What Is The Difference Between Free Medical SEO and Paid SEM?

SEO, SMM, SEM, and PPC all seem so interrelated with each other when you are a doctor testing your hand in medical marketing. However, correlated they may be, they all stem from their parent marketing strategy known as Search Marketing. To become a successful medical business owner, online you must understand the links and routes of search marketing to promote your medical business in the most profit inducing way.

Search marketing is a fundamental marketing system for online businesses to get traffic, stand out and develop their business online. Yet, search marketing can be quite a cumbersome task if you can’t get its basics right. Those basics involve free medical SEO and paid SEM.

Understanding the difference between paid SEM and free medical SEO, their strategies, and their relationship is crucial for you to get your medical business to stand out online and begin generating leads for you. Their names may sound quite similar; however, they are two different marketing tactics to deal with online promotion and marketing.

What is Free Medical SEO?

Free SEO services or just simply put, Search Engine Optimization is the part of the search marketing system that utilizes completely organic strategies to acquire visibility and patient traffic in search engine result pages or SERPs. With free medical SEO, you as an online medical business don’t have to pay for your ranking on SERPs.

What is Paid SEM?

Similar in name entirely different in nature, paid SEM or Search Engine Marketing is the part of the search marketing system that acquires patient traffic and leads by using paid ads to pop up on SERPs. A paid SEM campaign incorporates setting up the objectives for acquiring patient traffic and improving the ads as the campaign ventures on. With paid SEM, you get what you paid for.

When To Use Free Medical SEO Tools

Using medical SEO as a sole marketing strategy won’t cost you but it also means that you are advancing with it knowing there isn’t a definitive chance you would be getting patient traffic proportional to your SEO endeavors. By employing medical SEO, you step forward with the best hopes and uncertainty. This doesn’t mean SEO isn’t a successful marketing strategy but it always does not scratch up to the effort you put into it.

However, there are certain circumstances where the need of employing SEO strategies becomes dire. These cases include:

• When you can play around with medical keywords: You don’t want to spend your marketing budget excessively on medical keywords that aren’t especially competitive. This is where you can use free medical SEO for your benefit.

• When you are suffering from a tight marketing budget: This is the situation when employing SEO isn’t just the best however the only choice. Paid ads won’t help you much if you cannot properly spend on them. If you want to keep up your patient traffic flow, using medical SEO is your only choice. 

• When you are starting out: It is almost foolish to spend all your marketing capital in using paid ads if you are just starting out with your medical business. To get familiar with online search marketing, you must first experiment and discover and the best way to do all that while earning patient traffic is using SEO as your initial marketing strategy.

When To Use Paid SEM Strategies

While medical SEO is one of the most popular and successful marketing strategies of search marketing, it doesn’t always earn back the same ROI as put into it. With employing SEO as your marketing strategy, you don’t always get the flux of patient traffic as you hope. This is where most businesses choose to also look into paid ads or paid SEM. Paid SEM always pays out but it becomes necessary to make it your marketing strategy when you are experiencing cases such as:

• When you are suffering from an algorithm change: It is known that algorithm changes can get your rankings down in a blink of an eye, which is why everyone who owns an online business dreads them. To earn your rankings back, employing paid SEM is the most fastest and secure. Not only does it helps your medical business get its rankings back but also stabilizes it.

• When you have competitive medical keywords: It is very foolhardy to use SEO for your campaign of competitive medical keywords. Not only are they precious but require extra care in marketing them. To earn all their worth, using paid SEM is the best and profit inducing way. 

• When you need a great flux of patient traffic in a limited time:  Free SEO takes time to reach out and start earning patient traffic back. Simply waiting for your medical SEO to kick in won’t get you anywhere if you need patients, fast. Using paid SEM can help you achieve that is faster and better. Your paid SEM campaign starts earning your patient traffic immediately after its initiation.

Do Paid SEM Strategies Affect Your Medical SEO?

However similar they may sound, your paid SEM strategies and your free medical SEO strategies don’t really affect each other. While they both revolve around medical keywords, their way of working, earning patient traffic and maintenance is entirely different.

While one is free and the other requires you to buy it, they both require effort and attentiveness. It is smart, however, to employ both if you want a healthy flow of patient traffic. It is advised that you should start out with just SEO and later look into paid SEM to avoid any unfortunate financial losses.

Using Paid SEM and Free SEO To Promote Medical Business

Paid SEM and free medical SEO are both successful marketing strategies of search marketing. Both of them have their qualities and shortcomings and for best outcomes, the smart way is to employ both to market your online medical services. You simply need to explore them both until you settle on a ground that you know fits best your business objectives and goals.