Local SEO is the easiest place in marketing to spend $1,000 a month on nothing. Here is the real price range, the work behind it, and the free steps that outperform most paid packages.
Local SEO costs $300 to $800 a month for a single-location small business, $800 to $2,500 a month for competitive categories or multiple locations, and $2,500 and up for multi-city campaigns. One-time local SEO setup runs $500 to $3,000. Before paying anyone, complete your Google Business Profile, get consistent name, address, and phone data everywhere, and build a real review habit, because those 3 free steps produce more local visibility than most entry-level paid packages.
Every category, every service, real hours including holidays, 20 or more actual photos, the full service area, and a description written for humans. This is the single highest-return hour in local marketing and it costs nothing.
Google cross-references your listings. Suite 3 in one place and Ste. 3 in another is a small penalty repeated across dozens of directories. Pick one exact format and fix every listing to match.
Ask every satisfied customer, in person, the day the work is done, with a link ready. Steady reviews over months beat 30 reviews in one week, which looks exactly like what it is.
Paid local SEO should produce artifacts you can see. Ask any prospective provider to name the deliverables and the reporting before you sign, and be specific about what lands in month 1 versus month 6.
Crawlable structure, structured data for the business, its services, and its hours, page speed on mobile, and a site that renders without JavaScript errors.
A real page per service and per meaningful area, written with local specifics. Not 40 pages of the same paragraph with the town name swapped, which Google has recognized and discounted for years.
Auditing and correcting your listings across the directories that actually feed the local ecosystem, then leaving them alone. This is largely a one-time job, not a permanent monthly line item.
The request flow, the timing, the follow-up, and responses to every review including the bad ones. Response rate is a signal in itself.
Calls, form submissions, and direction requests. Not rankings screenshots for phrases nobody searches, and not impressions with no path to revenue.
Structured content that AI assistants can quote when someone asks for a recommendation. This is where local search is heading and where most providers have not caught up.
Our local search work is built into the site rather than sold as a separate retainer. Structured data, town-level pages written with real detail, indexed hours, page speed, and content shaped so answer engines can quote it are part of the Custom and Smart Site builds.
If you already have a site you like and only need the search work, say so in the intake and we will scope it separately instead of pushing a rebuild you do not need.
Monthly ranges by competition and footprint, with what each level realistically buys.
| Compare | Monthly cost | What it should include | Realistic timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single location, low competitionMost popular | $300 to $600 | Profile management, citations, reviews, and a few service pages | 3 to 6 months to move |
| Single location, competitive category | $600 to $1,500 | All of the above plus content, technical work, and links | 6 to 12 months |
| Multi-location | $1,500 to $5,000 | Per-location profiles and pages, plus consolidated reporting | 6 to 12 months |
| One-time setup | $500 to $3,000 | Profile build, citation cleanup, schema, and a review system | Done in 2 to 6 weeks |
The questions people ask before they spend money on a website.
$300 to $800 a month for a single-location small business in a normal category, $800 to $2,500 for competitive categories or multiple locations, and $2,500 and up for multi-city work. A one-time setup engagement runs $500 to $3,000 and is often the smarter first purchase.
It depends on whether people search for what you do. In a small market, service search volume can be low enough that a complete Google Business Profile, steady reviews, and a fast site capture nearly all of the available demand, and a monthly retainer adds little. Check the actual search volume for your category before committing to one.
Profile and review improvements can move map results within weeks. Organic rankings for service pages typically take 3 to 6 months to establish and 6 to 12 months in competitive categories. Anyone promising page 1 in 30 days is either targeting phrases nobody searches or not being straight with you.
The highest-value parts, yes. Complete your Google Business Profile, keep your name, address, and phone identical everywhere, post real photos, and ask every happy customer for a review. That work is free and it beats most $500 a month packages.
Answer engine optimization is structuring your content so ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI results can quote your business when someone asks for a recommendation. It overlaps heavily with good schema and clear content, so it should be part of the build rather than a separate upsell. Ours is.
Not always. If your current site is fast, crawlable, and editable, the search work can be done on top of it. A rebuild is warranted when the site is slow, cannot be edited, blocks structured data, or has no room for real service and area pages.
It is included in Custom and Smart Site builds rather than billed as a separate monthly retainer, because the structural work belongs in the site itself. For search work on a site we did not build, email hello@hollisterwebsites.com and we will scope it against what you already have.
The real range from DIY to agency, what moves the number, and what you can safely cut.
The monthly line items behind hosting, updates, and backups, and what neglect actually costs.
Where each platform genuinely wins, the ceiling templates hit, and the break-even math.
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