When we talk about driving growth with search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC), we’re talking about ways to get to the top of the search engine results. We’re talking about outranking competitors and outstripping advertisers. We’re talking about winning both organic and paid search engine traffic.
For healthcare marketers, this is really important. According to a recently published report from The Telegraph, some 7% of daily Google searches are health-related. In a world where there are 3.5 billion searches per day worldwide, that translates to an estimated 2.45 million health-related searches per day. Which makes sense when you start to consider the wide variety of reasons someone might “hit the Googles” with a health-related question.
While SEO and PPC have the same goal—get your business to the top of the search engine and drive people to your website—each digital discipline encompasses different means for getting there. Understandably, this can create some confusion among people looking to launch new or updated digital marketing efforts.
So we set out to answer some of the frequently asked questions we receive about the relationship between SEO and PPC:
Search engine optimization (SEO) consists of various strategies, tactics, and best practices that help websites and web pages rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a search engine advertising model where you pay each time a user clicks on an ad. The ads are tuned to show up in search engine results when specific audiences use specific search language. Businesses that are running a campaign will only pay when a user actually clicks an ad and visits the website. You don’t have to pay for just displaying the ad.
What they pay depends on the competition for specific search terms—higher-volume terms typically have a higher cost per click. In the screenshot below, you can see an example of a PPC ad. While the search result looks and feels “organic,” Marketo has bid on the search term “local PPC advertising,” as reflected in that first search result.
Both SEO and PPC can be very effective marketing strategies. This is especially true in the world of healthcare marketing, where rich audience targeting and well-optimized content can drive serious bottom-line results. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. While the majority of organizations we work with do deploy a combination of both SEO and PPC, there are many for whom only one or the other makes business sense.
That’s why it’s so important to first understand how each tactic works—its fundamental definitions and most appropriate use cases—before hanging your hat on one or the other. From there, you can develop the kind of sustainable strategy capable of achieving short and long-term business goals. Of course, no matter which mix of SEO and PPC you pursue, the most successful campaigns will be those you constantly review, reassess, and optimize.
Because, despite it all, SEO and PPC are still moving targets at their core. Both are constantly evolving and always at the mercy of algorithmic updates from the Google gods.
On the frontend of user experience, your website’s content should be structured so that it’s pleasant for a human visitor to consume. There should be a logical flow of information, with titles, headings and easy-to-skim bulleted lists. The content should be original, informative and fresh. You can’t fake good content.
