Google Ads for Eye Clinics: Cataract and LASIK Keywords That Pay

Open the search terms report of an eye hospital's Google Ads account and you may well find two lists mixed together. One is gold: "cataract operation cost", "LASIK eligibility test near me", "retina specialist for diabetes". The other is waste: "optometrist job", "free eye camp", "eye test online", "specs frame price". Every one of those clicks was paid for. This guide shows how to keep the first list and cut the second, and how to know whether the patients you get are worth what you paid.

How should an eye clinic structure its Google Ads account?

Start with one campaign for every treatment, each with its own budget. That way you always know what a cataract patient costs compared with a LASIK patient, instead of one blended number that hides everything.

Inside each campaign, split your keywords by the four kinds of people searching: those searching for the treatment, those asking about cost, those looking for a specialist near them, and those searching the condition itself. Start with exact and phrase match only, and loosen it later once you have data.

Condition searches come earlier in the journey, so give them a smaller share of budget than the cost and near-me groups, which are closer to a decision.

Add a small campaign on your own clinic's name and your surgeons' names too, so a competitor cannot sit above you when a family searches for you directly.

Which negative keywords should an eye clinic add before launch?

Build the negative list before the first rupee goes out, not after. For an eye clinic, the usual offenders are:

• Careers and education: job, vacancy, salary, course, optometry course, internship.
• Free and government care: free, camp, government, scheme, if those are not what you offer.
• Retail: frames, sunglasses, contact lens brand names, spectacles online, if you do not run an optical store. If you do, give optical its own campaign.
• Home fixes: home remedy, eye exercise to remove specs, natural cure.
• Do-it-yourself tests: online eye test, eye test app.
• Medicines: names of eye drops. Advertisers targeting India may not promote prescription drugs in ads or on landing pages, and those searchers are rarely surgical patients anyway.

Then keep the habit that saves more money than anything else: block half an hour every week, open the search terms report, add every bad search as a negative and turn every good one into a keyword.

What should the landing page for each campaign say?

Never send an eye ad to your homepage. A family searching for cataract surgery should land on a cataract page, and someone asking about LASIK cost should land on a LASIK page that explains how pricing works.

The cataract page is read as much by the son or daughter as by the patient. Cover what happens on surgery day, how long the visit takes, the lens options in plain words, what the package includes, the review visits afterwards and the insurers you are cashless with. Put click-to-call and WhatsApp where a phone screen shows them without scrolling.

The LASIK page leads with suitability, because that is the real question. Explain what the evaluation checks, which procedures you offer and how you choose between them for a given eye, how pricing works, and the EMI option. Never promise a glasses-free life. Promise an honest assessment and a realistic picture for their eyes. Everything on the page follows the same rules as the ad, because Google reviews where your ad sends people.

What should a treated eye patient cost you on Google?

The benchmark from Good Doctors Go Broke is a cost per new patient of roughly 10 to 20% of that patient's first-year value. Work it out for each campaign, not for the whole account.

Say your LASIK package is ₹60,000 as an example. Ten to twenty per cent of that is ₹6,000 to ₹12,000 per treated patient. Now say the LASIK campaign spends ₹90,000 in a month and brings 150 leads at ₹600 each. If 30% book an evaluation, that is 45. If 70% of those turn up, about 31 are evaluated. If 12 are suitable and go ahead, you paid ₹7,500 per treated patient. Healthy.

Cataract is different, because many patients go on to have the second eye done within the year, and many use insurance. Count both eyes in first-year value when that is your usual pattern, and track insured and self-paying patients separately so you can see which keywords bring which.

To make these numbers real, count calls, forms and WhatsApp clicks as conversions, then send back which leads booked and started treatment. Google restricts personalised advertising based on health, so you cannot chase people who visited your cataract page. You win on keywords, ads and pages instead. Our CRM and WhatsApp setup does this tracking for eye clinics.

Where do eye clinic Google Ads usually go wrong?

These come up again and again:

1. One "eye hospital" campaign for everything. You can never see what each treatment costs.
2. Broad match with no negatives. The budget leaks into jobs, courses and frames.
3. Ads running when nobody answers. Match your ad schedule to front desk hours, or have an instant WhatsApp reply ready after hours.
4. A price in the ad that does not match the fee sheet. The family calls, hears a different number, and stops trusting you.
5. Counting page views as conversions. It trains Google to find more of the wrong people.

In most eye accounts we take over, the biggest gains come from three boring things: a strong negative list, a dedicated page per treatment, and a phone answered within a few rings. If you want us to look at your account, our patient acquisition work for eye care starts there, and you can book a free growth call.

The short version

• One campaign per treatment, with ad groups for treatment, cost, near-me and condition searches.
• Build negatives for jobs, courses, frames, free camps and drops before launch, and review search terms weekly.
• Send cataract and LASIK ads to their own pages, written for the person actually deciding.
• Judge every campaign by cost per treated patient, aiming for 10 to 20% of first-year value.