How much does SEO cost, and what do you get for it?
Search for SEO prices and you get “$500 to $20,000 a month”, which helps nobody. Here is what local businesses really pay, what that money buys at each level, and how to tell real work from a monthly report with nothing behind it.
By Dan Horn, web designer in Caddo Mills, Texas · Prices checked October 2026
Most local businesses pay $500 to $2,000 a month. In Ahrefs’ survey of 439 SEO providers, local SEO averaged $1,557 a month, the most common retainer was $501 to $1,000, and the average hourly rate was $111. One-off projects most often cost $2,501 to $5,000.
What a month of SEO usually buys
| Monthly price | What you usually get |
|---|---|
| Under $300 | Automated listings and a report. Rarely any new pages or real work on your Google profile. |
| $500 to $1,000 | One location, one town. Google profile work, a few new pages or posts, review help, listings cleaned up. The most common price. |
| $1,000 to $2,500 | Several services or towns, new pages every month, local links, a monthly call. The local SEO average ($1,557) sits here. |
| $2,500 and up | Competitive cities, several locations, content and PR teams. The average across all SEO, local and national, is $2,917. |
Figures from Ahrefs’ survey of 439 SEO providers. What each band buys is typical, not a rule; ask any provider for their list.
What local SEO work actually is
For a business that serves a town or a county, most of the result comes from a short list of jobs done properly and kept up:
- Your Google Business Profile: the right categories, every service listed, real photos, posts, and questions answered.
- Reviews: a steady habit of asking for them, and replying to every one.
- A page for each service and each town worth ranking in, written for people rather than for robots.
- A site that loads fast on a phone and makes calling one tap.
- Your name, address and phone the same everywhere they are listed.
- Links from real local places: your chamber, the teams you sponsor, suppliers, local news.
- Call and form tracking, so you can see what the money is doing.
How long before it works
The map listing usually moves first, often within a few months if it has been neglected. New pages ranking in normal search take longer, commonly three to six months, and a crowded city takes longer than that. Anybody promising page one in thirty days is either guessing or about to do something that gets you penalized.
What not to pay for
- Guaranteed number-one rankings. Nobody controls Google, and the people who promise it know that.
- “Submission to 500 search engines.” There are not 500 that matter.
- Bulk links from sites that have nothing to do with you or your town.
- A long contract before you have seen any results.
- Reports full of impressions and “visibility” with no calls, forms or bookings in them.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What exactly gets done each month, in writing?
- Who owns the pages and the Google profile if I leave?
- How will we count calls and form fills, not just rankings?
- Is it month to month?
- Show me a business like mine, in a town like mine, that you moved.
What you can do yourself for free
Claim your Google Business Profile, fill in every field, get your hours right and keep them right. Ask every happy customer for a review and reply to all of them. Make sure your phone number is the same on Facebook, Yelp and your website. Those three habits beat a lot of cheap SEO packages, and they make any paid SEO work faster.
Local SEO, priced in the open.
Month to month, on a site I built or one I didn’t. You get a written list of what was done each month and a count of calls and form fills, not a page of impressions.
Local SEO
$599/mo
Your Google profile, your pages and your listings worked on every month. Works on a site I didn’t build.
SEO Plus
$1,199/mo
Everything in Local SEO with twice the new pages, more towns, and a call with me every month.
Google Business Profile care
$199/mo
Weekly posts, photos, review replies and questions answered, so the map listing stays alive.
Or Get Growing: $899 a month for the website, ongoing SEO and ads management together.
Common questions about price
Most local businesses pay between $500 and $2,000 a month. Ahrefs’ survey of 439 providers put the average for local SEO at $1,557 a month, with agencies averaging $1,819 and freelancers about $1,150.
Because at that price nobody can spend real time on your business. A $99 plan is usually automated directory listings and a monthly report. It will not hurt you much, but it rarely moves anything either.
Part of it can be. Setting up your Google profile, fixing a slow site and building the core pages is one-off work. Holding and improving rankings is ongoing, because your competitors keep working on theirs. A sensible plan is a one-off setup followed by a smaller monthly effort.
It is worth it when people search for what you do in your area and you are not the one they find. If you are fully booked from referrals and happy with that, it is not urgent. If a competitor is taking calls that used to come to you, it usually is.
The basics, yes: your Google profile, reviews and consistent listings. The pages, the speed work and the tracking take time and some know-how, and that is what you are paying a professional for.
The average in Ahrefs’ survey was $111 an hour. Freelancers tend to charge less than that and consultants more.
Want a real number for your business?
Send me your current website, or tell me what you need, and you’ll get a straight price and what I’d do first. No charge, no pitch, and a reply from me rather than a sales team.