“How much does SEO cost?” is the first question most business owners ask, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you need to win. A plumber who wants to show up in one city has a very different job ahead than a law firm competing across a whole region. This guide explains what you’re paying for, what moves the price, and how to tell a fair offer from a bad one.
The short answer
Most service businesses pay for SEO as a monthly retainer, because the work is ongoing: Google keeps changing, competitors keep publishing, and rankings need maintaining. Here is where our own plans start, so you have a real reference point:
- Local SEO and Google Maps: from $650 USD a month. For businesses that win customers in one area, such as trades, clinics and restaurants.
- SEO: from $1,250 USD a month. For businesses competing for searches across a city, a region or the whole country.
- AI search optimization: from $1,250 USD a month. For getting named in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews, usually alongside SEO.
We set our prices below typical agency rates in the US and Canada, and every plan includes reporting tied to calls, forms and bookings, not just rankings.
What you’re actually paying for
A good SEO retainer is not a mystery box. Each month should include a mix of the following, weighted to what your site needs most:
- Technical fixes: speed, crawl errors, broken links, mobile issues and structured data, so Google can read and trust your site.
- On-page work: titles, headings and copy that match what your customers actually type.
- Content: new service pages, location pages and articles that answer real questions.
- Local signals: your Google Business Profile, reviews and consistent listings across directories.
- Authority: earning mentions and links from relevant, real websites.
- Reporting: a plain report that shows what changed, what it brought in and what happens next.
What moves the price up or down
Two businesses can ask for “SEO” and need very different amounts of work. These are the factors that matter most:
- Competition. Ranking for “dentist Toronto” takes more work than ranking for a niche service in a smaller town.
- How many services and locations. Each service and each area you want to rank in needs its own page and its own effort.
- The state of your website. A slow or poorly built site needs fixing before content can do its job.
- How much content you need. Some sites need a handful of pages, others need dozens.
- Your starting point. A business with years of reviews and links climbs faster than a brand-new one.
Pricing models you’ll come across
- Monthly retainer. The most common model. You get steady work every month, and the agency is accountable for ongoing results.
- One-off project. An audit, a technical clean-up or a site migration. Useful when you have a specific problem to fix.
- Hourly. Common with consultants. Flexible, but harder to budget and easy to underuse.
For most service businesses, a monthly plan with a clear scope works best: SEO compounds, and stopping and starting wastes momentum.
Red flags to watch for
- Guaranteed #1 rankings. Nobody controls Google. A guarantee usually means risky shortcuts or a meaningless keyword.
- Prices that look too good to be true. Very cheap packages often mean automated links or copied content that can hurt your site.
- No access to your own accounts. Your Google Business Profile, analytics and website should always be yours.
- Reports with rankings only. Rankings matter, but you should see calls, forms and bookings too.
- Vague monthly work. You should know what was done each month, and why.
How long before you see results
Most businesses see measurable movement within 3 to 6 months. Competitive markets like Toronto and Los Angeles can take longer. If you need leads this month, Google Ads can bring in enquiries in the first week while SEO builds in the background.
SEO or Google Ads: where should the budget go?
Google Ads buys visibility immediately, but the leads stop the day you stop paying. SEO takes longer to build, then keeps working without a cost per click. Many of our clients start with ads to fill the calendar and add SEO so that, over time, they rely less on paid clicks. If you are unsure, our Google Ads budget calculator shows what a realistic ad budget looks like for your industry.
Get a number for your business
The fastest way to get a real price is a free 30-minute strategy call. We look at your site, your market and your competitors, and tell you what it would take to win, whether you hire us or not. You can also see every plan on our pricing page.
