SEO services are worth it when the economics work in your favor. If you're a local plumber spending $2,000/month on SEO and each new customer is worth $800 in gross profit, you need roughly three new customers per month to break even. Most established campaigns deliver that within 4–6 months, then scale from there. The math changes dramatically by industry—legal, SaaS, and high-ticket B2B often justify $5,000–15,000/month because a single client can be worth $50,000+ over their lifetime. SEO becomes not worth it in three scenarios. First, you're in a market with no search volume or your product is so novel people don't know to search for it yet. Second, your business can't wait 4–8 months for traction because you need leads this week. Third, your margins are too thin to absorb the upfront investment—if you're netting 8% and can't float $3,000/month for six months, paid ads or partnerships make more sense. The quality of the service matters more than the channel itself. Cheap SEO at $500/month from offshore link farms will waste your money and potentially damage your domain. Competent agencies charge $2,000–10,000/month in Canada depending on market competitiveness and scope. You're paying for strategy, content that actually answers search intent, technical fixes that don't break your site, and links that won't trigger a manual penalty. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we tell prospects to expect break-even around month 6–9 for local and month 9–14 for national campaigns, with meaningful ROI building after that. We track leads and revenue, not just rankings, because a #1 ranking for a term that converts at 0.2% is worse than #4 for a term converting at 8%. If your customer acquisition cost from other channels is already $400 and SEO can deliver it at $150 after ramp-up, the decision is straightforward. If you're pre-revenue or have a three-month runway, save your cash for something faster.