Recommendation: validate the EN authority push (17,000 โ‚ฌ) We are now ready to activate the most urgent EN authority components. The timing makes sense for three reasons: NavBoost recovery only takes us back to the previous level. To go beyond position 4 on "hair transplant turkey" we need external authority signals. The market is not waiting. Several leading UK and US clinics in our space significantly increased their EN authority signals over the same period (new medical certifications, aggressive UK content production, paid media expansion). The competitive gap is widening every month. Reddit and AI Overviews matter more than ever. A Reddit thread sits at position 4 on "hair transplant turkey". AI Overviews pull heavily from Reddit and tier 1 media. Two components urgent for the next 60 days: Digital PR US/UK (15,000 โ‚ฌ): editorial campaign with sport partnership and celebrity patient angles. Targeted journalist outreach, US and UK press coverage, PR assets creation, reporting on coverage tracking. Reddit & Forums (2,000 โ‚ฌ): 30 Reddit mentions + 10 forum mentions. Cheapest but highest leverage for AI Overview citations and Reddit SERP visibility (Reddit currently ranks position 4 on "hair transplant turkey"). Proposed timing and payment: Month Action Budget May Digital PR launch (50%) + Reddit & Forums (100%) 9,500 โ‚ฌ June Digital PR completion (50% balance) 7,500 โ‚ฌ Total 17,000 โ‚ฌ ๐Ÿ“ One more proposal: monthly patient case studies Some hair transplant clinics publish weekly patient case studies on their blog (example format: https://www.drserkanaygin.com/blog/dante-hair-transplant-istanbul-4600-grafts/). Each one is highly specific: named patient, country, exact graft count, technique, personal story. These articles rank well and get cited in AI Overviews because Google's recent updates favour first-hand personal content over generic medical text. We would like to do the same on the Cinik blog. We will write the articles in EN, FR and IT. We are not asking the clinic team to write anything. We just need the raw patient data per case. What we need from the clinic team, by the 15th of each month, for 2 patient case studies: โ€ข Procedure details: type of alopecia, technique used, number of grafts, duration, any specific notes โ€ข 2-3 photos before the procedure โ€ข 2-3 photos after shaving โ€ข 2-3 photos right after the transplant โ€ข Regrowth photos at key milestones: 10 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months โ€ข Final regrowth photos at 10-12 months โ€ข Short patient testimonial in their own words โ€ข Written permission from the patient to publish on our web channels Photos can be shared via Google Drive separately. Best regards, Tom and Alexis