Traditional dental SEO/AEO: what $500 and $3,000 a month can buy.

Sources and notes

1. 1Published prices on this page are agency advertisements, not an independent market survey or proof that every agency delivers the same work. Compare written proposals for the clinic’s size, existing site, market competition, location count, content quota, setup fees and contract term. Research checked September 15, 2026.
2. 2DDS MediaPro, Foundation advertises 5–7 keyword targets at $499 a month. Patient Excel, Growth Accelerator advertises 25 implant-related targets at $3,000 a month. These are tracking and optimization targets, not guaranteed rankings.
3. 3Neither cited $499 plan — DDS MediaPro, Foundation or DNTL’s Google Business Profile plan — specifies a new monthly article, hence 0 promised. Patient Excel advertises 4 blog posts a month plus service-page content at $3,000. Other $3,000 retainers may set content volume after an audit.
4. 4The cited $499 packages publish no backlink quota. Rathly’s $3,000 multi-location plan advertises 10+ backlinks but does not state whether that count is monthly or cumulative; Patient Excel includes backlink building without a numerical quota. 10+ is not a single-clinic monthly standard.
5. 50 guaranteed means no promised placement in an AI answer; it does not mean zero appearances. The cited $499 DDS MediaPro plan and Rotgar’s dental-eligible retainer from USD $3,000 a month publish no AI citation quota. Google says AI Overviews have no special technical requirements.
6. 6DDS MediaPro and DNTL advertise monthly reporting near $500. Patient Excel’s $3,000 plan includes its $2,000 Foundation plan’s monthly analytics report.
7. 71 a month is the buyer target requested for this comparison, not Patient Excel’s advertised quota. Patient Excel actually advertises meetings every two weeks; the cited $499 packages do not promise a meeting cadence.
8. 8The 50 and 300 clicks are hypothetical: 5,000 × (3% − 2%) = 50 and 20,000 × (3.5% − 2%) = 300 for commercially relevant Google Search impressions. Search Console defines click-through rate as clicks ÷ impressions. A Business-Profile-only $499 service cannot be forecast from website-search impressions.
9. 9Applying an illustrative 2–5% website click-to-inquiry rate to 50 and 300 clicks gives 1–3 and 6–15 inquiries after rounding. The rate comes from a UK dental agency’s directional treatment-page range; another dental agency uses more than 3% as a visitor-to-enquiry rule of thumb. These are not universal rates. Qualified leads can be lower after removing existing-patient, duplicate, wrong-service and spam contacts; direct Business Profile calls are not included.
10. 10Google’s AI-features guidance says ordinary SEO practices apply and there is no special AI Overview schema or technical requirement; AI-feature traffic is included in Search Console’s web reporting. Google Business Profile metrics define “calls” as call-button clicks. Google’s SEO hiring guidance says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking.
11. 11Google’s core-update guidance says improvements can take days to several months to affect search results and are not guaranteed to have a noticeable impact.
12. 12Google Search Console defines click-through rate as clicks divided by impressions. Google Business Profile defines calls as call-button clicks, not completed conversations; its booking count is available only with a supported booking provider. Leads and bookings therefore need separate clinic-side tracking.

Agency names appear only as published pricing references; none of them endorses this research. Modeled rows are worked examples, not forecasts for any practice.