Can you get SEO included with an AEO retainer?

Yes. Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the work of getting your practice named and described correctly when a patient asks ChatGPT or Google's AI for a provider, and several agencies publish plans that put it in the same retainer as SEO. The bundles come in three shapes, and "included" rarely covers everything. Off-site mentions, extra tracking and clinical review are the usual gaps.

Why can one retainer cover both?

Because a large share of the work is the same work. Google's documentation on AI features says the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations needed to appear in them. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. That is the job your SEO agency already has.

Microsoft says much the same about Bing and Copilot, with one caveat that matters when you read a proposal. Its October 2025 guidance says crawlability, metadata, internal linking and backlinks remain essential, and then adds that they are just the starting point: in AI search the question is which pieces of your content earn a place in the final answer.

So there is a shared base (a site the engines can read, structured data, procedure pages that answer the question) and a layer on top that classic SEO did not always cover: what directories, review sites and other publications say about your providers, and tracking of the answers themselves. A bundled retainer is one agency doing the base once and the layer on top. Our AEO vs SEO cost page has the published price ranges for each service, so this article stays on structure.

How do agencies structure a bundled SEO and AEO retainer?

In three ways, going by plan pages agencies have published. I opened each of these on 14 November 2026. They are list prices from sellers, not what practices paid, and none is a medical-only agency. Use them to learn the shapes, not to set your budget.

The first shape starts from SEO. WebFX's SEO plan table lists five tiers from $2,900 to $9,200 a month, and every tier includes line items a practice would think of as AEO: managing access for AI crawlers, a set number of prompts to target, and monthly tracking of presence in AI answers.

The second starts from AI visibility and reaches back. SEO.com's GEO page lists plans from $3,000 a month and names traditional SEO foundation building as one of four components. The page does not say how much SEO that covers, which is the first thing to ask.

The third drops the labels and sells output. RevenueZen's pricing page (a B2B agency, included here for the structure) runs from $3,000 for its Foundation plan to $10,000 for Scale, and each plan states the count of new pages, refreshed pages, backlinks and tracked prompts you get each month.

One more detail shows why you have to read the deliverables. WebFX also publishes a separate AI search plan starting at $3,000 a month, with 50 prompts monitored at the entry tier. The same agency sells AI work inside an SEO plan and as its own plan. Neither is wrong. They are different scopes with similar names.

What is usually included in a bundle?

The shared base, plus some tracking. Going by the plan pages above, a bundle's entry level usually covers:

• Technical work. Crawling, indexing, site speed, and access rules for AI crawlers.
• Structured data. Schema for the practice, providers, locations and services. Google's AI features page says structured data should match the visible text on the page.
• Pages. A set number of new or refreshed pages a month. For a practice these are procedure, condition and provider pages.
• Prompt tracking. A fixed list of patient-style questions re-run on a schedule, with a report on who was named.
• Reporting. Rankings, traffic and leads, with AI visibility added.

A caution on that last item. WebFX's own healthcare pricing guide tells practices to ask whether monitoring of mentions in AI Overviews and AI assistants is a named deliverable or an add-on. The same page puts typical healthcare SEO agency retainers at $1,500 to $5,000 a month. If your current retainer sits in that range, do not assume AI monitoring is in it. Ask.

What is usually excluded or capped?

The off-site layer, and anything that scales with volume. This is where two proposals with the same headline differ most.

• Digital PR and third-party mentions. The Digital Elevator's pricing guide says earning those placements takes real PR effort that is often priced separately or built into higher-tier retainers.
• Community work. RevenueZen's page lists Reddit as "Not included" on its two lower plans and as monthly posts and comments on the two higher ones.
• Tracking volume. Prompts are capped by tier in the WebFX and RevenueZen plans above. A practice with three surgeons and twelve procedures can use up a small prompt list quickly.
• Links. Where backlinks are listed they are counted per month. RevenueZen's entry plan, for instance, lists one.
• Term. One plan above is month to month. Another carries a six-month commitment.

