If you’re a doctor or medical practice partner, you may be wondering if organic SEO or PPC is right for your business. The answer may surprise you — the best solution is often to use keywords to combine both organic SEO and PPC. Here’s how it works.
Organic SEO for Medical Practice vs. PPC
Before we get into how to use keywords to combine organic SEO and PPC, let’s take a minute to review the difference between the two. Organic SEO is the process of optimizing your website for Google’s search algorithm so that your medical practice achieves visibility in the top search results. This can be achieved through optimizing your website content, title tags, meta descriptions, etc.
PPC (or pay-per-click) advertising, on the other hand, is a form of paid advertising where you essentially “buy” your way to the top of Google’s search results by bidding on relevant keywords. When someone searches for one of your keywords, your ad will appear at the top of the list of results – above even the highest-ranking organic result.
Why Use Keywords to Combine Healthcare SEO and PPC?
Now that we’ve reviewed the difference between organic SEO and PPC, let’s talk about why using keywords to combine both is often the best solution for medical practices. The answer comes down to cost and click-through rate (CTR).
Organic SEO is generally a more cost-effective solution than PPC because once you’ve optimized your website for Google’s search algorithm, you shouldn’t have to keep paying for it. Unfortunately, organic SEO can take months (or even years) to achieve results – which may not be feasible if you need leads now.
PPC ads, on the other hand, require ongoing payments each time someone clicks on your ad. With PPC, however, there can be an immediate boost to your lead generation efforts because your ad will appear at the top of Google’s search results as soon as you start running your campaign. Because of the ongoing costs associated with PPC, they are not always a viable long-term solution for medical practices looking to generate leads on a budget.
The question becomes, how do you combine organic SEO and PPC in a way that’s both effective and cost-efficient? The answer lies in using keywords strategically.
Strategic Keyword Use for Healthcare Branding
There are two main ways that medical practices can use keywords strategically to combine organic SEO and PPC: broad match keywords and long-tail keywords.
Broad match keywords are general terms that are relevant to your medical practice – like “family physician” or “ob-gyn.” These types of keywords usually have high search volume but also high competition, which can make it difficult (and expensive) to rank for them organically or run successful PPC campaigns targeting them.
Where broad match keywords have high competition, long-tail keywords have low competition. Long-tail keywords are specific phrases that are less commonly searched but are more likely to convert because they signal higher intent (i.e., someone who searches for “bariatric surgery near me” is further along in their journey than someone who just searches for “weight loss surgery”). In addition, long-tail keywords are usually cheaper to bid on in PPC campaigns than broad-match keywords.
Lower competition keywords typically offer a better ROI even though they have lower volume. The quality of inbound leads from a lower competition term is oftentimes better than a generic, higher-volume keyword.
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Although deciding whether to pursue organic SEO or run a PPC campaign (or both) can feel like a daunting task, there’s no need to go it alone – our team can help! We’re experts in all things digital marketing (including SEO and PPC) at Snap Agency, and we’ll work with you to create a customized strategy that meets your unique needs – ensuring that you get the most bang for your buck.
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