The short version
SEO for a small business means making sure Google can find your pages, that each page matches what your customers search for, and that your Google Business Profile and reviews are working for you. Most small businesses pay an agency $500 to $1,500 a month for it.
The work is not mysterious. It's a list of fixes up front, then a monthly routine of tracking, improving and adding pages. What you're paying for is someone who does that routine every month and tells you plainly what moved. Below is the checklist we work from, what the surveys say about price, and the questions that separate a real plan from a monthly invoice.
What SEO work should cover
This is the list we run on the sites we look after. The right column is when or how often it happens. If a plan you're looking at can't tell you who does each of these, ask.
Foundations, first
- Every important page is indexed in Google, and Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are set up and checked.Month 1
- Each page has one clear job: one service or one question, with a title and description written for the search behind it.Month 1
- Keyword research in the words your buyers actually type, with real monthly search volumes, not guesses.Month 1
- The site is fast on a phone, works over HTTPS, and has no broken links or redirect chains.Month 1
- Structured data (schema) tells Google your business name, address, phone, hours and services.Month 1
Every month
- Rankings for your target keywords are tracked, and pages that slip get looked at.Weekly
- Pages that show up in search but don't get clicked get better titles and descriptions.Monthly
- New content answers questions your customers ask: a service page, a guide, an FAQ.Monthly
- Internal links point from strong pages to the pages you want to rank.Monthly
- A short report says what changed, what moved, and what's next. In plain English.Monthly
Local: Google Business Profile and reviews
- Google Business Profile is complete: categories, services, hours, holiday hours, photos and a website link.Month 1
- Your name, address and phone match everywhere: the site, Google, Bing, Apple, Yelp and the directories that matter.Month 1-2
- Posts go up on your Google profile, and every review gets a reply.Weekly
- Happy customers are asked for reviews, steadily, not in one burst.Ongoing
Check indexing before anything else. A page Google hasn't found can't rank, no matter how good it is. Eleven days after we launched our own new site, Search Console still listed three of our five pages as “unknown to Google.” It's the most common problem we find, and the cheapest to fix.
What it costs
Two industry surveys are worth knowing. Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers, and SE Ranking surveyed 260 agencies. They measure slightly different groups, but they agree on the shape:
- The most common monthly price is $500 to $1,000. Both surveys found this. SE Ranking found 64% of agencies charge under $1,000 a month, and 30% charge under $500.
- US agencies charge more. In the Ahrefs survey, 79% of US and Canadian providers charge $1,001 a month or more. The average local SEO retainer was $1,557.
- Bigger agencies charge more again. Over 70% of agencies with 25 or more staff charge over $1,000 a month (SE Ranking). The Ahrefs average for agencies was $3,209.
- Hourly work is $75 to $150 an hour for most providers. One-off projects like an audit usually cost $500 to $5,000.
What changes the price is mostly scope: how many locations, how much content, whether links are being built, and how competitive your market is. A plumber in a small town and a law firm in San Francisco are not buying the same thing.
For comparison, our Growth plan is $300 a month per site. It can sit below the survey range because it's built on top of our Care plan: we already host and maintain the site, so the technical side is covered, and the tracking and monitoring are automated. It's scoped to one site and one location.
Sources: Ahrefs, SEO pricing survey and SE Ranking, SEO pricing survey.
How long it takes
Honest timelines, for a local business in a normal market:
- Weeks: fixes. Getting pages indexed, completing the Google Business Profile, fixing titles on pages that already show up but don't get clicked.
- Three to six months: rankings. New and improved pages settle into their positions, reviews add up, and the map results start to move.
- Six to twelve months and beyond: authority. Content and links compound. This is where national or very competitive keywords get won, if they get won.
Anyone promising page one in 30 days is either selling ads, selling your own brand name back to you, or not telling the truth.
Local SEO and your Google profile
For most small businesses, the map results matter more than anything else on the page. Those come from your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and how close you are to the person searching. A few things we find over and over on profiles we take on:
- No website link on the profile. We found this on a client's profile during a routine check. People who found the business on the map had no way to click through to the site.
- Reviews that stopped. One client had gone more than six months without a new review. Google favors steady, recent reviews, and so do customers.
- Edits nobody made. Google and the public can suggest changes to your hours, phone or categories, and Google sometimes accepts them. Someone has to watch for that.
Doing it yourself
A few hours a month gets a small business most of the way on local SEO:
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Every field, real photos, the right primary category, and a link to your site.
- Set up Google Search Console and check that your important pages are indexed.
- Give each service its own page, with a title that uses the words customers search for. Use the city or region if you serve one.
- Ask every happy customer for a review, and reply to every review you get.
- Add one useful page a month that answers a question customers ask you on the phone.
The hard part isn't knowing what to do. It's doing it every month, and spotting the technical problems you can't see from the front of the site.
Questions to ask an SEO provider
Good providers answer these easily. Vague answers are the answer.
- Which keywords will you target, and how many people search for them each month?
- What exactly will you do in the first 90 days?
- Will you write content? How much, and who approves it before it goes live?
- How do you get links, and can I see examples?
- What's in the monthly report? Can I see one from another client?
- Who owns my Google Business Profile, Search Console and analytics accounts?
- Is there a contract? What happens if I cancel?
- How will we know it's working, and when should I expect to see it?
Red flags
- Guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls Google. Google's own advice is that no one can guarantee a number one ranking.
- Bought links or “link packages.” Hundreds of links from unrelated sites can get a site penalized. Ask where links come from.
- They own your accounts. Your Google Business Profile, Search Console and analytics should be in your name, with access shared to them.
- Reports full of numbers that don't matter. Impressions and “keywords ranked” on their own aren't results. Calls, form leads and target keyword positions are.
- Long contracts up front. SEO takes months, so a minimum term can be fair, but a year-long lock-in before any work is shown is a bad sign.
Want us to handle it?
Our Growth plan is $300 a month per site: ongoing SEO, new content, Google Business Profile management, and a monthly report that shows what moved. It includes everything in Care (hosting, updates, security, backups). See website care and SEO plans or get in touch.
