Practice SEO pricing varies a lot from shop to shop, because the deliverables behind the number vary a lot. I am not going to hand you invented price tiers and pretend they are the market. What I can do is tell you what drives the range, what to watch for in a quote, and what I actually charge.
What Drives the Range
A few things move the price up or down: how much of the work is done by a junior versus a strategist, whether content is written for your practice or templated, how competitive your specialty and market are, and whether SEO is sold alone or bundled with web, ads, and automation. A quote with none of that context is not a real quote — it is a number.
Where I Sit
I do not sell SEO as a standalone monthly retainer. It is one of the pieces I install inside two fixed-fee offers. The Empty Chair Offer runs for ninety days: fifteen paying patients, or I refund the full fee and keep working at no charge until you get them. It requires practice-funded advertising spend, paid directly to the ad platforms and never marked up. The Dormant Chair Recovery runs for sixty days and uses no ad spend at all; it works from the patients you already have. Both cover the full system — website, Google Business Profile, search, automation, and reporting — under one engagement.
See the New Patient Engine for what the full system includes.
How to Evaluate Any Quote You Get
- Cost per booked patient — ask what it should look like within 4–6 months, and hold the agency to it
- Map Pack rank — ask for a measurable lift by month 3
- Organic patient attribution — ask to see a clear growth trend by month 6
- Deliverable transparency — you should be able to see what was done each month, not a vague summary
The Hidden Costs to Watch
- "Setup fees" disguising the real first-year price
- Required multi-year contracts that lock you in regardless of performance
- Ad spend bundled into management fees, sometimes marked up
- Content "extra" line items that should be in scope
Niche-Specific Notes
- Dental & ortho — Invisalign and implant cases usually carry enough value per patient to justify real investment in SEO
- Vision care — LASIK practices are typically competing hardest and need the full system, not SEO alone
- Ortho, spine & interventional pain — established practices can often start smaller; growth-mode practices need the full system
Book a call if you want an honest read on whether a single service or the whole system fits your practice.