Small business SEO in Canada generally falls into three pricing models. Monthly retainers range from $500 to $2,500, with most legitimate agencies charging $1,200–$1,800 for local businesses competing in mid-sized markets like Ottawa or Hamilton. You're paying for ongoing optimization, content updates, link building, and reporting. One-time SEO audits or website overhauls start around $2,000 for basic technical fixes and can reach $5,000–$8,000 for comprehensive competitive analysis and implementation roadmaps. Hourly consulting sits between $75 and $200, though anyone charging under $100 is either inexperienced or offshore. What drives the cost is competition intensity and business model. A local plumber in Sudbury needs far less firepower than a Toronto e-commerce store fighting national brands. If you're selling products online, expect the higher end of every range because you need product page optimization, category structure work, and usually more aggressive link acquisition than purely local services require. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we see small businesses waste money in two directions. Some pay $300/month to cheap providers who deliver blog posts but no actual ranking movement. Others get quoted $5,000/month by enterprise agencies selling overkill solutions. The right spend matches your growth stage. A new business with under $200K revenue should probably start at $800–$1,200 monthly focusing on foundational technical SEO and one market or product category. Scale spend as revenue grows. Watch out for packages that don't specify deliverables. "SEO services" means nothing. You want defined keyword targets, page count, link acquisition numbers, and reporting frequency in writing. Also question any agency promising page-one rankings in 30 days. Legitimate SEO takes 3–6 months minimum to show material results, sometimes 9–12 months in competitive spaces. If the price seems too good, you're either getting low-quality offshore work or they're front-loading effort and abandoning you after month three.