As a medical provider there are many ways that you can spend your marketing dollars. If you want to increase patient leads, search engine marketing may be your best option for your medical practice. When most people want information on a doctor, condition, or treatment, they search Google. So, if they search your specialty, being in the right place at the right time online can give you a competitive advantage. Having first-page search engine rankings means that prospective patients looking for the care you offer will find you. You make it simple and easy for potential patients to connect with you. With an effective ongoing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program, your search engine rankings will improve over time.
The Medical Practice SEO Decision
The difficulty that many medical providers have in making the right SEO decision is that they lack an understanding of SEO, making it easy for poorly qualified or over-priced marketing companies to take advantage of them. Who can you trust? Many marketing agencies have starting prices at well over a few thousand dollars per month. How many new patients would you need to get to cover this monthly cost? Other marketing agencies provide cheap packages starting as low as $500 per month. These marketing companies usually offer a standard cookie-cutter package with generic content generation that doesn’t consider your specific needs.
In general, most medical practices pay $2,500 to $,7500 per month for SEO, though some will spend as little as $500 or as much as $10,000 per month on search engine optimization depending on website size, number of providers, amount of locations, how competitive the online visibility is for the specific specialty, condition, or treatment, and the marketing agency’s level of experience and expertise.
The SEO Process for Your Medical Practice
The right process will assure you that the marketing agency you select can help your medical practice. A good marketing company will evaluate your online presence and ranking potential. This may include:
- Research keywords to that are most appropriate for your practice, but also ones attainable as a first-page ranking—keywords that are not so competitive that first page rankings can’t be achieved.
- Conduct an audit of your website to determine if the website is SEO-ready and if not, what errors need to be corrected.
- Analyze your competitors’ websites to determine how they rank and what SEO strategies will help your site outperform them in the search engines.
- Determine what it will take for you to win in the search engines and develop a proposal customized to your needs.
You need to understand exactly what services are being offered and why. A solid marketing agency will recommend a plan with specific tactics that will be customized to your medical practice.
What About Google Ads?
Google Ads are paid online advertisements that let medical providers like you bid on the opportunity to have an ad appear next to searches on Google.com. In contrast, SEO improvements can help your website rank better on Google Search by making it more relevant to users. Google Ads are currently displayed at the top and bottom of the page, alongside regular search results. Each technique has worth dependent on several elements such the level of competition, the client’s budget, the amount of time needed to see results, and more.
Google Ads and SEO may complement one another when handled correctly. Marketing agencies can carefully employ ads to boost exposure for crucial keywords and drive bought traffic in cases where the medical practice lacks the organic ranking to appear on Page 1. The effectiveness of certain keywords on the target audience can also be tested using Google Ads. The focus will then shift from less successful keywords to those that attract visitors with higher conversion rates and greater engagement.
Similar to this, keyword information from SEO efforts can also be utilized to identify the best places for Google Ads. Finding keywords with high search volume but strong competition, which makes it challenging for a website to rank on the first page of results, will likely make them good candidates for Google Ad campaigns.
Think of Google Ads as a tool to advertise time-sensitive events and provide a quick inflow of traffic when required. The long game in SEO, on the other hand, is about developing enduring authority and a devoted following that will stick with your medical practice indefinitely.
Consider D Media for Medical Practice Marketing with SEO and Google Ads
At D Media, we’ve been providing SEO and search engine advertising services for over 15 years. We are not mass marketers trying to sign up hundreds of medical practices. We are independent consultants who know what it takes to get a medical practice increased online visibly, growing organically over time as Google likes it, and continually increasing website traffic. We specialize in helping providers generate new leads that turn into patients and provide a solid return on your investment.
Contact us for a free initial consultation. Once we understand your needs, we can begin the analysis necessary to develop a customized SEO program.