SEO vs. Google AdWords: Which Is Right for Your Dental Practice?

The simple answer is: NO. SEO and Google advertising are two very different things in everyday marketing. Google advertising refers to paying for one of the top 3 listings which are denoted through the term “Ad.” Dental offices pay by the click for Google AdWords. A dental practice can sometimes be seen paying as much as $500 for a click depending on the bid term.At astronomic rates like these and without a guaranteed patient, it is very easy to lose money on Google AdWords. The first time you run a campaign there, you should expect to lose money to gain insights. While succeeding on Google AdWords is potentially profitable and scalable quickly, it requires a heavy upfront spend. The same cannot be said for SEO.

SEO for Dental Practices

SEO, in our opinion, is a much more stable source of viewers, patients, and income for dental practices. Search engine optimization for dentists will be slower in terms of impact than Google AdWords. At the same time, the work you’re doing is creating sustainable long-term search results that will likely be massively beneficial. Unlike AdWords revenue, you will continue to benefit from new traffic when you stop spending on SEO. Doing the same on Google AdWords will be sure to drop your traffic down to 0.

While optimizing your website both on-page and off to target the correct Google search terms and metrics can be tedious, you can be sure that it’s worth it. It is estimated that only 10% of search engine users will ever click on an advertisement. By putting yourself in the prime position in Google search below the advertisements, you stand to gain an incredible amount of click value based on what the advertising vendors ahead of you would have paid for a click you just received for free with hard SEO fundamentals.