Google Ads for Mohs Surgery: What Actually Drives Booked Patients

Most Mohs surgery practices operate in a referral-dependent world. Dermatologists send patients to you. Primary care physicians send patients to you. The relationship network you've built over years is your primary acquisition channel — and that's not going to change.

But here's the tension: a meaningful percentage of patients also search. They search after receiving a referral (to vet you), they search when they want a second opinion, and increasingly, they search when they've been diagnosed with basal cell or squamous cell carcinoma and want to understand their options before committing to a provider. That search behavior creates a narrow but high-value paid search opportunity — if you understand exactly where the money makes sense and where it doesn't.

Mohs patients search differently than cosmetic derm patients — and your campaign structure has to reflect that

A patient searching for Mohs surgery is not shopping the way someone looking for Botox or a chemical peel shops. They're not comparing prices on a menu. They've typically received a skin cancer diagnosis, they're anxious, and they're looking for a specific procedural expertise and a surgeon they trust.

This means your keyword universe is small, intent is high, and the patient's decision timeline is compressed. They're not browsing — they're booking. The searches that matter look like "Mohs surgery near me," "Mohs surgeon" followed by your city, "skin cancer removal specialist," and "Mohs procedure for basal cell carcinoma."

The volume on these terms is low compared to cosmetic dermatology keywords. But the value per patient is substantial — a single Mohs case often represents significant reimbursement, and the patient frequently returns for surveillance and additional procedures.

The services in your practice that should never touch a paid search budget

Not everything you do warrants ad spend. Mohs practices often also perform standard excisions, biopsies, cryotherapy, and general dermatologic surveillance. None of these should be in your Google Ads campaigns.

Standard excisions and biopsies are almost entirely referral-driven. Patients don't search "I need a biopsy" — their PCP or dermatologist orders one and sends them somewhere. Cryotherapy for actinic keratoses is low-margin, high-volume work that doesn't justify acquisition costs through paid search. And general skin checks, while valuable for your funnel, convert at rates too low to sustain paid traffic economics.

Your ad budget belongs exclusively on Mohs-specific and skin cancer surgery-specific terms where the patient is self-selecting into your highest-value service line.

The negative keyword list you need before you spend a dollar

Mohs surgery campaigns bleed money to irrelevant clicks without aggressive negative keywords from day one. Here's what to exclude immediately:

• "Mohs scale" and "Mohs hardness" (mineralogy students searching a completely unrelated scientific scale — this alone can consume a surprising portion of budget)
• "skin cancer pictures," "skin cancer symptoms," "what does skin cancer look like" (informational searches from undiagnosed people who are not your patients yet)
• "free," "cost of," "how much" (these searchers are in research mode, not booking mode — unless you specifically want to run a cost-education landing page strategy)
• "home remedies," "natural treatment," "alternative to surgery"
• "dermatologist" as a broad term (too general, pulls in acne, eczema, cosmetic searches)
• "reconstruction" or "plastic surgery" without Mohs modifiers (pulls in unrelated cosmetic intent)
• "veterinary" and "animal" (yes, this happens)
• "training," "fellowship," "residency," "salary" (medical professionals searching, not patients)

Review your search terms report weekly for the first 60 days. You'll find new negatives constantly because the Mohs keyword space is small enough that Google's broad match will aggressively expand into irrelevant territory.

The cost-per-booked-patient math that determines whether this channel works for you

Work backward from your revenue per Mohs case. Take your average reimbursement for a Mohs procedure (including stages and reconstruction if you perform it in-house), then determine what percentage of that you're willing to spend on acquisition.

If your average Mohs case generates meaningful revenue and you're willing to allocate a reasonable percentage to acquisition, you can tolerate a higher cost per click than most medical advertisers. The math works because volume is low and value per conversion is high.

Track the full path: click → landing page → phone call or form submission → scheduled consultation → completed procedure. Your true cost per booked patient will be your ad spend divided by completed procedures attributable to ads. Most Mohs campaigns see conversion rates from click to lead that are higher than general dermatology campaigns because the intent is so specific — but your front desk's speed in answering and scheduling is the variable that makes or breaks the economics.

Split your campaigns by diagnosis awareness, not by service type

The traditional campaign split for medical practices — one campaign per service — doesn't map well to Mohs. You essentially have one core service. Instead, split by the patient's stage of awareness:

Campaign 1: Diagnosed and seeking a surgeon. Keywords: "Mohs surgeon near me," "Mohs surgery" plus your city, "skin cancer surgeon," "basal cell carcinoma removal specialist." These patients have a diagnosis in hand. They're comparing surgeons. Your landing page should emphasize your fellowship training, case volume, and how quickly they can be seen.

Campaign 2: Diagnosed and seeking information about the procedure. Keywords: "what is Mohs surgery," "Mohs surgery recovery," "Mohs surgery success rate for squamous cell." These patients are earlier in their decision process. They may have been told they need Mohs but haven't committed to a provider. Your landing page here should educate and then convert — explain the procedure, then make it easy to schedule a consultation.

Campaign 3: Referral-verification searches. Keywords: your own name, your practice name, "Dr. your practice reviews." Yes, bid on your own brand terms. When a dermatologist refers a patient to you, that patient will Google you. If a competitor is bidding on your name (and in competitive markets, they might be), you need to own that top position. This campaign is cheap and defensive.

Your landing page has one job: get the anxious patient to call today

Mohs patients are not leisurely shoppers. They have cancer. They want to know three things: Can you do this procedure? How soon can you see me? Are you qualified?

Your landing page for Mohs campaigns should answer those three questions above the fold. Fellowship training, next available appointment timeframe, and a phone number that gets answered by a human during business hours. Every additional click between the ad and a live conversation is a lost patient.

Do not send paid traffic to your homepage. Do not send it to a general "services" page that lists 14 things you do. A dedicated landing page for Mohs surgery with a click-to-call button and a short form will outperform any general page by a wide margin.

Why the front desk is your actual conversion rate problem

You can build a technically perfect campaign — right keywords, right negatives, right landing page — and still lose money if your front desk doesn't answer the phone within three rings during business hours and doesn't have a protocol for Mohs inquiries.

A patient calling about Mohs surgery needs to be triaged differently than someone calling about a mole check. They need to hear that you can see them soon, that the surgeon is fellowship-trained, and that the procedure can typically be completed in a single visit. If your receptionist puts them on hold for four minutes or says "the doctor will call you back," a meaningful percentage of those patients will call the next result on Google.

Track call answer rates and time-to-schedule for every lead that comes through your paid campaigns. This is where most Mohs practices leave money on the table — not in the campaign settings, but in the 90 seconds after the phone rings.

When to pause and when to scale

Mohs surgery demand has seasonal patterns in many regions — more diagnoses after summer, more procedures scheduled in fall and winter. Watch your impression volume monthly. If search volume drops and your cost per click rises without a corresponding increase in bookings, pause or reduce budget rather than overpaying for scarce clicks.

Scale when you have capacity to see new patients within a reasonable timeframe. If your next available Mohs appointment is weeks out, you're paying to acquire patients you can't serve promptly — and those patients will find someone who can see them sooner.

The channel works when your capacity, your front desk responsiveness, and your campaign targeting are all aligned. Get one wrong and the math falls apart.

By Todd Whitaker, MBA

See your market on Viotto — the moment you start, you'll see which competitors are bidding on Mohs terms in your area and where the gaps are that you can take yourself.