Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)

The most common and effective ways to market on the Internet are through the use of SEO and PPC. These are the most direct methods as they place your website in front of someone who is looking for a dentist in real time.

Gilleard Dental Marketing uses both PPC and SEO to send potential new patients to your website.

Learn more about SEO and PPC in the article below.

To learn about our PPC management program, click here.

What is PPC?
PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and is the method used by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing (MSN) to get revenue for placing ads on search results. When someone types in search terms (called "keywords" in Internet marketing lingo) that match ones you have in your advertising campaign, your ad comes up on the right or on top of the regular results (called "natural" or "organic" results). You literally pay per click and the cost of the click depends on how many people are searching for the term and how many advertisers are vying to advertise to these people. It is a bidding process and matches the economics of supply and demand. For example, a lot of dentists like to market "cosmetic dentistry" on search engines but fewer people search for cosmetic dentistry than for a dentist, so the cost of a click on a cosmetic dentistry ad is higher.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
This, simply, is the process of coding your site so that search engines can find it and post it on the results when specific search terms are entered by the searcher. Something called a "crawler" has come along and indexed your site for what search terms might be relevant to it. The game is to get the site onto the first page of results for these search terms. Whether or not your site ends up there is not only based on the relevancy of your site, but also on how "popular" your site is, based on the number of links to it from other websites, especially those sites that themselves have a high popularity score. SEO is normally done on specific search terms, such "cosmetic dentistry", "Invisalign ____town" and "dentist _____town".

Is SEO cheaper?
Before going further, we would like to dispel a common misconception: that once you have completed search engine optimization, there is no further cost. This is often not the case. As the game is to get onto the first page of results, there are very few spots (eleven) that a lot of search engine optimizers are competing for. Furthermore it is definitely preferable to be in the top half of these spots. The high position usually has to be maintained and this involves a continuous jockeying of the SEO factors and a cost to the company or individual doing it, which can be comparable to the cost of running a PPC campaign.

Which to use, PPC or SEO?
SEO can have an initial outlay and then a few months runway for it to work so it can be more cost effective to start with PPC and then assess if you want to add SEO to the mix. SEO can be cheaper per patient procured but isn't always because of the potential cost of keeping the site high on the results. SEO is more challenging in larger urban areas where the competition can be fierce, and can be relatively simple in a rural area or small town. To evaluate whether SEO will work well for your practice, a feasibility study can be done. If it's a choice between only one or the other, in most cases we recommend PPC for a dentist. There are some distinct marketing advantages to PPC:

  • The ability to write precisely targeted ads that include hot buttons which cause a prospective patient to want to click onto your website. In this way we can drive traffic to your website.

  • The ability to control the placement of the ad high on the page for maximum exposure and clicks.

  • There are search terms that can be either difficult or cost prohibitive to optimize a website for so that the site will show up on the first page of results. These search terms can be advertised using PPC and in this way you can drive people to your site for various procedures. These can include cosmetic dentistry, dental implants, Invisalign, veneers, etc.

Do SEO and PPC guarantee success?
There are other ways to drive business to your site on the Internet but SEO and PPC are the most effective. However, driving people to your site is only half of the equation as once a potential patient arrives on your site, the site needs to create an interest and action in scheduling to come into the office. We have seen countless site that despite people clicking onto it are, by report, not bringing patients in the door. The missing element is proper marketing.

Read more about website creation here.

For information on how we can help you set up a successful Internet Marketing campaign, call 951-736-9053 or email us here.

For more information on other Internet marketing related services, click on a link below:

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