Cost of SEO for Orthodontists

During my many years working as an SEO Consultant for orthodontic practices and also providing search engine optimization services for orthodontists, I have personally audited, optimized, and talked to many orthodontists. One of the main questions they ask us almost always is what the SEO cost for orthodontists is, and the answer is not always straightforward. Before answering this common question, let’s first break this down to what activities and deliverables an SEO firm does for an orthodontic client.

If you don’t wish to read these breakdowns, jump to the end of the article to read the cost categories for SEO services for orthodontists.

Technical SEO or On-page Optimization

This comes down to the on-page optimizations, adding new pages, fixing the site structure, optimizing different pages, speed optimization, user experience optimization, conversion optimization, etc. These are the technical tasks that the SEO team should do to make the site visible to Google and fix any potential problem that might get in the way of Google indexing the site or associating it with the orthodontic terms the practice should be targeting. Unlike popular belief, this is not a one-time task but an ongoing thing. Why is that? Let me tell you, neither your site nor Google and the demand of the market are fixed components. Your site gets changed, the WordPress or any other CMS you use is constantly changing, and we need to update our optimizations and make sure the site complies with all the recent changes.

For example, a new version of WordPress or newly installed plugins can affect a website’s speed optimization, which might require us to re-optimize the site to achieve a high-speed score related to Core Web Vitals, which otherwise could negatively affect the rankings.

Google changes, too. Google runs both minor and major core updates occasionally, recently a couple of times per year. With all these changes, the rules of the game sometimes change, too, and we need to make changes accordingly to ensure compliance with Google’s recent updates. For example, Google recently introduced machine learning that might associate common optimization elements with Spam, like site-wide use of Table of contents or FAQs. If any of these techniques are used on your site, they must be rectified to avoid affecting your rankings.

Your competitors are also changing, working on their sites and SEO. So, we need to make changes to your site to maintain our competitive advantage over them. For example, in response to a new orthodontist opening up near you recently, we might need to add a page targeting their street name or neighborhood more precisely to make sure we will maintain our rankings in those areas that we used to come up high in the past.

So when it comes to on-page optimization, which is sometimes also referred to as technical SEO, the primary deliverable for the SEO company is to maintain a well-optimized, error-free, high-performing website that evolves and gets changed but in a positive way.

Link Building

Links matter a lot; why? Because Google relies on them a lot. Google has tried to downplay links and replace them with other signals like user interactions, reviews, citations, and machine learning, but still, even to this date, all SEO experts mostly agree that links are the most critical signal that makes your site rank higher than your competitors. They are one of the main components of a successful orthodontic SEO campaign.

So, for link building, the deliverable of the SEO company would be to build high-quality links for your website from relevant and trustworthy sources.

Content Optimization

Another deliverable of an SEO campaign for orthodontic practices is to add and update the content of the site to target both the seed keywords and the long-tail keywords that your potential patients might search to find you. So, adding and optimizing pages for all the treatments you provide, adding pages for areas you serve, and adding blog content on a regular basis are among the top activities of the SEO company in this category. Typically, 2-3 blog posts should be written to build topical authority for different treatment terms. Also, past blog posts or website pages should be updated from time to time in response to changes in Google algo and competitors targeting similar keywords. Sometimes, we might need to merge old or outdated content or even entirely remove them.

Tracking

Your SEO company should track and monitor essential metrics for your orthodontic SEO campaign. These include conversion tracking (both for calls and forms), backlink tracking, citations tracking, reviews tracking, keywords tracking, traffic, and competitors monitoring. We constantly run keyword research, competitive analysis, gap analysis, etc., to gain market insights in the area you serve for the treatment options you provide. We need to use different tools. Some of the tools that we use are Semrush, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Allintitle; the latter is a full-fledged suite of SEO tools that our team has developed.

The deliverable that fits under the tracking category is to track and monitor a historical analysis of the different SEO metrics related to your site. This analysis will be used in the reporting as well as to help us update our strategies and fine-tune our SEO campaign for your practices.

Reporting

Your SEO team will and should report to you about the performance of your SEO campaign. Depending on your agreement with them, they might send you monthly reports, quarterly or semi-annual reports, etc. Preparing these reports and presenting them to you, depending on how detailed they are, can take several hours.

The derivable in this category is to present you with a detailed, well-structured report that can exactly show you what the status of your site is and how the SEO campaign was able to enhance your Google performance and rankings and generate more leads and patients for you.

Local SEO Optimization

This comes down to the optimization we need to make to your Google Business listing, building N.A.P citations (N.A.P stands for Name, Address, and Phone number.) Helping you get more patient reviews, etc.

Cost of SEO for Orthodontists

Now, let’s get to the fun part: what would be a reasonable cost for SEO services for an orthodontist or orthodontic practice? Based on the breakdown we provided above, we can create this cost range for SEO campaigns for orthodontists. Please note that costs can vary depending on the competitiveness of your locations, how many offices you have, and the location of the SEO company that provides you with these services.

• Below $1100 per month: This is a bit of an unrealistic budget for SEO. You can still find some freelancers who might do SEO in this cost range, but the results might not be as favorable as you might think.
• Between $1100 and $2500 per month: This is a realistic budget for SEO, provided that you have only one location and are in a less competitive market. You might not have a lot of agencies that offer this cost range for your orthodontic practice in the USA, but in Canada, you can find reliable SEO firms that provide top-quality services for this range.
• Between $2500 and $5000 per month: This is a reasonable cost range for SEO services for orthodontists; this budget gives us more freedom to build high quality links, create more content, and spend more time optimizing the site for different signals. You will be able to find very good SEO firms that provide SEO services for orthodontists in this range, both in the USA and Canada.
• Over $5000 per month: This is a reasonable budget only if you have multiple locations and one or more of them are in a competitive area. Most orthodontic practices won’t fall under this category, with the exception of those that have many locations and serve in dense areas with other practices close to them.

Generally speaking, most orthodontic practices fall under the $2500 to $5000 per month SEO cost category and can achieve good results with this budget. We do not recommend using cheap SEO services provided by freelancers on platforms like Fiverr or likewise, as they can hurt your site’s rankings more than they help using black-hat, outdated, low-cost techniques that, in some cases, can lead your orthodontic site to get banned or devalued on Google.

Stay with specialized, reputable SEO firms that provide SEO services for other orthodontic practices and have a successful track record of providing SEO services to other orthodontists in the past.