BBC Mental Wellbeing

A new BBC topic page to support BBC Mental Wellbeing Season 2024.

An SEO challenge, as health is a Your Money or Your Life topic which is harder to rank on search engines.

BBC mental wellbeing feature about fitness guru Joe Wicks, with his portrait, exercise videos, and mental health support information.
BBC “Everyday tips” section showing five wellbeing article cards about managing worries, workplace wellbeing, resilience, loneliness, and helping someone who is struggling.
BBC Wellbeing Online page featuring Lauren Mayberry discussing speaking out despite internet hate, with related programs about social media, screen time, cyberbullying, and online trolling.

1. The Challenge

  • Create a new destination for audiences to discover all BBC content on mental health, supporting the BBC Mental Wellbeing Season 2024.  

  • Health is a Your Money or Your Life topic which makes it harder for a new site to rank on search engines, making SEO a key concern.

  • Meet high BBC editorial standards, have a coherent structure and feature content in a range of formats and from a range of BBC products.

  • It needed to feel useful - to give the audience tools to help themselves and those around them.

2. Strategy

  • The season launch was supported by broadcast, social media and BBC Homepage.

  • Create a coherent, visually pleasing, easily navigable page ready for this new audience.

  • The SEO needed to demonstrate Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness (EAT principles) so it would be searchable.

3. Implementation

  • Audit of available content, divided in to topic slices promoted by keyword research.

  • Maintain an upbeat mood for the page

  • Slice names: Move to improve your mood | Everyday tips | Inspiring stories | Supporting your kids | Wellbeing online | Dealing with life’s challenges | Looking after yourself | Supporting teens and young people | Stories of hope | All about treatment | Workplace wellbeing | Find your calm 

  • Used colourful images focusing on emotion and human faces, and rewrote headlines focusing on emotional hooks and practical advice.

  • Used a range of different content slices to vary the page’s appearance.

To improve SEO:

  • Helpline banner high on the page to benefit EAT principles

  • Keyword searches, checking headings matched popular Google search terms eg Joe Wicks became a fitness guru not a fitness coach, Looking After Yourself renamed Self-Care

  • Got BBC Sport, Children in Need, BBC Sounds etc to include links to my page in their content.

  • BBC mental health documentary was a popular term - I created a new slice just of iPlayer documentaries.

  • Linked to other BBC resources eg Parents’ Toolkit, Tiny Happy People, Sounds, iPlayer, Children in Need to improve SEO visibility

5. Results

  • Straight to the top of Google. Still the second option for BBC Mental Health after the BBC News mental health page.

  • Close to 4 million site visits in 2024.

  • 2025 audience research found the BBC was considered the best brand for covering mental health issues - ahead of Channel 4, ITV, YouTube, social and Netflix. Those that had seen recent BBC mental health content were more likely to think positively about the BBC on key measures.