"How much does SEO cost?" The honest answer is: it depends on the work to be done. But an order of magnitude helps you plan. Here are our real prices, what makes them vary, what a monthly engagement should include and the red flags to know before you sign.
Key Takeaways
- Our SEO engagements range from $500 to $2,000 a month before taxes, depending on the scope of the work
- The price depends mostly on how many areas you serve, local competition, the state of your website and your Google Business Profile, and the content to produce
- A good engagement names its deliverables: technical fixes, content, Google Business Profile, follow-up and a report every month
- No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google: a ranking promise is a red flag
- Our engagements have no long-term contract, and you remain the owner of your site and your content
What Our SEO Engagements Cost
Our SEO engagements range from $500 to $2,000 a month, depending on the scope of the work. The price is set after a free diagnostic, in a detailed quote that names each deliverable, its price and what is included. The work starts when you accept it.
In between, the price follows the scope: the more areas to cover, competition, pages to fix and content to produce, the closer the engagement gets to the top of the range.
Our prices are in Canadian dollars, before taxes: GST (5%) and QST (9.975%) are added. Our SEO engagements have no long-term contract. Our approach and pricing page also lists our starting prices for websites and automations.
What Changes the Price
- How many areas you serve: a single city or several regions, with service pages that clearly name the areas where you work.
- Local competition: the number of businesses going after the same searches in your area changes the amount of work.
- Your website's starting point: tags, structure, speed or structured data to fix before the rest. If your site needs to be rebuilt, that is a separate project: our guide How much does a website cost in Quebec? gives the prices.
- Your Google Business Profile: categories, services, service area, description, photos and posts to set up or keep up to date, review requests with no incentive and no filtering, review monitoring and identical contact details across directories. Our Local SEO and Google Business Profile service details this work.
- Content: service pages and articles that answer your clients' real questions, in Quebec French, with sourced facts.
- Two languages: if you serve clients in English and French, each version is a page in its own right for Google, with its own content to work on.
- Visibility in AI answers, if it is part of the engagement: checking that ChatGPT's and Perplexity's search crawlers can read your key pages, reading Search Console's generative AI performance report and running manual, dated checks in ChatGPT and Perplexity. Our AI visibility page explains this work.
- Follow-up and reporting: what is measured each month (Search Console, Google Business Profile) and a report that separates observations, decisions and next actions.
Before you ask for a price, see where your site stands. Our free SEO audit emails you a 3-page PDF report within a few minutes: your SEO score out of 100, your main keywords in Google, mobile speed, 15 checks and up to 5 priority actions. No access to your site or your Google accounts is needed.
What a Monthly Engagement Should Include
Whatever the provider, check that the quote names:
- a starting audit and a prioritized plan: what blocks first, such as an important page that is not indexed, cosmetic touch-ups later
- the planned technical fixes: tags, structure, speed, structured data
- the content to produce, and for which searches
- the work on your Google Business Profile and local citations, if you serve clients in your area
- a report every month, from your own data, that says what was delivered, what the data shows and what comes next
- access to your data and ownership of your site, your content and your Google Business Profile, in your name
At Expert Local, the detailed quote names each deliverable, its price and what is included. Our SEO agency page describes the three pillars of our search marketing: audit and technical SEO, content and brand authority, local visibility and reviews.
What You Pay For: Work, Not a Ranking
An SEO engagement buys work: fixes, content, a Google Business Profile kept up to date, follow-up. It does not buy a ranking. No one can promise a timeline for rankings or traffic: it all depends on the site's starting point and local competition. What we commit to is delivering the planned work each month and showing you what your data indicates.
That is also why our SEO engagements have no long-term contract: you stay because the work delivered suits you, not because a contract holds you. And if you leave, your site, your domain name and your content belong to you.
Red Flags
- A guaranteed first position: Google says so in its tips for hiring an SEO: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." If an SEO guarantees you first place, Google's advice is: "find someone else."
- A guaranteed spot on Google Maps: according to Google, "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."
- A guaranteed timeline: a promised date for a ranking or a traffic level is a promise no one controls.
- Bought links or reviews: buying or selling links for ranking purposes goes against Google's rules, and its review rules forbid offering an incentive in exchange for a review or soliciting only positive reviews.
- A package with no list of deliverables: if the quote does not say what is delivered each month, you can neither compare it nor check the work.
- A long commitment before you have seen the work: ask for the minimum term and what happens if you stop.
- Your data in the provider's name: your Search Console, your Google Business Profile and your website should be in your name. For an audit, Google even advises granting only read access to Search Console.
Our guide on hiring an SEO expert also compares agencies, freelancers and marketplaces.
How to Compare Two Quotes
Two quotes at the same price can describe two very different engagements. To compare them:
- List the deliverables for each month: technical fixes, pages or articles, work on the Google Business Profile, report.
- Ask who does the work and who answers your questions.
- Ask whether there are setup or audit fees on top of the monthly price, and what they cover.
- Check the length of the commitment and what you own if you stop.
- Ask what the monthly report looks like and what data it is based on.
To see where your site stands, start with our free diagnostic. For a precise price, book a discovery call or write to us.