SEO pricing breaks down into three main models: monthly retainers, project-based fees, and hourly consulting. Most agencies in Canada charge $1,000 to $10,000+ per month on retainer, with the wide range reflecting business size, competition level, and deliverables. A local Ottawa plumber competing in a 50km radius will pay far less than a Toronto ecommerce brand fighting national competitors. Monthly retainer brackets look like this in practice: $1,000–$2,500/month covers local SEO for small businesses (GMB optimization, local citations, basic content), $2,500–$5,000/month supports regional campaigns with consistent content production and link building, and $5,000–$15,000/month funds competitive national or ecommerce strategies with technical audits, extensive content, and aggressive outreach. Agencies charging under $500/month are almost always offshore, template-driven, or ineffective. Project-based SEO runs $2,000–$10,000 for defined scopes like technical audits, site migrations, or penalty recovery. Hourly consulting sits at $150–$300/hour in Canada, useful for strategy sessions or interim guidance but rarely the most efficient model for ongoing work. What drives cost is labor hours, not magic. An agency spending 15 hours per month on your campaign at $100/hour internal cost needs to charge $1,500+ just to break even before overhead. Competitive markets demand more content, deeper technical work, and harder link acquisition, so hours multiply. A campaign targeting "personal injury lawyer Toronto" requires 5–10x the effort of "Ottawa pool cleaning" because you're outmaneuvering established competitors with million-dollar SEO budgets. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we've run campaigns from $1,200/month for local service businesses to $8,000/month for national brands. The difference isn't upselling, it's matching effort to the hill you're climbing. Cheap SEO either cuts corners (automated content, low-quality links) or delivers so few hours that nothing meaningful moves. The cost question isn't what SEO costs in general, it's what ranking in your specific market costs, and that's a function of competitive analysis, not industry averages.