SEO vs Adwords

Good morning and welcome to another edition of the Business of Aesthetics podcast. I'm Jeff Richman. Today we're going to be discussing SEO versus AdWords, and we have a terrific guest with us, Naren Arul Raja. Naren and I, Naren's a co-host at Business of Aesthetics as well with me. We've had more than a decade-long relationship, and I think this is a great place for us to start because this is actually where Naren and I first met each other at a American Academy of Dermatology meeting. I don't remember the date Naren, you probably don't either, but I'm going to say maybe 2008 or 2009 we met each other out there.

That is correct. Good morning to you, Naren. Good morning, Jeff. Good morning. And I really appreciate this topic, and I think we're going to have some fun today. And I think you're right. We met definitely more than a decade ago. I don't know the exact year, but probably around 2008 or 2009. And I remember seeing you for the first time. You look the same today that you looked then. Maybe with a few more gray hairs, but other than that, I think, you know, so even back then you are determined, hardworking and, you know, focused. So same, Jeff. Well, thank you. Yeah, I know when we, just to jump into, you know, after we first met each other, when we started doing business, we had opened Thrive Aesthetic and Anti-Aging Center in 2007. And in 2000, so maybe a year or two later, we were primarily doing AdWords as a way to generate new patients. You know, we were a new clinic.

Not a lot of people or practices knew about us. AdWords or using Google to do ads at that time was a thing to do. We were spending a really good amount of money doing that. I believe at that time, we were spending close to $5,000 a month in in AdWords and and I knew about SEO I knew SEO was search engine optimization I knew what it meant and I knew that it took a long time but I didn't really know a whole lot more about it then that. And after you and I started discussing it and it being a long-term play, we started slowly moving around $1,000. I think we at first maybe moved $1,000 into SEO and still kept our AdWords because that was our lifeblood. You know, we were scared to walk away from it. AdWords because that was our lifeblood. You know, we were scared to walk away from it.

And maybe six or eight months later, we found that we were getting some results from SEO. You know, it was little, but it was there. And then so we took a little bit more of our AdWords budget and moved it over and then took a little bit more of our AdWords budget. And I remember at some point you said to us, you don't need to put any more money into more of our average budget. And I remember at some point you said to us, you don't need to put any more money into SEO. You're it's enough. And I said, well, should I keep this other money in AdWords? And you know, we decided no. So for me, it was actually as a long-term play, it was a, it was a cost savings. And when I interviewed with younger kids and they asked me what, you know, what, what would you do differently? if you could do anything differently? I always say I would have invested in SEO from day one, but we still built our business on AdWords. personal story but so when when do you think seo makes sense um what why does seo make sense can you can you share a little bit of that with us absolutely um before i do that i want to kind of give you a give you and our listeners a definition of marketing marketing is getting people to find you, meaning anyone who need your services to find you.

Second, subconsciously influencing them so they choose you. So when they find you, they're also going to find 10 of your competitors, let's say. Why should they choose you? So that's where Dr. Robert Cialdini, who is a genius in influence, his principles come into play. For example, if they think the doctor is famous, the doctor is on TV, the likelihood of them choosing the doctor now goes up. If they see a lot of positive reviews, you know, and these reviews are like glowing five-star paragraph or what I call love letter reviews, the likelihood of them choosing you goes up. So first they have to find you, right? So I'm Googling Botox. And if you don't show up, in my mind, I don't even know that you are an option. Now, once they find you again and again and again for various things, now we have to work on the subconscious mind. So for some reason, they think you are better than everyone else.'s the reviews it's the authority it's liking so we like people who are similar to us so for example if you have kids you should talk about it because everyone who has kids will like you because they feel you are like them and we like people who are similar or we like people who are caring. So you doing videos, educating people about topics and really being able to communicate on a person-to-person level as opposed to a doctor-to-doctor level where they feel like they can understand you.