Three more gaps are specific to practices, and none of the plan pages I read address them, so raise them yourself. Who reviews procedure content for clinical accuracy before it is published, and is your surgeon's or medical director's time assumed? Who cleans up provider profiles on Healthgrades, RealSelf, Zocdoc and specialty society listings when a provider joins or leaves? And does anything in the plan involve tracking tools on scheduling or intake pages? The last one is a compliance question first. Our guide to HIPAA and tracking pixels covers it.

When is keeping your current SEO agency the right call?

When it is working and the agency can show you the AI work on request. Good SEO still does things an AEO label does not replace: it keeps your site indexed, keeps your Google Business Profile accurate and keeps you in the map and organic results that many practices still rely on for consult requests. An agency that knows your providers, your procedures and your approval process is worth something. Switching has a cost too. RevenueZen's page, for example, says onboarding takes 30 to 45 days.

If your agency is delivering booked consults, the lighter move is to add a layer. The Digital Elevator describes a "monitor and maintain" tier at $1,000 to $2,500 a month for businesses with solid SEO fundamentals in place, and 310 Creative suggests starting by putting 10% to 20% of your organic or SEO budget toward AEO. Both are sellers' guidance, not independent benchmarks.

A bundle makes more sense when your SEO agency does not want the AI work, when two vendors would be editing the same procedure pages, or when you are already paying two invoices that list the same deliverables.

For transparency, we sell this, so weigh what follows accordingly. ElytraCo offers traditional SEO alongside AI visibility, and practices on an AEO program may qualify for preferred SEO pricing. We review what you pay your current SEO provider and show how both can run under one strategy, potentially for less. The comparison covers equivalent services and is subject to qualification. ElytraCo's AEO plans run from $2,500 to $10,000 or more a month, and enterprise programs are custom scoped. The published range is on our AEO pricing page.

What should a practice check in a proposal?

Check the nouns and the numbers, not the acronyms. Google's own advice on hiring an SEO is a good filter for either service: it says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, and that an SEO should be willing to explain the changes they make to your site. The same holds for AI answers. Nobody controls what ChatGPT says, so a promise of placement is a reason to keep looking.

These steps take an afternoon and work whether you end up with one agency or two:

1. Pull your current SEO scope. Find the contract or the last three invoices and list what was delivered each month: pages, technical fixes, profile updates, reports.
2. Ask your current agency one question in writing. "Which AI visibility work is already in our retainer, and can you send a sample report?" The answer tells you whether you need anything new.
3. Get the bundled proposal as a deliverable list. Counts per month for pages, refreshes, prompts tracked, engines tracked and off-site placements. Decline any proposal that only lists categories.
4. Put the lists side by side. Mark each line as shared base (technical, schema, pages), AI layer (tracking, off-site mentions) or SEO only (local rankings, links). Anything that appears twice should be billed once.
5. Ask about the caps and the gaps. Prompt limits, engines covered, digital PR, directory cleanup for each provider, and who signs off on clinical content.
6. Ask about the exit. Term, notice period, and who owns the content, the Google Business Profile access and the reporting accounts when the contract ends.
7. Set a baseline before anything changes. Record consult requests by source, and ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google the questions a patient would ask for your top three procedures. Save the answers with the date.

How to check where you stand

Step 7 is the one to do today, because it tells you whether there is a problem to pay for at all. If the answers name your providers accurately, your current setup may be enough and a monitoring layer is all you need. If they name other practices, or describe yours with an old address or a provider who has left, you have a specific list to hand any agency. Our post on what patients see when they ask AI to recommend a doctor walks through how those answers are built.

If you would like a second set of eyes, our free AI visibility audit runs your real procedure and provider questions across the major engines and shows who is named. More on how we work with surgeons, dermatologists, dentists and med spas is on the medical practices page.

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