What keywords should your practice be focused on?

After consulting healthcare practices about Websites, SEO and PPC over the last 5 years, I've been able to learn a ton about what doctors think they know about online marketing and how consumers actually search online. Please allow me to give you some insight so you can begin to improve your performance.

DoctorLogic is a data-driven marketing platform that currently supports over 1,000 doctors including plastic surgeons, dermatologists, dentists and other specialities. What's nice about our platform is that we are able to see data platform-wide, by each speciality that we serve and even down to the individual practice. Our advanced analytics allows us to see data that most agencies just simply aren't able to provide to their clients.

What keywords should your practice be focused on?

One of the common conversations that we get to have with prospects and existing customers regularly is what keywords actually drive the most leads and ultimately the most revenue.

Many doctors want to focus on head terms (also known as trophy/ego keywords) like Best Plastic Surgeon + City Name, Top Cosmetic Dentist near me, etc. While ranking well for this type of term isn't a bad thing, the data clearly shows that MOST consumers are NOT searching that way online.

Consumers who are ready to take action are typically searching for terms related to the procedure. With voice search increasing, it's more important now than ever before that doctors adapt their marketing strategies now to how people are searching for them online. Many experts believe that voice search will make up 50% of all mobile-searches by 2020. With this in mind, most voice searches are long-tail keywords and sometimes long sentences.

Below are a few examples of basic procedure terms and also long-tail procedure-related terms that make up the majority of all searches related to procedures.

Plastic Surgery:

• mommy makeover
• mommy makeover pictures for Hispanic female in her 30s
• How much does a mommy makeover cost in my area?
• mommy makeover reviews for plastic surgeons in my area

Cosmetic Dentistry:

• porcelain veneers
• veneer before and after
• porcelain veneer pricing + city name
• reviews for porcelain veneers near me

The numbers don't lie!

One of my colleagues on our Customer Success Team recently had a conversation with a cosmetic dentist for a campaign that we are managing. We are helping this doctor with SEO, PPC, reputation monitoring and a few other services.

FREE TIP: One of the many benefits of running Google Paid Ads is that Google shares data with you that you typically won't receive from only doing SEO. Even if you only run PPC for 3-6 months, you can learn alot and apply new strategies to your SEO efforts.

The doctor wanted to primarily target terms like "best cosmetic dentist + city name" (I left the city name out to keep private) which is an ego-driven keyword.

We were trying to tell him he should focus more of his budget towards long-tail procedure terms, like "veneers before and after."

He thought more people would be searching online for his preferred terms vs. the terms that we had advised. Below are 2 snapshots of data from this particular practice's campaign.

Best Cosmetic Dentist + City Name:

Veneers Before and After:

As you can clearly see, the procedure term far outweighs the number of searches and clicks than the ego-driven term. The veneer-related term had 50X the volume of impressions (how many times a paid ad is shown) and nearly 8X the volume of clicks (people who clicked on their ad).

If you are spending alot of money on marketing like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Google AdWords (PPC) and simply are not generating many leads, we should talk. While most doctors I meet have worked with a handful of agencies in the last 5-10 years, I've worked with hundreds of doctors and campaigns and I am confident through my consulting and years of experience I can help educate you on how you can be more successful.

While DoctorLogic doesn't manage campaigns for free, I do offer a FREE consultation to any healthcare practice that is actively looking for new ways to grow. When we meet, in addition to giving you an overview of DoctorLogic's Patient Acquisition Platform, I'll be able to tell you how many keywords you are ranking for organically online and what positions that they are in. This will give you better insight into your actual SEO value, so you'll know how much your website traffic is actually worth. You'll then know if you are paying too much for SEO or actually achieving a strong ROI.

I'll also be able to discuss strategies customized for you that you can apply instantly to drive more leads. At the end of our discussion, you can take that free advice and give it to your current provider and you'll also know how DoctorLogic would address your specific gaps to help you grow your online presence and generate more leads.

Can you handle more capacity?

If so, let's begin a discussion. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

To your success!

John Vakidis

I'm a Partner with DoctorLogic. We offer a medical website platform that provides plug-ins and websites built for 1 million doctors and dentists across 150 medical specialities.

Do you have questions about marketing your practice more effectively online? If so, shoot me an email to [email protected] or call me at 469-458-7126.