Now they like you because they feel like they can relate to you and you make sense to them. So those are things we do as part two, but part one is helping people find you. Now you asked me a question, why does this CEO make sense? And Google is used 6.3 billion times every single day. And I have heard that number has gone up since COVID. But let's just stick with the lower number, 6.3 billion. Now, most of us in US, I would say 99% of us or 95% of us have used Google at least a thousand times or more. So when you ask, let's say, imagine having a professor and let's say you go to the professor a thousand times and ask him questions. After the thousandth time, the next time, whatever he says, you're going to believe. Why? Because, you know, otherwise we should be idiots to having asked questions thousand times right the only reason we ask that question thousand times is we believe that the person knows what he's talking about same thing with google we kind of believe that google has the right answers so that's why we have used it a thousand times if not more the average american the average canadian so so seo and we don't go to Google to see the ads.

We go to Google to see what Google thinks. You know, we might say, you know, who's the wife of the second president of the United States? Google, boom, gives you an answer. You might say, you know, what are the top three Halloween costumes in 2019? Boom, Google gives you an answer. You might say, you know, the best dermatologist for Botox. Google gives you an answer you might say you know the best dermatologist for botox google gives you an answer so after a while we just believe in those answers so that's why i feel a ceo is very very very very powerful because i am asking the question i'm saying you know i have a need let me type the question now when google gives the answer because we went there not for the ads but we went there for the organic we trust that answer that we were looking for in the first place before even typed it in we want the answer we are looking for that answer so um we did we did some experiments and we noticed organic is significantly more we can talk about it you know later topic when we talk about return on investment but because of these two reasons trust and trust and intent seo seems to work so so just to summarize marketing is helping people find you and then subconsciously influencing them so they choose you so step one helping people find you google is it 90 of search today especially for local business, is Google.

And again, if you do well on Google, you're going to do well on everything else. You're going to do well on Bing. You're going to do well on YouTube, which again is owned by Google. YouTube does require videos, and we can touch on that at a later time. So Naren, that's interesting. On Google, you said 90%. I know, I think maybe a decade ago, it was around 65% was the amount that Google was used versus others. So it seems like they really, really dominated in that. And the other thing I wanted to just have you touch on for a quick second is, you mentioned organic. So can you explain the difference when I go to Google? I'm just not sure all of our listeners know when I go to Google, I see, you know, different things on the page when I do type in that question. So maybe you can touch on what I'm seeing on that page. Absolutely. So you see ads, right? Those are clearly labeled. So a lot of people like most of like, like me, I ignore it, just like, you know, when I see, you know, add on, on YouTube, for example, I just, you know, click on that link that says, you know, after the first five seconds, skip the ad, right. So now, with Google ads on a page, you don't even need to click on any link because I don't have to look at it. I can just look at what's below that. So ads is one form of things you say on the page. And the reason most of us ignore it is because that's not the reason we typed in the search in the first place. We wanted to know the right answer from Google. The second thing you see is typically, again, it depends on the device you're using could be the maps. So that's called the Google

three pack. Now again, in the maps, there might be ads and then there is the organic results. So when we think about Google, we don't just think about just the maps. We also think about maps plus what's called, you know, SEO. SEO typically means what's below the maps. So usually outside of the maps that Google will also have listings. Again, there'll be ads and there will be organic listings. Most of us are trained just to skip the ads and just look at the organic on the map as well as below the map. Now on a mobile device, it's similar. Now Google also has a product called Google Maps. Now on Google Maps, I only see the map stuff. Now Google Maps is again used by a billion people or more. So it's again a huge product, very, very, very, very popular. Google dominates that market as well. And Google dominates it in two ways. One is they build the best search engines possible, the best Maps tools possible. The second way they dominate is they have amazing apps, both for the Android platform, which they own, by the way, 85% of the people in the world use Android and in the US it's like 55%.

And then the others who use iPhone, again, the best Maps app and the best search app are Google's. So we all use Google a lot more than any other apps on our smartphones. So that's kind of how Google makes sure that it's the way we've asked questions and gets answers. It's a lot of great information. Yeah, and it's always changing. It just seems like all of this is changing and how all the rules associated with it are changing. It seems like for a normal practice that doesn't have, you know, full-time IT people dedicated to stuff like this, it would be really hard to manage when to use what and when to do what. So it makes sense that we outsource these services. Is there any reason that you would still use? So SEO now, we've just determined, you know, 90% of the search is going through Google. The SEO is that organic answer that comes up.