Med spa SEO sits at the higher end of local service pricing because the content load is heavier. Every treatment is its own search, every treatment needs its own page, and the buyer compares providers visually before booking. Market retainers run from several hundred with a freelancer to one to four thousand with an agency, and higher with firms that bundle social and paid. The number should track to how many treatment pages get built and maintained, not to how impressive the strategy document was.
Legitimate cost sits in treatment content, visuals and reviews. A page about dermal fillers has to answer what it costs, what it feels like, how long it lasts and who should not get it, written by someone who checked with your injector. Before and after galleries need consent handling and consistent image treatment. Reviews drive booking decisions more than rankings do, so collecting and responding to them weekly is real work. Add technical upkeep, profile posting and seasonal pushes before summer and events, and the retainer makes sense.
The margin heavy items are familiar. Generic wellness blog posts. Keyword reports with every treatment variation in the country. Social posting that does not connect to booking. Influencer packages attached to an SEO retainer. Also be careful about compliance, because some agencies will write medical claims that your state regulators and the platforms will not accept, and you carry that risk, not them. Any vendor writing about treatment outcomes should be running the copy past your medical director without being asked.
At any level you should get profile management, review generation, technical maintenance and some new treatment content each month. A real retainer adds a steady page build out across treatments, location pages if you have more than one, gallery updates, and link work from local and industry sources. You should hold admin on your own profile, analytics and booking tool. Ask for the monthly work list in plain language, naming pages published, posts made, reviews collected and fixes applied.
Judge a quote by asking which treatments get pages in the first ninety days and in what order, because that order should match what your highest margin services are. Ask who reviews medical claims. Ask what happens if you stop. Then read two treatment pages they wrote for another clinic and see whether you would hand them to a patient. Heights includes monthly SEO for Google and AI search in the $399 a month plan, with monthly content, unlimited site updates and Google Business Profile.
| What you are buying | What it usually runs per month |
|---|---|
| DIY reviews and profile posts | Free, plus staff time |
| Freelance consultant | Several hundred to about fifteen hundred |
| Local agency retainer | One to four thousand |
| Med spa specialist with social and paid | Several thousand and up |
| Heights Digital | Included in $399 a month after a $750 build |
If yours is not here, ask it on the call. You will get a straight answer.
(210) 729-4008For every treatment you actually want more of, yes. People search by treatment name, not by clinic category, and a single services list cannot rank or convert for a dozen different procedures. Start with your three highest margin treatments, build those pages properly, then expand one or two a month.
For med spas, reviews often decide the booking even when rankings are equal. Volume, recency and how you respond all factor in. A clinic ranked third with two hundred recent reviews usually beats the clinic ranked first with twelve. Any retainer that ignores review generation is missing the biggest lever you have.
Send the site over. We will tell you what is broken, what you could rank for, and whether AI search knows you exist. No charge and no pitch deck.
