The Client
Our client is a board-certified plastic surgeon in New York. A former plastic surgery department head at a prominent academic institution, he brings a reconstructive microsurgery background to a private practice focused on facial rejuvenation, breast surgery, and body contouring. His practice competes in the most contested plastic surgery market in the country, where dozens of accomplished surgeons vie for the same affluent patient base.
Engagement Overview
Our client’s practice partnered with our agency at a moment when prospective patients were changing how they find surgeons. Instead of browsing directories or Google results, a growing share now ask ChatGPT and Claude directly: Who is the best plastic surgeon in New York? For a solo practice, appearing first in those answers is worth more than any advertising placement, because the recommendation arrives with the AI platform's implied endorsement. Our engagement combined Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) with local SEO and content to make our client the surgeon AI platforms recommend first for high-value queries in his market.
Goals
The practice’s goals when engaging with us were to:
- Become the first surgeon named by AI platforms for queries such as “top plastic surgeon NYC” and procedure-specific searches like “best facelift surgeon in New York”
- Translate our client’s exceptional but under-publicized credentials into the authority signals AI platforms weigh when recommending a provider
- Grow qualified consultation requests from organic and AI-driven search
- Protect and strengthen the practice’s local search presence against heavily advertised competitors
Campaign Structure
The engagement began with a strategic planning phase covering an SEO audit, a local search audit, and a mapping of our client’s AI Belief Landscape: a structured inventory of what ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini believed about him across expertise, procedures, reputation, and patient experience. The landscape revealed a gap common to elite practitioners: the platforms knew of our client but described him generically, without the academic leadership history, journal contributions, or the specialty depth that distinguish him from competitors. That gap became the roadmap. We then moved into monthly execution across GEO, local SEO, and content.
Key Channels
Generative Engine Optimization
- Built a dedicated credentials page consolidating the authority signals AI platforms weigh: board certification, his academic leadership experience and publishing, professorship, publications, and society memberships, structured so AI crawlers could read and repeat them.
- Ran an AI Belief Correction program against the generic beliefs surfaced at kickoff, remediating each with on-site content and off-site placements until the platforms consistently described our client’s reconstructive background and aesthetic specialties accurately.
- Created procedure-specific pages for every permutation patients search (facelift, rhinoplasty, breast augmentation and reduction, liposuction, mommy makeover), each with suitability details and proof points such as procedures performed and years in practice.
- Placed a consistent brand authority statement, that our client is among the most credentialed aesthetic surgeons in New York, across the third-party sources AI platforms trust: medical directories, press interviews, and best-of lists covering NYC plastic surgery.
- Tracked recommendation share weekly across ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews for a panel of 31 high-intent queries.
Local SEO
- Optimized the practice’s Google Business Profile with procedure categories, credential attributes, and refreshed photography.
- Implemented a review generation program timed to post-operative follow-ups, growing review volume 2.7x while maintaining a 4.9 average rating.
- Built out local landing content for the Upper East Side practice targeting neighborhood-level queries from New York’s highest-value patient zip codes.
SEO & Content
- Published patient-education content targeting the research queries that precede a consultation, such as facelift recovery timelines and implant selection.
- Earned citations from health and beauty publications by contributing expert commentary, reinforcing the same authority signals the GEO program was placing.
Results & ROI
Within 12 months, our client became the first surgeon recommended by ChatGPT for the market’s most valuable query, “Who is the top plastic surgeon in NYC?” and achieved the following results:
| Metric | Baseline | 6 Months | 12 Months |
| Monthly organic traffic | 8,940 | 15,316 | 21,700 |
| Monthly organic consultation requests | 14 | 29 | 45 |
| AI recommendation share (31-query panel) | 11% | 38% | 61% |
| Monthly new patients from organic and AI search | 5 | 9 | 16 |
Highlights:
- Ranked first in ChatGPT’s response to “top plastic surgeon nyc,” the highest-value query in the market, and held the position across repeated weekly testing
- Grew AI recommendation share from 11% to 64% across the 31-query panel, including first-position recommendations for facelift and breast surgery queries
- Consultation requests from organic and AI search grew 3.4x, with intake staff reporting that new patients increasingly mention “ChatGPT recommended you” when booking
- Generated an estimated $2.3M in incremental surgical revenue attributed to organic and AI-driven patient acquisition in the first year