SEO package pricing breaks down into three main tiers based on what you're trying to rank for and how much ground you need to cover. Small local businesses targeting a single city usually pay $500 to $1,500 per month for foundational work: Google Business Profile optimization, basic on-page SEO, local citations, and a handful of content pieces or backlinks. Mid-market companies competing regionally or in moderately competitive niches typically invest $1,500 to $3,500 monthly, which buys deeper technical audits, ongoing content production, link outreach, and conversion rate tracking. Enterprise or high-competition sectors like legal, finance, or national e-commerce often start at $4,000 and scale past $10,000 per month because you're fighting for keywords worth thousands of dollars per click and need sustained content, authority building, and developer coordination. One-time packages exist for audits, site migrations, or penalty recovery and usually run $1,000 to $5,000 depending on site size. Some agencies bundle this into the first month of a retainer. Hourly consulting sits around $100 to $300 per hour in Canada, though most serious SEO work requires recurring effort to see results, so pure hourly is rare outside advisory roles. What you're really paying for is time: researcher and strategist hours, writer hours, developer hours if technical fixes are needed, and outreach hours for link building. Agencies like Ottawa SEO Inc. price based on deliverable volume and competitive intensity rather than arbitrary tiers, because ranking a plumber in Cornwall requires different effort than ranking a SaaS tool nationally. Cheaper packages often mean fewer content pieces, slower link velocity, or limited reporting. The biggest cost driver is competition: if your target keywords have domain-authority-70 sites in the top five, expect to pay toward the upper end for months before you crack page one. Always ask what specific deliverables you get per month and how the agency handles months where rankings plateau.