SEO pricing models and typical 2026 ranges
Monthly retainers are the usual way small businesses buy SEO. You pay a fixed fee for ongoing work: technical fixes, content, Google Business Profile, links and reporting. For a single-location local business, retainers typically run from the mid hundreds into the low thousands of dollars a month. Multi-location, national and e-commerce campaigns sit higher, often well into four figures a month, because there is simply more to rank.
One-time projects cover a defined job: a technical audit, a site migration, a keyword and content plan, or a Google Business Profile cleanup. They're priced by scope, from the hundreds for a small audit to the thousands for a large site or a migration. A project makes sense when you have people in-house to act on the findings, or when one specific problem needs fixing before you commit to ongoing work.
Hourly consulting suits a business with an in-house marketer who needs an expert for a few hours a month; rates vary widely with experience. Pay-per-result deals sound safe but deserve caution. They often pay for rankings on phrases the agency picked, reward short-term tricks and end with you owning less than you thought. Ask exactly what counts as a result before signing one.
Price is driven mostly by competition and scope. A plumber in one town needs less than a law firm competing across a metro area. Other factors are how many locations and services you want to rank, how much content needs writing, the technical state of your site, whether links have to be earned, and how crowded your field is. Search data shows the spread clearly: some local terms are easy to win, others take years of steady work.
A fair retainer produces visible output every month. Expect a list of what was done, the pages published or improved, Google Business Profile activity, technical issues fixed and leads by source. If a monthly report shows only rankings and traffic graphs, ask how many calls and forms came from search. That number is what you're paying for.
Walk away from ranking guarantees, “secret” methods, mass directory submissions, links bought from networks, and contracts that keep your content or Google profile in the agency's name. Be careful with very cheap monthly packages too. Real SEO takes skilled hours every month, and a price far below the going rate usually means automated reports and little else.
SEO is slow by nature. New pages need time to be found and trusted, and local profiles build prominence through reviews over months. That's why our Local plan runs on a 6-month cycle: it's long enough to judge honestly. If you need leads this month, pair SEO with ads for the first months and treat the ad budget as a separate line paid to Google or Meta.
Our plans start at $600/month for Local, $1,000/month for Growth and $1,800/month for Full, set for small and mid-size local businesses. Strategy, content and SEO work happens with our team in Budapest; we're based in Fort Myers and meet clients at their business or on Zoom. We don't sell rankings, we report leads by source, and you keep every account if you ever leave.
Our SEO plans and what each one covers
These are starting prices before tax, and ad budgets are never part of them. Each plan gets a fixed quote after a 20-minute call.
- Local, from $600/month. Local SEO, Google Business Profile management, technical monitoring, review requests and a monthly report, on a 6-month cycle.
- Growth, from $1,000/month. Everything in Local plus 2–4 SEO articles a month, Google Ads management, landing-page optimization and a monthly call. The plan we recommend most often.
- Full, from $1,800/month. SEO, Google Ads and Meta ads together, social content and creative, link building and a quarterly strategy workshop.
- A free first look. Our Website Grader checks speed, SEO and conversion basics in about a minute, before you pay anyone anything.
- Our own SEO platform. Keyword research with live search data, site structure, technical audits, rank tracking and content plans all run in our SEO OS.
- Reports that count leads. Every form, tracked call and landing-page inquiry lands in the CRM with its source, so the report shows leads instead of positions alone.
- You keep the accounts. Your website, content, analytics and ad accounts stay in your name, with full access.
Why SEO quotes are so hard to judge
- Two agencies quote the same monthly fee for completely different amounts of work.
- Reports show rankings for phrases nobody searches, while calls and form leads go uncounted.
- Contracts lock you in for a year before you can tell whether anything is working.
- Cheap packages buy links from networks that can get a site penalized by Google.
- Nobody explains what happens to your content and accounts if you decide to leave.
How to get a reliable quote
- Get a free baseline. Run your site through a grader and note your Google profile's reviews, categories and photos.
- Ask for the scope in writing. Monthly deliverables, who owns what, and how leads will be counted.
- Compare like with like. Line up the work per month, not only the price per month.
- Give it a fair window. Judge local SEO after about six months, with leads by source as the yardstick.