What the law lets you publish, and what it ends your clinic over
Fertility marketing sits inside a tighter legal box than almost any other clinical specialism, and most clinic websites were written before the box existed. The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021 and the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 came into force in January 2022. They require ART clinics and banks to register on the national registry, set eligibility conditions for treatment, and outlaw commercial surrogacy. A page offering surrogacy packages with pricing isn't an SEO tactic, it's a criminal one.
The sharper edge is the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, which prohibits any advertisement relating to pre-natal or pre-conception sex determination or sex selection, with imprisonment of up to three years. "Family balancing" — a euphemism borrowed from overseas clinic sites, and one that has genuinely appeared on Indian pages written from US templates — is exactly the phrase that puts you there. Search your own site for it today.
On advertising conduct generally, the medical profession's 2002 conduct code remains the practical reference point; the National Medical Commission's 2023 replacement was put in abeyance shortly after notification, so don't build a content policy on it. The durable principle in both: factual information about your services is fine, claims about your superiority are not.
Success rates, without lying and without hiding
Every prospective patient asks the same question, and almost no Indian clinic answers it in a way that survives scrutiny. "Success rate" isn't one number — it's a fraction, and the clinic picks the denominator. Choose flatteringly and you can publish 70% while doing worse work than the clinic publishing 38%.
Publishing an honest number is a competitive act, not a compliance one. The couple reading your page is on their second opinion and has already seen a 75% banner and mistrusted it.
- Publish live birth rate per cycle started, by age band, with the period covered and the number of cycles in each band. Small n? Say so. A clinic that admits a band is small reads as more credible, not less.
- Never publish a single headline percentage. It is the number a lawyer, a journalist and a well-read patient all attack first.
- Explain why your number is what it is. A clinic taking complex referrals will have lower rates and a better story. Tell it.
| Metric | What it counts | What it hides |
|---|---|---|
| Pregnancy rate per embryo transfer | Positive test after a transfer happened. | Everyone who never reached transfer. Flatters most; quoted most. |
| Clinical pregnancy rate | A pregnancy confirmed on ultrasound. | Miscarriage. It is not a baby. |
| Live birth rate per cycle started | Babies, divided by everyone who began treatment. | Almost nothing. This is the honest denominator. |
| Cumulative live birth rate per patient | Babies after all transfers from one egg retrieval. | How many cycles it took, and what that cost. |
| Any of the above, unstratified by age | A clinic average. | That outcomes fall sharply with maternal age. An average is a statement about your patient mix, not your lab. |
The cost page is the page
Fertility treatment is excluded under most Indian health policies, so this is a cash purchase for a couple who have usually already spent on tests, IUI attempts and second opinions. Cost queries — ivf cost in india, ivf cost in hyderabad, is ivf covered by insurance, ivf emi — carry the highest commercial intent in the category, and the clinic publishing a real break-up gets the call.
Published Indian quotes for a fresh cycle commonly land in a broad ₹1.5–₹3.5 lakh band, and the spread is that wide for reasons you can itemise. Your own numbers are the ones that matter — publish them with the components separated, so nobody arrives at reception discovering medication was extra.
- Consultation and diagnostics — AMH, semen analysis, scans, hysteroscopy where needed. Small individually, meaningful together.
- Stimulation medication, which varies with age, AMH and protocol and is the largest source of quote variance. Give a range, say what moves it.
- Egg retrieval and lab work, including whether ICSI is bundled or charged separately. The commonest hidden line item.
- Embryo freezing and annual storage, priced per year. People forget it exists until the bill arrives.
- Frozen embryo transfer cycles, far cheaper than a fresh cycle. Couples budgeting for one cycle are usually budgeting wrong, and saying so is a kindness that converts.
- Donor gametes, PGT-A and other add-ons, each with a plain note on who actually needs it. Recommending against an add-on on your own price page is the most persuasive paragraph on the site.
Explainers, in the order people actually search them
The mistake is starting the content at IVF. Nobody starts at IVF. They start with a symptom, a failed year of trying, or a test result they don't understand, and they arrive at IVF three or four search sessions later — often after IUI has failed.
The diagnostic layer, which almost nobody owns
low amh meaning, normal sperm count range, pcos and getting pregnant, how long to try before seeing a fertility doctor. High volume, little competition from clinics, currently answered by international content farms. A clinic with a reproductive endocrinologist on staff can write these better than anyone and rarely does.
They don't convert on the visit. They earn the bookmark and the branded search two months later, which is the mechanism that works in a considered category. The logic we describe for healthcare content under Google's YMYL bar applies with a longer lag.
The treatment layer
- IUI — what it is, when it's appropriate, realistic per-cycle expectations, when to stop. Clinics under-write it because it earns less. It's the first treatment most people search.
- IVF and ICSI — the difference, when ICSI is indicated and, honestly, when it isn't.
- Frozen embryo transfer — timeline, preparation, cost difference.
- Donor egg, donor sperm and embryo donation — written inside the ART Act framework, eligibility conditions stated.
- Egg freezing — a growing metro search category with a different searcher entirely: unmarried women in their early thirties, researching quietly. Write for her, not for a couple.
The layer nobody writes: what happens when it fails
ivf failed what next, how many cycles should we do, when to stop ivf. These searches happen, and the results are grim to read because they're mostly written by people selling a next cycle. Answer them straight, including the possibility of stopping and of adoption. You lose one cycle's revenue and gain the referrals of everyone who noticed.
From the first search to the first consult — and what we guarantee
Plan for months, not days. A fertility decision runs across multiple search sessions, a failed treatment or two, at least one second opinion and a conversation with family. Your CRM knows the real first-touch-to-consult lag. Almost no clinic measures it, and it's the most useful number you could pull this week.
That window needs a site that stays useful without pushing. Doctor profiles with real qualifications, registration numbers and sub-speciality — patients choose a consultant, not a building. A second-opinion page saying what to bring. A tagged WhatsApp path, because that's where Indian fertility enquiries live. And a booking flow that doesn't demand a phone number before answering a question.
A single-centre clinic sits at ₹40,000/mo with us; a multi-city group with per-centre pages, a diagnostic content layer and outcome reporting is ₹75,000/mo and up. All ex-GST, month-to-month after the first quarter, every asset yours — numbers on our pricing page.
We don't promise a ranking position, for the same reason you don't promise a pregnancy: nobody controls the outcome, and the promise itself tells a patient something about your judgement. We freeze your trailing-90-day count of qualified enquiries from organic search on day one, and if we haven't beaten it in 90 days we keep working free until we do. That's how the guarantee works, and why we take three clients a month.