Enhance Your Dental SEO Strategy with Effective Paid Search Campaigns

Key Takeaways

• SEO boosts your online visibility and attracts more patients by ranking your practice higher in search results.
• Paid ads place your practice at the top of search results, increasing visibility and potential patient engagement.
• Combining paid search with SEO efforts enhances your online presence and maximizes patient acquisition.
• Choosing the right keywords is crucial for attracting the right audience and improving clicks and conversions.
• Craft compelling ad copy with clear calls to action and use ad extensions to provide more information.
• Measure and optimize campaign performance using key metrics like CPC, CPA, and ROAS.

Paid search ads are meant to complement and enhance your SEO. Not only do they help you bypass the organic SEO rankings, but they also generate an average ROI of 200%. 

To see results like this, you first need to know what makes a paid search ad effective — after all, no clicks means no customers.

Let’s explore the basics of paid search marketing and how you can use it to attract more patients to your dental practice.

The Importance of SEO for Dental Practices

Consider how people find information today. They’re not thumbing through Yellow Pages or checking newspaper ads. Instead, they’re hopping on their phones or computers and going straight to Google. 

They’re entering phrases like, “find a dentist near me” to see who’s available in their local area. If your practice doesn’t appear on page 1 of the search results, chances are you’re missing out on a lot of potential patients.

More than 7 in 10 dental patients say they searched for a dentist online before scheduling an appointment. Of those, 86% say they contacted a dentist after their search.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of optimizing your website so that it ranks higher in search results. This makes your website and practice more visible to people who are actively searching for what you offer.

When your practice appears closer to the top, it builds a sense of authority and credibility that will help your practice grow. People trust search engines like Google to show them the best results. If you’re at the top of the page, it tells prospective patients you’re a top choice in their area.

Why You Need Paid Search Campaigns

Paid search campaigns are essentially ads that appear on search results pages.

You can tell a paid ad from an organic listing by the word “Sponsored,” as in this example:

If you’re running paid ads, you’ll appear at the top of search results – before the non-paid listings. This means your dental practice will be among the first that prospective patients see, which can help you earn more clicks and calls.

To create a paid search ad, you’ll need to bid on relevant keywords within your industry. Keywords are the terms people use to find services like yours online. The amount you’re willing to pay for those terms will influence your ad placement. 

When someone searches for those keywords, an auction takes place. Search engines will review all bids for those keywords, along with ad relevance and quality. Then it will decide which ad to show the user.

With Google paid search, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This means there's no charge for bidding or for your ad being displayed to searchers — you only pay when someone clicks on it. This is why paid search ads are also known as pay-per-click advertising.

Integrating Paid Search with SEO

Paid search can complement SEO efforts. While you can’t “pay to play” and improve your organic SEO rankings, there are ways paid search can augment your SEO. 

• Enhance your overall online presence. Using paid search ads and SEO helps your dental practice occupy multiple positions on search engine results pages, increasing your chances of being seen by potential patients.
• Gain more data on keywords. Learn immediately which keywords are driving the most traffic and clicks so you can continue optimizing your website for long-term SEO value.
• Get immediate traffic while you grow your SEO. SEO takes time to build, so you can use paid ads to start attracting leads while your SEO efforts are maturing.
• Optimize ad spend. If you are ranking for organic keywords that are performing well, you can allocate your budget to other terms that have high potential but that you’re not ranking for yet.

Combining paid ads with SEO maximizes your online visibility.

This synergy allows you to drive more targeted traffic and ultimately improve conversions.

Keyword Optimization for Paid Search Campaigns

Keyword optimization forms the foundation of paid search ads. These are the terms your patients type into the search bar to find services like yours. This ensures your ads are shown to the right audience, which improves clicks and conversions.

The keywords you choose for your ad campaigns should match the intent of your target audience. For example, someone searching for “dental implants cost” is more likely to be ready to buy than someone searching for, “What are dental implants?”

If you’re not sure where to start with keyword research, these tools can help:

• UberSuggest, a limited free tool that shows you search volume, paid difficulty, and keyword suggestions
• Google Keyword Planner, a free tool within the Google Ads platform
• SEMrush, an agency-grade tool that shows you what keywords your competitors are ranking for and more

Start by making a list of keywords and phrases that relate to your dental practice. These might be generic phrases like “pediatric dentist,” specific services like “sedation dentistry,” or location-based phrases like “dentist Akron OH.” 

You might find some of these keywords are too broad. In these cases, add modifiers to make them more specific. For example, if you offer emergency after-hours service, your keyword might be “emergency dentist in Charlottesville” instead of just “emergency dentist.”

You’ll also want to ensure there’s enough search volume for the keywords you’re targeting.

Keyword tools can show you search volume data. For example, the keyword “dental implants Myrtle Beach, SC” receives 30 searches per month:

It also shows a paid difficulty of 30, which makes it relatively easy to win a bid.

Tips for Crafting Compelling Ad Copy

You’ll use your keywords to create your ad copy, which should be enticing and compelling to get prospective patients to click the ad.

Writing ad copy isn’t like writing blog posts or web pages for your dental site. Good ads are succinct yet descriptive, and most importantly, they give a clear call to action. 

Let’s review some helpful ad copy tips:

• Prioritize clarity over creativity. You’re not trying to win a copywriting award —  you simply need to get patients to click the ad, so be clear about what you offer and what they should do next.
• Use extensions. Extensions add functionality to your ad, such as clicking to call your office or displaying your address and a link to Google Maps to help patients find you.
• Build trust in the headline. Use words like “trusted,” “top-rated,” or “experienced” in the headline to grab attention and cater to your audience’s emotions.
• Highlight an offer in the body copy. If you have something compelling to offer, such as 100% financing or free X-rays for new patients, include it in the body copy.
• Include one call to action. Don’t overwhelm the user with too many directives; focus on a single next best step.

Here’s an example of what a good paid ad looks like:

The ad clearly matches the query and doesn’t leave you guessing about what it’s for. It also uses site link extensions to move the patient to the next step, such as making an appointment.

Targeting Techniques for Better Paid Search Results

Aside from keywords, you can apply targeting techniques to reach qualified leads.

One option is to use geo-targeting, or geo-fencing, which limits your ad reach to people within a specific radius to your practice. For example, you might choose to show ads only to people who are searching within 10 miles of your office.

Another technique is to create audience segments. For example, you can segment your audience by:

• Marital status
• Homeownership status
• Interests and hobbies
• Life events
• Mobile device type

There are other options too, but one you might pay extra attention to is mobile devices. People searching via mobile devices should be considered hot leads. That’s because 80% of them tend to convert when searching for local services. You might choose to increase your bid on mobile devices to capture more of those leads.

Measuring Paid Search Campaign Performance

As with other marketing efforts, you’ll want to see how your paid search ads impact your practice growth. This will help you allocate your budget more effectively, identify waste, and calculate ROI. 

Some marketing analytics to pay attention to include:

• Cost per click (CPC)
• Cost per patient acquisition (CPA)
• Conversion rate
• Return on ad spend (ROAS)

You can also A/B test variations of each ad to see which version gives you the best results. Test early and often to see which creates the greatest lift.

Improving Dental SEO with GrowthPlug

Paid search ads can help you jumpstart your lead generation while waiting for organic dental SEO to grow. Great ads take time and combine many different components like keyword optimization, compelling ad copy, and targeting — all of which you can measure and refine to get better results.

Before you invest in paid ads, consult with one of our Ads Managers to understand how we can maximize your reach and relevance of your ads to increase the chances of attracting potential patients.

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Our ads management services can provide that dedicated marketing agency experience for a fraction of the cost. Talk to our team today.