Medical clinics and offices can’t just rely on foot traffic to get new clients or patients. They need high-ranking websites to attract more customers and help them expand. With a high-ranking medical website on search engine results pages (SERPs), you can reach your target audience better, which eventually helps boost local traffic.
You can use many digital marketing strategies to promote your medical website, but two stand out: search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC). Let’s find out the reasons medical marketers prefer these strategies and the differences between them. Learning about these can help you decide if SEO or PPC works best for your medical website.
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SEO and PPC Explained
As reported by Digital Authority Partners, SEO and PPC are two of the most widely used and effective digital marketing tactics. Some marketers use SEO to make their websites rank high on SERPs, while others prefer PPC to promote their services or products.
SEO
Search engine optimization is a term to describe strategies that can help optimize a website for search. People nowadays prefer to look for information online, especially on medical specialists, hospitals, clinics, offices, and services. But instead of scanning the first few results pages, people prefer to select only the first few results.
Your medical website must be at the top of Google search results to grab your audience’s attention. You can improve your website rankings and secure that top spot with SEO. It can promote your business to help you take the lead in a local market.
Some popular SEO strategies are as follows.
- Creating content meant for humans and not for robots
- Peppering your content with high-value keywords
- Putting user experience foremost
- Building links
- Regular content posting
- Optimizing website speed and components
PPC
Pay-per-click is an advertising strategy that can quickly improve your medical website’s popularity. To post regular ads, you must pay the publisher or search engine (Google or Bing) to host your ad. It’s costly to advertise on a search engine’s home page or results page where your ad might not reach your target audience.
In PPC, you pay only when someone clicks on your link, whether your ad is on a website, social media page, or a search engine results page. Because of this, marketers find PPC more practical than other digital marketing tools.
Below are some popular PPC strategies:
- Using modified broad-match keywords
- Using Google Analytics
- Taking advantage of social media reach
- Creating buyer personas
- Finding new ways to display PPC ads
Differences Between SEO and PPC
SEO and PPC are two powerful strategies you should not overlook. Understanding how each one benefits your medical marketing strategy is essential in improving your reach online.
Meanwhile, here are the differences between the two:
The Time to Expect Results
You can’t expect to see the results of your SEO campaigns right away. Building a fully optimized website can take weeks and months, but the results will undoubtedly impact your future marketing strategies.
SEO strategies such as link building are very effective optimization tools. But building your reputation using links and backlinking will take a very long time to do.
Climbing up and staying on top of Google’s search results do not happen overnight. Once you’ve achieved page one or a higher level on SERPs, you must maintain your position through consistent SEO tactics.
Meanwhile, PPC can take your site to the top right away. By creating an engaging and well-managed ad, you can expect better engagement from your audience. Ads that get more attention are more likely to get you to the top as long as your audience uses the correct keywords to find your business.
There is instant and measurable engagement in PPC, which means that you do not need to wait. With PPC, you can test different campaigns for your medical website and make changes on the go.
Advertising Budget
Running an SEO campaign depends on many factors and is usually more expensive than running PPC ads. The reason for this is that it takes time to see the results of your work.
Also, you need a lot of resources and time to create and maintain an SEO campaign. To ensure the success of your campaign, you need to hire an expert SEO company to work on your SEO strategies.
On the other hand, PPC ads are more affordable and practical to use. Setting up a PPC campaign is easy; you only need online tools such as Google Ads to do this.
You don’t need to pay extra for tools and software or for a marketing team to create a PPC campaign. But you might need to hire a digital marketing team to help you make successful PPC ads.
Website Domain Authority
SEO strategies can help you rank high on SERPs to achieve domain authority. When properly used, SEO can give you lasting results to enjoy higher ranks longer. SEO strategies, such as optimized content, social media SEO, and link building, can help you build your reputation and attract more attention to your practice.
Meanwhile, PPC ads won’t be as successful in building domain authority but can drive more traffic to your landing pages instantly.
Organic Search Rankings
Expect a higher organic search ranking when you use quality-focused keywords. You can achieve higher organic rankings by using SEO and PPC, as long as you conduct in-depth keyword research and create a relevant keyword strategy.
Improve your organic search rankings by carefully understanding search engine algorithms. Improve your website content and landing pages and formulate engaging titles and meta descriptions. These can help you rank higher, whether you are using SEO or PPC.
Final Words
SEO and PPC ads are effective digital marketing strategies for medical clinics. Learning the benefits of and the differences between these two can help you find the best marketing strategy to boost your online reach. It won’t be long before you get better traffic to your local medical office when you apply SEO and PPC properly.