What contractor SEO costs and why it varies

One public source is an Ahrefs pricing survey of SEO providers. The article is marked "Updated: August 15, 2024", so treat its figures as a snapshot, not a current rate card. These are the statements that matter for a contractor, quoted as the source words them:

• "Local SEO is more affordable, averaging $1,557 per month."
• "The most common hourly rate for local SEO services is $75-$100."
• "78.2% of SEOs charge a monthly retainer." That line comes from the same source, and it means hourly and project pricing exist but are the minority.
• "Agencies charge 138% more than freelancers." Again per the source, which does not say whether the extra buys more work, only that the price is higher.

An average hides the spread. A one-truck operator in a small town and a multi-crew company covering a metro area are not buying the same amount of work, and an average cannot tell you which one you are.

First Call publishes no prices, so none appear here. What we can say is what changes the amount of work, because that is what changes the price.

• Number of services. A company selling drain cleaning alone has a smaller job than one selling repair, replacement, and emergency work, since each service wants its own page and its own searches.
• Service area. More towns means more map positions to track. Rankings differ by neighborhood, which is why a geo-grid rank tracking baseline exists at all.
• Competition. A market where five rivals already have hundreds of reviews takes more effort than one where nobody has touched their profile.
• Starting point. A site that is slow, unindexed, or built on a template with no service pages needs rebuilding before it can be improved.
• Who does the work. The same source says "SEOs with 2+ years of experience charge 33% more." That is the survey's claim about its respondents, not a rule for your area.
• Reporting depth. Tracking calls to a booked job takes setup that a ranking-only report skips.

A retainer is a fixed monthly fee for an ongoing scope. Hourly billing suits an audit or a one-off fix. A project fee suits a defined build, such as a new website. None of the three is better by nature. The danger is a retainer with no written scope, because then the fee tells you nothing about what happens each month.

First Call uses three tiers named Foundation, Growth, Domination, priced to each market, and no prices are published on this site. The price is set after we look at the market and the starting point. We say that plainly because a published tier name without a scope is no better than an unlabeled number.

Ask any provider to list deliverables, not hours of "optimization." For local work a clear proposal names things like Business Profile optimization and category audit, review acquisition and response, location and service page architecture, and citation cleanup. It also states how results are reported. Google's own advice for evaluating an SEO is to ask "What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?" A provider who cannot answer that in writing has not scoped the work. The companion guide on choosing a marketing agency has the full list of questions.

Search work and pay-per-lead products charge in different ways. Google's Local Services Ads page says "You only pay when potential customers get in touch through your ads on Local Services Ads." That is a cost per contact. SEO is a cost per month, and what it builds, such as pages and reviews, stays after the invoices stop. Our comparison of Local Services Ads, SEO, and PPC lays out when each fits.

The number that matters is cost per booked job. Divide monthly spend by jobs that came from search, and track phone calls to their source so the figure is your own. A retainer that produces no calls is expensive at any price. If you want a baseline before comparing quotes, the free 100-point audit shows where your site and map presence stand today, and the local SEO service page describes what the monthly work covers.