Most home service contractors pay between $600 and $3,000 a month for SEO. Below roughly $500 a month you are usually buying reports instead of work, and above roughly $3,000 a month you are usually paying for a team size that a market like Clark County does not require.
SEO pricing varies that widely because “SEO” is not one product. What you are quoted depends almost entirely on what is actually done every month, and most quotes do not say. Here is what each tier tends to include, what it does not, and how to read a proposal without knowing the jargon.
| Monthly price | Who charges it | What you typically get | Honest fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0 (DIY) | You, on Sunday nights | Google Business Profile filled out, review asks, basic service pages | One-truck operators in a thin market. Real, but slow. |
| $99 to $300 | Resellers, directory upsells, “SEO packages” | Automated listing submissions, a dashboard, a monthly PDF | Rarely worth it. There are not enough hours in that price to do work. |
| $600 to $1,200 | Small studios and solo specialists | Profile management, service and city pages written by a person, on-site fixes, review system | Most single-market contractors. This is where Placed sits. |
| $1,500 to $3,000 | Regional agencies | The above plus heavier content volume, link outreach, formal reporting, an account manager | Multi-city or multi-trade operations with real competition. |
| $3,000 to $5,000+ | National agencies | Large content teams, digital PR, technical work on big sites | Franchises, roll-ups, 10+ locations. Overkill for one town. |
The short version
- Typical US agency retainers in 2026 land between $1,500 and $5,000 a month; published survey averages sit near $3,200.
- Local SEO for a single-market contractor costs less than that. $600 to $1,500 is a normal, workable range.
- Under $500 a month, the math stops working. Nobody can afford to do meaningful work at that price.
- Price is not the useful question. Hours of real work per month, and on what is the useful question.
- Placed charges $800/month for ongoing SEO, website upkeep included. Websites start at $2,500 when a rebuild is needed.
Why do SEO prices vary so much?
Because the label covers at least five different jobs, and different sellers are doing different ones.
A $250/month package is usually automated: software pushes your name, address and phone number to directories and emails you a dashboard. An $800/month engagement is a person doing specific things: maintaining your Google Business Profile, writing the service and city pages you are missing, fixing what keeps pages from ranking, keeping a review flow going. A $3,000/month engagement is several people, more content, and outreach for links.
Two other things move the number. First, competition. Ranking a plumber in Battle Ground is not the same job as ranking one in Portland proper. And the starting condition of your website: if it is slow, thin, or built on a page builder that fights every change, the first months go into repair before anything can rank. That is why website work and SEO get priced together.
What does $800 a month actually buy?
We will use our own number, since it is the one we can speak to honestly. At Placed, $800/month covers ongoing local SEO with website upkeep included: the profile, the pages, the on-site fixes, and keeping the site maintained rather than billing every time something needs changing. If the site needs rebuilding first, that is a separate project starting at $2,500.
Here is the part most pricing pages leave out.
What $800/month does not buy
- It does not include Google Ads management. If you want ads run, that is a different service and a different bill.
- It does not include a call tracking platform, a citation-blasting campaign, or a paid backlink program.
- It does not include unlimited content. There is a sane amount of writing per month at this price, not an unlimited amount.
- It does not include getting a suspended Google Business Profile reinstated. That is its own headache and nobody should promise you an outcome on it.
- It does not buy speed. See the timeline section below.
If a proposal promises all of the above bundled together, ask about it. Not because the agency is dishonest. Usually they are describing a menu rather than a monthly workload.
Is cheap SEO worth it?
Do the arithmetic before you sign. At $199 a month, after software and overhead, you are buying one to two hours of a person’s attention. One hour cannot write a service page, audit a site, respond to reviews, and keep a profile current. So it does not. Something automated happens instead, and you get a report about it.
That is a math problem more than a scam. The genuinely cheap option is not a $199 package; it is doing the basics yourself. Claiming and completing your profile, asking every finished customer for a review, and writing one honest page per service you offer will move a small-market contractor further than a $199 package will. It costs Sunday nights instead of dollars.
The contractor outranking you is rarely better at the work. He is just easier to find.
Placed, Vancouver WA
How long does SEO take to pay for itself?
Two different clocks, and conflating them is where most disappointment comes from.
- Map and profile movement: often 2 to 3 months. Google Business Profile work, review volume, and service-area cleanup tend to show up first. This is the fastest honest win available to a local contractor.
- Organic (blue link) rankings: usually 6 to 12 months. Service pages, city pages and technical fixes compound slowly. Twelve months is normal in a competitive trade, not a sign something is broken.
