The SEO Pricing Framework That Helps Plastic Surgeons Spend Right — Not Just Spend More

Two practices can both be described as 'plastic surgery clinics in a major city' and face completely different SEO challenges — and price points. Cost is not a function of how big your practice is. It's a function of how hard the work is.

Here are the variables that move the number most:

• Local search competition: A solo rhinoplasty specialist in a mid-size city competes against a different field than a multi-procedure practice in Miami, New York, or Beverly Hills. Highly competitive metros require more aggressive content production, stronger backlink profiles, and faster iteration — all of which cost more.
• Service breadth: A practice offering 12+ procedures (facelifts, rhinoplasty, liposuction, breast augmentation, body contouring, injectables) needs dedicated landing pages, procedure-specific schema, and topical authority across all of them. A boutique practice focused on two or three procedures has a narrower — and more manageable — content scope.
• Current website condition: If your site has thin content, poor technical structure, or HIPAA-questionable tracking implementations, remediation work front-loads the cost. Starting from a clean foundation is cheaper than repairing an existing one.
• HIPAA and FTC compliance requirements: Cosmetic surgery content operates under specific regulatory constraints. Before/after photo usage, patient testimonials, and outcomes claims all require careful handling under FTC Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255) and state medical board advertising rules. This is educational context, not legal advice — verify requirements with your compliance counsel. Agencies that don't account for this create liability, not value.
• Link-building difficulty: Healthcare is one of the harder verticals for earning authoritative backlinks. Medical journal citations, local news coverage, and professional association references take more effort to acquire than links in most commercial niches.

Understanding these variables helps you evaluate whether a proposal you receive is appropriately scoped — or whether it's ignoring the hard parts to look cheaper on paper.

The ranges below reflect what we observe across engagements and from industry benchmarks. They are not guarantees — your specific market, starting authority, and competitive set will affect where you land. Treat these as orientation points, not quotes.

Solo or Boutique Practice — Mid-Size Market

Typical range: $1,800–$3,500/month

This covers a single-location practice offering a focused procedure menu in a city with moderate competition. At this tier, you should expect: monthly content production (2–4 pieces), technical maintenance, local SEO and Google Business Profile management, and basic link acquisition. Complex content like HIPAA-safe before/after optimization may be limited in volume.

Established Practice — Competitive Metro

Typical range: $3,500–$6,000/month

This is the most common engagement tier for practices in markets like Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, or Seattle. It supports a broader procedure portfolio with dedicated landing pages, higher-volume content production, active link-building, and review strategy. At this level, a competent agency should be producing 6–10 pieces of content monthly and actively building topical authority.

Multi-Location or High-Volume Practice — Top-5 Metro

Typical range: $6,000–$12,000+/month

Practices competing in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, or similar markets — or those with multiple locations — need sustained investment across a wider surface area. Expect aggressive link acquisition, city-specific landing pages, structured data implementation, and dedicated compliance review of all published content.

One-Time or Project Work

Typical range: $2,500–$8,000 per project

Technical SEO audits, site migration oversight, or full content architecture overhauls are often scoped as standalone projects. These are separate from retainer costs and are typically completed before or alongside an ongoing engagement.

Note: All ranges vary by agency, scope, and market. Benchmarks here reflect general industry patterns, not a specific price list.

There is no shortage of agencies offering plastic surgeon SEO for $500–$900 per month. It's worth being direct about what that typically delivers in a competitive healthcare vertical.

At that price point, an agency cannot afford to:

• Produce original, medically accurate, procedure-specific content at meaningful volume
• Manage active link-building — the kind that earns references from health publications, local media, or professional directories
• Review content for FTC and state board compliance before publishing
• Build and maintain technically correct structured data for medical services and before/after galleries
• Allocate senior strategist time to your account

What you often get instead: templated content recycled across multiple practices, automated citation submissions, generic monthly reports, and junior account management. In healthcare, generic content doesn't just underperform — it can actively harm E-E-A-T signals that Google uses to rank medical content. Google's Quality Rater Guidelines place medical sites in the 'Your Money or Your Life' category, where thin or inaccurate content is penalized more severely than in other verticals.

This isn't an argument for spending more than your practice needs. A single-location practice in a low-competition market may achieve its goals at $2,000/month with the right agency. The issue is spending $800/month in a market that requires $4,000/month of effort — and expecting results that can't come from that budget.

A straightforward way to evaluate a low-cost proposal: ask specifically how many original content pieces they produce monthly, who reviews for medical accuracy, and how they build links in the healthcare niche. Vague answers to those three questions tell you what you need to know.

SEO is not a single service — it's a stack of interdependent activities. Understanding how a retainer is allocated helps you evaluate whether a proposal is appropriately balanced or skewed in ways that won't serve your practice.

