Why dental SEO doesn’t cost £45 per month
…. or even £150 per month
A new SEO client recently called us to query the prices for our service following a conversation he’d just had with the provider of payment services at his dental practice.
The provider of payment services concerned is extremely well-known, operates world-wide and perhaps surprisingly had started to offer search engine optimisation services as a business “add on” for their clients – at a very low price of £45 per month. The client was confused why our services were considerably more expensive when he’d been offered “great” results for very little outlay.
The discussion which followed between the dentist and myself, served to show just how easy it is to tempt some people with silly offers and why, particularly when it comes to SEO, that you need to have a reasonable understanding of what is being offered. Let’s take a look at this particular example in more detail and then a few more questionable SEO offers to watch out for.
The small print
Following our discussion, I actually headed over to the provider’s website to evaluate what they were offering for £45 per month – for sure it couldn’t be credible but how were they masking it to make it look so? Firstly they were leveraging on their reputation as a leading payment service for businesses, potentially lulling the inexperienced into thinking that they can also offer other business services too. But high-quality SEO is quite tricky and very time-consuming to do properly; not a cheap bolt-on. It also takes a lot of experience and insight, particularly within the dental business niche, to achieve great SEO results and just because you provide payments services, doesn’t mean you know about SEO.
What was also apparent on the website was the use of “throw away” terms the provider obviously introduced to make it look like they know what they’re doing e.g. “ethical SEO” and “quality link building”. They also provided a couple of examples of where their work had yielded great Google success for a couple of their clients. All well and good until you search for the websites of those companies and find them back on page 2 and 3 for their key terms. Ironically one was a dentist! I suspect that particular client may have rumbled it by now and moved elsewhere.
However, the really telling information was tucked away at the base of the small-print – “we guarantee to get one search term into the top ten results for over 200 search engines”. Sounds impressive but it’s actually not impressive at all, in fact it’s pretty awful. You see, getting just one, unspecified result into the top ten search results whilst very easy, just isn’t going to yield the traffic you need. You need multiple search results in the top half of pages one of the search results to really start getting traction and provide new dental patient enquiries.
So please read the small print before you throw money down the drain. This particular provider was setting themselves a very low bar and tempting unsuspecting clients on mass. Money for old rope? I think so.
Watch out for these other questionable SEO offers and recommendations
In the example above we have an SEO service model deliberately designed to have a low price but equally have very little obligation in terms of delivery. Unfortunately there are an increasing number of dental marketing providers who also rely on smoke-and-mirrors when it comes to their SEO services.
Perhaps the most obvious trick to those who understand the discipline, is where a supplier claims to offer SEO within a monthly maintenance service. This lulls the client into believing that their website is being looked after and that it is being promoted effectively in Google. However, take a look at the small print for these contracts and you’ll see that the most critical aspects of on-site SEO aren’t actually catered for. But you saw the term “SEO” and you though it was. Six months down the track when your Google results haven’t improved, the provider steps in to up-sell you to an even more expensive package.
Another classic trick is where the supplier defines a list of keywords for where there is very little traffic and deliberately excludes the generic “money” terms such as “dentist” and “cosmetic dentist”. But more on this in a future article.
You will also see other providers within the dental profession; reps, mentors, trainers etc, selling bolt-on SEO services where they genuinely have very limited insight into the discipline and what is actually needed to move the SEO needle in various different scenarios. They may be good at their own discipline but most of them aren’t really close enough to the detail to make recommendations about SEO. For sure, listen to the recommendations, but be skeptical about referral fees they may be receiving and shop around before you decide.
So what does good SEO cost?
This will vary from case to case based on various factors such as competition, client aspirations etc. What we can say is that the “one price fits all” deals you may see advertised can’t work – by definition you will either be paying too much or too little for your own unique circumstance. But to give a guideline, small SEO campaigns may start around the £250 mark through to £1k or more for more complex situations. There are no automated systems, tricks or quick wins and each campaign will need hours of work – hence the fees.
Do you need assistance to make an informed decision for your own dental practice?
Understandably you may feel confused about the plethora of SEO services advertised and need more help to decide. It’s all too easy to pay too much as well as too little, so if you need some free, transparent advice, please call the Dental Media Digital Marketing team on 01332 672548.