PPC Tips for Healthcare. Quick Wins That Improve Performance

Healthcare PPC has a long list of things that can go wrong. Most of the biggest performance problems trace back to a small number of structural and operational mistakes. This guide covers the most impactful quick wins, organized by category, so you can prioritize the fixes that move CPL the most.

Account Structure Tips

Tip 1: Separate Brand and Non-Brand Campaigns

Your practice name keywords belong in their own campaign with a separate budget. Brand keywords have very high Quality Scores and conversion rates because searchers already know who you are. Mixing brand keywords into your service line campaigns inflates the campaign’s average performance metrics and hides how non-brand keywords are actually doing. Keep them separate and you get clean data on both.

Tip 2: Create a Dedicated Competitor Campaign

Bidding on competitor practice names captures patients who are still comparing options. Someone searching for a competing practice by name has appointment intent but has not committed. Your ad should highlight specific differentiators: accepting new patients, same-week appointments, specific insurance accepted, or a service the competitor does not offer. Keep this campaign separate so you can measure its performance and budget independently.

Tip 3: Review Mobile vs Desktop Performance Separately

Mobile and desktop users behave differently in healthcare PPC. Mobile users are more likely to call directly from an ad. Desktop users are more likely to complete a longer form. Check whether conversion rate and CPL differ significantly between devices. If mobile converts at a higher rate, increase your mobile bid adjustment. If mobile clicks are high but conversions are low, investigate whether your landing page loads fast and functions well on mobile.

Keyword Tips

Tip 4: Build Your Negative Keyword List Before Launch

Most campaigns launch with no negative keywords. Every day without negatives, budget goes to job seekers, students, DIY searchers, and other non-patients. Build a starter list of at least 50 negatives before your campaign goes live. Job terms, educational terms, free and low-cost terms, and DIY terms should all be in place from day one.

Tip 5: Review the Search Terms Report Every Week

This is the single most impactful recurring PPC management task. The search terms report shows exactly what patients typed to trigger your ads. It reveals waste you would never find by looking at your keyword list. Set a weekly calendar reminder and review it consistently. Even 20 minutes per week reviewing search terms and adding negatives compounds into significant savings over a year.

Tip 6: Consider Pausing PPC Keywords Where You Rank Organically

If your SEO page ranks in position one for a keyword organically, you may be paying for clicks you would get for free. Review your Google Search Console organic rankings and cross-reference them with your PPC keyword list. For keywords where you rank in positions one through three organically, test pausing the PPC keyword to see whether total traffic holds. Redirect that budget to keywords where you do not rank organically.

Ad Copy Tips

Tip 7: Include Your Phone Number in an Ad Headline

One of your 15 available RSA headlines should be your phone number with a booking CTA. “Call [Phone] to Book Today.” Mobile users often click directly to call from a phone number in an ad headline. Even on desktop, a visible phone number in the ad itself captures patients who prefer to call rather than fill out a form.

Tip 8: Use “Accepting New Patients” in Headlines

“Accepting New Patients” is one of the highest-performing phrases in healthcare PPC ad copy. It directly addresses a key patient concern: availability. In markets where many specialists have wait lists, this phrase signals immediate access and differentiates you from competitors who do not include it. Include it in at least one headline across all service line campaigns.

Tip 9: Address the Most Common Patient Concern in Descriptions

Different specialties have different primary patient concerns. For dental: “We Accept Most Insurance Plans. Same-Week Appointments Available.” For orthopedic surgery: “Board-Certified Surgeon. Minimally Invasive Options Available.” For urgent care: “Open 7 Days a Week. No Appointment Needed.” Match your description copy to what patients in your specialty actually worry about before booking.

Landing Page Tips

Tip 10: Send Traffic to a Dedicated Landing Page, Not Your Homepage

A homepage serves everyone. A landing page serves one patient at one moment of decision. When someone clicks an ad for “dental implants near me,” they should land on a page about dental implants, not a general dentist homepage. Dedicated landing pages consistently convert at two to four times the rate of homepage traffic. This is the single highest-impact structural fix in most healthcare PPC accounts.

Tip 11: Phone Number Above the Fold in Large Text

Patients with urgent needs call rather than fill out forms. If your phone number requires scrolling to find, or is in small text in the header, you are losing these high-intent patients. On every PPC landing page, display your phone number prominently above the fold, large enough to read quickly on mobile. Consider a click-to-call button for mobile users.

Conversion Tracking Tips

Tip 12: Set Up Call Tracking Before Launch

Healthcare practices that launch PPC without call tracking are optimizing blind. Phone calls are 40 to 60% of healthcare PPC conversions. Without them, your conversion data is incomplete, your CPL calculation is wrong, and your optimization decisions are based on partial information. Use CallRail or a similar provider that offers a signed BAA. Set up dynamic number insertion so phone calls get attributed to the keyword and ad that drove them.

Tip 13: Track Thank-You Page, Not Form View

Your conversion event should fire when the thank-you page loads after a form submission, not when the form page is viewed. Tracking form page views instead of completions can make your conversion rate appear 3 to 5 times higher than it actually is. This produces CPL numbers that look great but do not reflect actual leads. Verify your conversion tracking fires on form completion by submitting a test form and checking Google Ads conversion history.

Bidding Tips

Tip 14: Wait for 30 Conversions Before Enabling Target CPA

Google’s Target CPA automated bidding learns from conversion data. The algorithm needs a minimum of 30 conversions in the past 30 days to make reliable bid decisions. Enabling Target CPA on a campaign that converts five or ten times per month often results in worse performance than manual or Enhanced CPC bidding. Build conversion volume first, then switch to automation.

Tip 15: Reduce Bids During Hours the Office Is Closed

A patient submitting a form at 2am wants an appointment, but they are also likely to fill out two or three other practice forms before morning if no one contacts them quickly. Paying peak bids for overnight traffic produces leads that are harder to convert because your follow-up is slower than competitors who are awake. Reduce bids by 50 to 70% overnight and on days you are closed. Redirect that budget to peak hours when your front desk can respond immediately.

Putting It Together

The highest-impact items on this list are: sending traffic to dedicated landing pages (Tip 10), setting up call tracking before launch (Tip 12), adding negative keywords before launch (Tip 4), and reviewing search terms weekly (Tip 5). These four actions address the most common and most expensive mistakes in healthcare PPC. The rest of the list compounds the gains from getting those fundamentals right.

At Redefine Web, we implement all of these on day one of every healthcare PPC engagement. ProCare Sports saw a 30% engagement increase when we restructured their campaigns with proper architecture, call tracking, and landing pages. If you want to review how your current account measures against these benchmarks, start with a PPC audit. For a full picture of what’s involved in getting healthcare PPC right, see our healthcare PPC services overview and our guide to healthcare PPC management.