A well-constructed monthly engagement typically allocates budget across four areas:

Technical SEO and Site Health (roughly 15–20% of retainer)

This covers crawl monitoring, Core Web Vitals maintenance, schema implementation and updates, and any ongoing technical fixes. For a new engagement, this work is heavier upfront. On a stable site, it becomes a lower-maintenance line item — but it cannot be dropped entirely. Google's indexing and ranking signals change, and what was technically sound 18 months ago may need updating.

Content Production (roughly 30–40% of retainer)

This is the highest-use component for plastic surgery practices. Procedure pages, comparison content ('rhinoplasty vs. septoplasty'), FAQ content, and geographic landing pages each need to be accurate, compliant, and genuinely useful. Cheap content here is the most common reason practices plateau after early gains.

Link Acquisition and Digital PR (roughly 25–35% of retainer)

In competitive markets, content alone doesn't move rankings. Your domain needs references from credible external sources — health publications, local media, medical associations, and authoritative directories. This is labor-intensive work and cannot be effectively outsourced to link farms without creating algorithmic risk.

Local SEO and GBP Management (roughly 10–20% of retainer)

For most plastic surgery practices, the Map Pack drives a meaningful share of new patient inquiries. Google Business Profile optimization, review strategy, and local citation consistency all fall here. This component overlaps with reputation management, which may be handled separately depending on your agency's scope.

If a proposal doesn't break down how budget is allocated across these areas, ask. The answer reveals how the agency actually operates.

How you engage an SEO agency matters as much as how much you spend. The contract structure shapes accountability, flexibility, and where the agency's incentives actually point.

Monthly Retainer (Most Common)

You pay a fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope of work. This is the standard model and works well when the scope is clearly defined and reviewed quarterly. The risk: agencies can deliver 'activity' (reports, Cheap SEO (under $800/month) almost never covers the [content volume](/resources/plastic-surgeon/plastic-surgeon-seo-checklist) and link-building a practice needs., calls) without delivering results. Ask what success metrics are tracked and how performance is reviewed.

Project-Based Engagements

A defined deliverable — technical audit, site redesign SEO oversight, content architecture — for a fixed price. Appropriate for one-time work or before committing to a retainer. Not a substitute for ongoing SEO, but a reasonable starting point to evaluate an agency's quality before a longer commitment.

Performance-Based Models

Some agencies offer pricing tied to ranking positions or lead volume. These sound appealing but carry risks: ranking targets can be met on low-value keywords, and lead quality can vary. If considering this model, define the target keywords and lead qualification criteria with precision before signing.

Contract Length

In our experience, 6-month minimums are standard and reasonable — SEO results take time to materialize, and short-term contracts don't give an agency enough runway to demonstrate what's working. Be cautious of 12-month lock-ins with no performance review checkpoints. A reasonable contract should include a 90-day review clause and clear exit terms if core deliverables aren't being met.

Whatever model you choose, get the scope of work in writing. 'Full-service SEO' means different things to different agencies. The deliverables list — content volume, link targets, reporting cadence, included services — should be explicit, not implied.

The most common source of frustration in plastic surgeon SEO is not bad strategy — it's misaligned expectations about when results appear. Understanding the timeline lets you budget appropriately and avoid pulling the plug before the work has time to compound.

Here is a realistic horizon for a practice starting from a typical baseline:

• Months 1–2: Technical foundation work, content architecture, initial page optimization. No meaningful ranking changes yet. This phase is invisible but critical.
• Months 3–4: Early ranking movement on lower-competition queries. Some procedure pages begin appearing in positions 8–20. Local SEO improvements may start surfacing in Map Pack results faster than organic.
• Months 5–6: Measurable organic traffic growth on targeted procedure terms. Map Pack visibility stabilizes. This is the first point at which you can make an evidence-based evaluation of trajectory.
• Months 7–12: Compounding effect. Established content earns links passively. Rankings consolidate. New patient inquiries attributable to organic search become trackable.

Practices in highly competitive markets (Beverly Hills, Manhattan, Miami Beach) typically see this timeline shift right by 2–4 months. Practices entering a low-competition market may see early traction sooner.

From a budgeting standpoint: plan your SEO investment as a 12-month commitment before evaluating ROI. Stopping at month 4 because you haven't seen a surge in consultations is the equivalent of canceling a gym membership before the first results appear. The compounding nature of SEO means early months are cost-heavy relative to the return; later months are when the economics improve.

For practices that need immediate patient volume while SEO builds, paid search (Google Ads) and SEO are not mutually exclusive. Running both in parallel is a common and rational approach during the 4–6 month organic ramp period.