Good medical SEO will get your pages ranked highly on SERP.
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. There are 3 basic areas to a results page; the organic section and two are paid advertising. Good content marketing, optimization or SEO (search engine optimization) is focused on getting your pages ranked highly in the “organic section” as opposed to the paid advertising areas.
I created this search engine results page using the following search terms: Medical Marketing Enterprises.
A – Banner Advertising (PAID)
This section has the colored background and is always in the top left position. These are “banner” ads and are paid advertising. The keywords used and amount of competition will determine the price. In general, these ads rotate and are related to specific search terms used to generate the search.
For instance, the 3 results in section A all paid Google to place these ads and are related to my search keywords “Medical Marketing Enterprises.”
C – “Adwords” PPC Advertising (PAID)
The section on the right are also paid advertising. These are the famous Google “Adwords” PPC (pay-per-click) advertising whereby an advertiser pays Google to place these small 4 lined ads on the side of your SERP when you are searching for related terms. See how they all “relate” to Medical Marketing?
You’ll see these ads pop up all over the place; email, and other websites are common places. Advertisers only pay Google when a serfer actually clicks on the ad (hence, “pay per click”). For a medical practice, these PPC ads are very affordable, but do nothing to increase your page ranking.
B – Organic Search: The Target for Your SEO Goals
You want your pages to rank highly here.
This is the listing of true, legitimate search. Pages listed here appear based on their relevance to the search terms used to create the search and are not paid advertising (such as the banner ads and Adwords).
Pages ranked here are the most relevant to your search terms, have the best SEO and pagerank.
It is in this area where we want your pages to rank in the “Top 10” or “Above the Fold” (newspaper term used to connote the “most important).
The goal of every medical practice is to get their webpages ranked highly in the organic section. Using content marketing strategies and good SEO, your pages will attract the most traffic due to the high visibility. Content marketing (i.e. getting your pages ranked highly on the organic search) is the only way a practice can attain and maintain high SERP rankings.
Compared to the paid advertising, the organic search is free, and thus, has the best ROI (return on investment). It is how my website increased my surgical volume over 30% last year….all through content marketing.
To Your Growth And Success!
Randy
Randall V. Wong, M.D.
Medical Website Optimization
www.MedicalMarketingEnterprises.com