Side by side
The agency column describes a typical monthly retainer, not any named company.| Question a clinic owner asks | Monthly agency retainer | Single links from a marketplace |
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| Who picks the websites? | The agency, often shown to you after the fact | You, from a table with traffic and price |
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| What do you pay? | A fixed monthly fee, commonly several hundred dollars | From $1 a link up to about $500, only when you order |
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| Can you stop tomorrow? | Often after a notice period | Yes, there is no subscription |
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| How fast does a link appear? | Spread across the month | Usually within about 24 hours of payment |
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| Can you read the article first? | Sometimes | Yes, if you supply your own finished article |
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| Is time included? | Yes: someone else does the work | No: you or your manager do the choosing |
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| Is reporting included? | A monthly PDF | A status per order in your account |
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Our reading
Pay the agency for hours, not for links
If your day is full of patients and you want someone to own the whole plan, an agency buys back your time. If the plan is simply a few good links, a marketplace costs less and shows more.
- The retainer pays for attention and strategy, which is real value.
- The marketplace pays only for placements and gives you the choosing.
- Neither route can promise a position in Google.
Three clinic situations
A two-chair dental practice with a free Friday afternoon can handle single links. Add three rows to the basket, review, pay. Done by tea.
A multi-site physio group with three managers and a legal team may prefer one partner who handles approvals and wording. In that case the retainer buys process, and no table of sites will replace that.
A newly opened aesthetic clinic sits between the two. Early on, the Business Profile and reviews matter more than links, as our decision tree for studios explains. Spend there first. Then order a few links using the seven-screen walkthrough, starting small enough that you can inspect every article.
Whichever route you pick, ask for the same thing. A list of the exact pages that link to you, with dates. A clinic owner who can open that list can judge the work, while one who only receives a score cannot. Ahrefs, Semrush and Google Search Console each show part of the picture, so cross-check them. Simple.
Budget thinking helps here. Suppose a clinic sets aside $300 a month for six months. As a retainer, that is a fixed purchase of someone's time. As single links at an example average of $30, it is ten placements you can read, spread across the half year. Both are valid, and which fits depends on whether you value hours or visibility.
Money questions
Is a retainer ever the cheaper option?
Occasionally, when it includes work beyond links, such as site fixes or copywriting you would otherwise buy separately. Compare line by line. If the invoice only says link building, you can price it against single placements starting at $1.
Can I mix both routes?
Yes. Some clinics keep a small retainer for the plan and buy extra single links when a new treatment page launches. Just keep one list of every link so nothing is counted twice and you can see the total.
Which is safer with Google?
Neither is automatically safe. Google's SpamBrain system looks at patterns, such as many unrelated links arriving at once. Relevant sites, modest volume and sensible anchors matter more than who placed the order.