Breaking News: Google Bans Popular Regenerative Medical Treatments from AdWords
The major search engine recently made an alarming announcement saying they will officially be putting a ban on all paid advertising for speculative and experimental medical treatments beginning October 2019. This includes some of the most popular regenerative medical treatments including PRP, stem cell therapy, gene therapy, and more.
Tune into this live webinar on Wednesday, November 13th at 2:00 pm EST to find out how this crisis will affect your practice, as well as strategies you can implement today to prevent damage from Google Ad bans in the future.
REGISTER HERE:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1203832593722556685
Guest Presenter: Tim Sawyer
President & Co-Founder, Crystal Clear
An Overview of What Happened…
Tim Sawyer
Google recently made an alarming announcement, saying it will officially be banning all paid advertising for what they have classified as speculative and experimental medical treatments, beginning in October 2019. The controversial ban includes Stem cell therapy, cellular (non-stem) therapy, gene therapy, and similar forms of regenerative medicine, platelet rich plasma, biohacking, do-it-yourself (DIY) genetic engineering products, and gene therapy kits.
For those interested in reading the announcement please follow the link at the end of this article.
Now if you’re like me and you either spend a lot of time in the anti-aging community or if you have been providing these treatments for a while, the idea that Google would refer to the use of stem cells and PRP treatments as “speculative” and “experimental” might make you think, “WHAT?! There is a ton of science and data supporting the efficacy and multiple uses of these proven treatments.”
While I would agree, that’s not the point of this article. The practical implication of this ban is this: if you are providing these treatments or plan to and you were counting on using Google Paid Advertising — also known as PPC (pay per click) or SEM (paid search engine marketing) – then, “Houston, we have a problem!” The real question is NOW WHAT? Especially given the fact that most patients seeking these treatments will obviously begin their search on the internet and without paid advertising what other options are available? The good news is there are many, but they require a little sweat equity and some elbow grease.
Your first and best bet lies with what’s referred to as organic SEO (search engine optimization). While this is a longer-term strategy, the results over time can become equally as effective and cost less. Organic SEO is the strategy of getting your practice and your website’s landing pages ranked on the first page of Google for your top treatments. And I am also sure you have heard the phrase, CONTENT is KING. Which means you need to create as much unique quality content as you can related to these treatments and procedures. Remember, no first page rankings = no traffic to those pages.
Consistent blogging is an easy way to distribute content and improve rankings. Every time you create a blog post, that becomes a permanent page on your website and increases the probability of a first page ranking. Use titles that are directly related to the treatments and make sure the content is unique meaning you are the original author.  A good frequency would be two times a month. In terms of word count, consider the fact that a recent study done by HubSpot reported that the average number of words appearing on a landing page with a first page ranking on Google is 2,100. I know that might sound like a lot. But 1,000- 1,500 words will really make a difference on your bottom line.
The second option is the use of social media. Make sure you are creating posts that are engaging but also keep the goal in mind of creating conversions. This means you are driving traffic from your posts to corresponding landing pages on your website. Gaining likes and shares are great, but we need to drive potential patients to your website in order to generate forms and phone calls into the practice.
Instagram is another powerful tool to leverage, yet while it might be the “hottest” social platform currently, do not ignore Facebook as a strong viable medium to market your treatments as well.
The big takeaway from this is you need to have a blended marketing strategy that can’t be wiped out with a single move from Google. Best practices understand the need to speak marketing efforts across multiple mediums to maximize their results. We can not predict what any one medium will decide in the future whether it’s Google, Facebook, Instagram etc. That said, we can insulate ourselves from the devasting effects of any one single ban by diversifying our efforts. But it doesn’t matter what I believe, it only matters what you believe. Wishing you increased happiness and success in 2020 and beyond.
To view the official announcement by Google, visit:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-bans-speculative-experimental-medical-treatments-28181.html