The Cost of SEO: Part I
What does SEO cost for a medical or dental practice seeking to gain (and maintain) a competitive edge in the online marketplace? Talk about a loaded question. So many different variables are factored into determining the cost of SEO, it’s practically impossible to name a specific price point that fits every practice. To give you an idea of what all goes into the equation, let’s take a look at a few factors that greatly influence the cost of SEO, beginning with your target market.
How Competitive is Your Marketplace?
The geographic location of your practice can impact the cost of your SEO dramatically. For instance, let’s say you’re a LASIK surgeon practicing in Atlanta, GA. Now, Atlanta isn’t necessarily a small market (especially when you extend your reach into the surrounding suburbs), so there are likely several other LASIK surgeons in the area with whom you are competing for online visibility.
Consequently, your SEO strategy will need to be somewhat aggressive in order to consistently rank higher than your competition in search results. What does that mean? It means you’ll need to blog more, acquire more inbound links, consistently update your procedural pages, regularly syndicate press releases, ensure your website design is up-to-date, and so on and so forth. As you may have guessed, all of this ultimately influences the price you pay for SEO services.
And that’s just Atlanta. Imagine your practice is located in New York City. You’d have to double, nay, triple your SEO efforts to keep pace in such a competitive marketplace, which, again, affects the cost of your SEO.
Can Any SEO Firm Do the Trick?
While many online marketing companies offer SEO services, not all services provided will get you to the top of the search results. We’ll discuss the pricing differences, as well as product offerings, among large and small SEO firms in our next blog post, so be sure to stay tuned.