Understanding Medical SEO Pricing: Quick Guide

With prices that range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars, knowing how much to pay for your medical SEO pricing can feel overwhelming. However, without a fully conducted SEO audit, you may not get an accurate quote for the work that needs to be done. An audit might uncover minor problems that can be cheaply and quickly fixed. But it could also reveal the need for a complete overhaul.

When choosing a medical SEO agency, you deserve full transparency regarding the rates it charges for its services. This article aims to help you to understand what goes into medical SEO and how much different SEO services cost.

Different Ways to Price Medical SEO

SEO agencies offer different pricing models. A simple job might have a project, ala carte, or hourly rate, whereas long-term projects justify a retainer.

     1. Hourly Rates

Freelance SEO consultants typically charge hourly rates. A good medical SEO consultant will charge $100 to $250 per hour, and top-end medical SEO consultants charge even more. You can expect to pay hourly rates for minor projects and jobs website audits, keyword research, and content creation.

     2. Project Rates

You can get a project rate for an SEO project with several components, like a site audit. Medical SEO projects begin at $500 and sometimes cost thousands of dollars. It pays to shop around.

     3. Ala Carte SEO

Ala carte jobs can include keyword research, backlinks, content, citations, and much more. You can save money pay paying for a quick ala carte job, but you need to know exactly what you need. Otherwise, you should consider having an SEO audit done. 

     4. Monthly Retainer

A retainer is a monthly fee for ongoing work. Some medical SEO agencies present it as an “SEO package.” A retainer usually begins with a technical audit and keyword research. The agency will make recommendations and then begin producing content and backlinks every month. 

Retainers can be a “set it and forget it” way to deal with ongoing needs for SEO. Monthly medical SEO retainer fees can range from $500 to $5000. Often, SEO agencies offer different monthly plans with different fees. Make sure to get a package that includes monthly reports and measurable results. 

Things That Affect Medical SEO Pricing

There are several things that affect medical SEO pricing most. The size of a website is a determining factor. The amount of SEO services you need also impact the cost. Keywords competition is also a variable. Some keywords will be harder to rank higher as compared to others. Your location can also influence the price, as will the format in which you pay

     1. Medical SEO Services

Effective SEO has many moving parts that work together to boost your website over the top. 

Website Audit

Medical SEO work begins with an SEO audit that uncovers and prioritizes the issues needing addressed to bring a website to the top of search engine results. Your SEO consultant will analyze the findings, compile a report, and make detailed recommendations.

Keyword Research

The next step is to find the ideal keywords for your healthcare practice's website. Search engines use keywords strategically placed throughout your site as a part of their rankings. The higher search engines rank your website, the more people will find it.

Content Creation

High-quality content should be created that features the target keywords. This includes blog posts that engage and educate your patients as well as quality landing page content like images and patient testimonials.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO optimizes existing content and internal linking and adds sitemaps and robot txt.

Off-Page SEO

This includes backlinks and citations from review websites. Off-page SEO promotes your practice on social media or review sites like Yelp. which helps your credibility and your search engine rankings.

Technical SEO

Search engines also look at backend SEO, which involves coding, website architecture, and speed optimization.

Link Building

Quality backlinks from reputable websites are extremely important to good medical SEO. Guest posting is also a great way to get backlinks. This involves writing an optimized post for another site in exchange for a backlink to yours.

     2. Local Medical SEO 

Most healthcare professionals need local SEO. If you have a local medical practice, you want to attract local patients. Local medical SEO places focus on ranking healthcare websites in specific cities and regions. This can be accomplished with localized content, local citations, geo-targeted keywords, and claimed local listings. Prices for local medical SEO range from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. 

How To Know if a Medical SEO Agency Is Worth It

Hiring a medical SEO agency can become expensive. Just because an agency charges more doesn't necessarily mean it produces higher-caliber work. Do your research before hiring anyone to do SEO for you. Study their website. Do you like their style of writing? Is it readable and engaging? Do they use good spelling and proper grammar? They'll likely have the same writers working on your site. Potential patients assume you wrote the content, and poorly written blog posts may reflect badly on your practice

Case studies are examples of the work your medical SEO agency has done for other clients. Reviews and testimonials from clients can also help you evaluate. Sort through both the positive and negative reviews. Ensure they only use “white hat” SEO techniques. “Black hat” SEO tries to game the system by finding shortcuts and loopholes to rank a website. Those techniques eventually backfire, causing search engines to penalize websites. White hat SEO means your website adheres to proper search engine guidelines. 

Conclusion

Medical SEO is essential for a healthcare practice to survive and thrive. But, it's also very technical and time-consuming. Quality medical SEO services may not be cheap, but by choosing a cheaper agency, you may pick an amateur who does more harm than good. Do your research and make sure you hire the medical SEO professional fit for the job.