So the real question about price is not “is $800 cheap” but “can I fund this for twelve months without resenting it.” An engagement abandoned at month four costs the whole spend and returns almost none of it. If cash flow makes a year uncertain, say so before you start, because it changes what we would recommend.
How do you know if you are overpaying?
You are probably overpaying, or paying for nothing, if any of these are true:
- You cannot name one specific thing that was done last month.
- The report says “keyword rankings improved” but your phone did not ring more.
- You are billed for ranking on terms nobody in your service area searches.
- Your website is still slow, still missing service pages, and nobody has mentioned it.
None of that requires becoming an SEO to spot. It requires asking what happened this month and getting a specific answer.
These are the prices we actually charge, and the timelines are the ones we actually tell clients. If you’re a contractor in Clark County or the Portland metro, our SEO in Vancouver WA page shows what that $800 a month gets worked on first.
Should you pay monthly, hourly, or per project?
- Monthly retainer. Best for ongoing local work, because profiles, reviews and content need attention every month. Most contractor SEO is priced this way for a real reason.
- Project fee. Best for a finite job: a rebuild, a technical cleanup, or a set of service pages. Published 2026 ranges for one-off local SEO setups run roughly $1,000 to $3,500.
- Hourly. Best for advice or a second opinion. US rates quoted in 2026 run about $75 to $250+ an hour. Fine for a consult, expensive as a way to run a program.
Avoid anything sold as pay-per-ranking or guaranteed placement. Nobody controls Google’s results, and the guarantee is usually written against terms so obscure that hitting them means nothing.
When is SEO the wrong spend?
Sometimes it is. If you need work in the next thirty days, because payroll is tight or the schedule is empty, SEO is the wrong tool. Google Ads or Local Services Ads buy visibility today at a known cost per lead. SEO buys it in six months at a lower cost per lead. If you cannot get to month six, buy the ads. We would rather say that than take six months of retainer from a business that needed leads in three weeks.
SEO is also the wrong first spend if your website cannot convert the traffic it already gets. Sending more visitors to a site that does not load on a phone, does not list your service area, and does not make calling easy is pouring water into a bucket with a hole. Fix the bucket first. That is why our SEO work includes website upkeep rather than treating the site as somebody else’s problem.
How to compare two SEO quotes in ten minutes
- Ask each one: what specifically will be done in month one, month two, and month three?
- Ask what is not included. A vendor who cannot name anything they exclude is describing a menu, not a plan.
- Ask who does the work: the person you are talking to, an employee, or a subcontractor you will never meet.
- Ask what happens to your website, pages and profile access if you leave. You should own all of it.
- Divide the monthly fee by a plausible hourly rate. If the answer is under three hours, ask how that is enough.
You do not need to judge anyone’s SEO expertise. You need to judge whether the price buys enough hours to do the things they listed. That, a contractor can do better than most.
Frequently asked questions about SEO prices
How much does SEO cost per month for a small contractor?
For a single-market home service business, $600 to $1,500 a month is a normal working range in 2026. Larger multi-city operations commonly pay $1,500 to $3,000. National agency retainers run higher, but that scale of team is rarely needed for one town.
Is SEO cheaper than Google Ads?
Per lead, usually yes, but not right away. Ads cost more per lead but start immediately; SEO costs less per lead but takes months to arrive. If you need calls in the next month, ads are the better spend. If you can fund six to twelve months, SEO is the cheaper long-run channel.
Why do some agencies charge $99 a month?
Because at that price the work is automated, usually directory submissions and a reporting dashboard. It is not necessarily dishonest, but it is not a person doing your marketing either. There are not enough hours in $99 to write pages, fix a site, or manage reviews.
How long before I see results from SEO?
Google Business Profile and map pack movement often shows in two to three months. Organic rankings for service and city pages usually take six to twelve months. Anyone promising page one in thirty days is selling something else.
Does SEO pricing include the website?
It depends on the vendor, and it is worth asking directly. At Placed, ongoing SEO starts at $800 a month with website upkeep included; a full rebuild, when one is needed, starts at $2,500 as a separate project. Many agencies bill site changes separately, which is where surprise invoices come from.
Is local SEO different from regular SEO?
Yes. Local SEO focuses on the map pack, your Google Business Profile, reviews, and pages built around the places you actually serve. For a contractor it is the larger share of the opportunity, which is why home service marketing is priced differently than national SEO. Trade specifics matter too. The competitive picture for HVAC looks nothing like roofing in the same city.
