Pricing, Plastic Surgery, and The Internet

The Internet has become a powerful marketing and consumer tool. People are increasingly using the Internet to search for products and services and to compare prices. But just how does this relate to a website for a plastic surgery practice? It’s clear that many, many people are using the Internet to search for information about plastic surgery procedures and the surgeons who perform them. During the month of July on Yahoo alone, there were 201,678 searches performed for the term ‘plastic surgery’, 125,122 for ‘breast enlargement’, 96,020 for ‘liposuction’, 67,554 for ‘botox’, and 43,880 for ‘rhinoplasty’. Not surprisingly, people are also searching for information about the cost of plastic surgery.

During the same month on Yahoo, thousands of searches were performed utilizing the following keyword phrases:

“Liposuction Cost”	7,043 searches
“Hair Transplant Cost”	3,811 searches
“Plastic Surgery Cost”	2,909 searches
“Breast Augmentation Cost”	2,707 searches
“Rhinoplasty Cost”	1,393 searches

Ideally, certain pages within your site should target these keyword phrases, bringing more visitors and potential patients to your site. But you cannot simply create a keyword-rich page, a page which repeatedly uses the phrase ‘Breast Augmentation Cost’ for instance, you must also provide your visitors with what they’re looking for and that’s the cost of particular procedures. This, however, can create a problem.

Listing the exact cost of procedures on your website can be difficult. First, procedures depend to some degree on the particular patient and other factors. As such, prices will likely vary. Further, plastic surgery tends to be a high ticket item and actually putting those high prices in print may potentially scare some people away. Lastly, you may have seen other sites out there that list their costs, typically something like ‘Breast Augmentation As Low As…’ or ‘Guaranteed Lowest Price For Rhinoplasty’, all of which tend to negatively impact an otherwise professional image.

There is, however, a good solution and you can still provide users with the information that they’re looking for. Give your visitors an idea of how much a particular procedure costs by listing the averages provided by organization like the ASPS or ASAPS. For instance, the ASPS lists $3,373 as the average physician fee for breast augmentation in 2004, $4,822 for facelift surgery, and $2,339 for ear surgery. These are certainly figures that you can include on your website, or you can even determine your own averages and use those. By including this information, you will not only be targeting important keyword phrases, you’ll also be satisfying your visitors by giving them what they want.