SEO for Plastic Surgeons

82.8% of patients search for providers online prior to contact. 71% of patients seek other providers when they don’t find what they’re looking for on a provider’s site. Being found by local patients searching for your services is vital but it’s only half the battle. Anticipating and answering a prospect’s questions better than your competitors is the path to patient acquisition online. Good SEO strategy and content does that. If your website isn’t ranking for the terms your prospects are searching and you aren’t positioned as the solution to their problems, you’re leaving money on the table.

While it is true, no provider seeking SEO services wants to hear, “it depends.” Time-to-results is difficult to gauge. A survey of 75 SEO experts reported notable traffic increases in 6 months while first page rankings take an average of 12-24 months. Again, this can vary by keyword competitiveness and other factors. Keep in mind, SEO compounds over time. As your site ages and you continue publishing content and getting backlinks, search engines collect more data establishing what Google calls E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trust) factors, ranking higher for various keywords becomes faster and easier. Contact us for a more accurate appraisal of your time-to-results.

Broadly, SEO services range from $5k-$15k/month, with initiation costs between $5k-$10k. Costs depend on several factors. Question any agency providing one-size-fits-all pricing. SEO is time-consuming and labor intensive. Strategy is probably the most important factor in winning SEO, followed by high-quality content and backlinks. Beyond those, Google considers over 200 ranking factors. Optimizing for ‌these factors requires careful thought, planning, processes, and execution. If you want to know what SEO will cost your practice, contact us for a no-obligation consultation.

Fortunately, calculating ROI for SEO services is fairly simple for medical practices. First, find your average patient lifetime value (LTV). Calculate this by averaging the number of times patients visit your office annually. Next, multiply that number by the average value of an office visit, multiplied by the average number of years patients remain with your practice. Example: An average patient visits 3 times/year spending an average $2500/visit and stays with you for an average of 5 years. Their LTV is $37,500. Or $7500/year.

Next factor in the cost of SEO services. Working with an agency is good because you’ll have fixed costs. Let’s say your cost is $15,000/month or $180,000/year.

Now look at your organic traffic increases and conversion. Let’s say SEO efforts brought 100k new visitors to your site in a year. You convert .025% for 250 new patients. The total value of those conversions based on average LTV is $93,750,000 or $1,875,000/year.

Calculate annual ROI:

• (Return – Cost) / Cost 
• $1,875,000 – $180,000 = $1,695,000
• $1,695,000 / $180,000 = $9.41 ROI for every dollar spent.