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 when you search 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.