Small business SEO costs $500–$2,500 monthly for local service businesses targeting one city or region, like a plumber in Ottawa or dentist in Mississauga. If you're competing regionally or nationally in a moderately competitive space—think boutique eCommerce, B2B services, or multi-location trades—expect $2,000–$5,000 monthly. The floor drops to zero if you're doing it yourself, but you're trading dollars for hundreds of hours and a steep learning curve. Monthly retainers cover ongoing content, technical fixes, link building, and rank tracking. One-time SEO audits run $1,000–$3,500 and make sense if you have in-house capacity but need a roadmap. Project-based work—like optimizing 20 service pages, fixing site speed, or building local citations—falls between $3,000–$15,000 depending on deliverables. Hourly consulting sits around $100–$250 per hour; useful for strategy calls or troubleshooting specific issues, but inefficient for execution-heavy work. Pricing hinges on four variables: competition level in your niche and geography, current site condition (new sites need more foundational work), scope of target keywords (5 local terms versus 50 product categories), and whether you need content creation or just optimization. A Vancouver realtor fighting 200 competitors needs more budget than a niche contractor in Sudbury with three rivals. Agencies below $500 monthly either offshore heavily, automate everything, or deliver almost nothing—maybe a blog post and a rank report. You'll see results, but glacially, and often the wrong results. Above $5,000 monthly, you're paying for dedicated strategists, custom content, and serious link acquisition; justified for businesses doing $500K+ revenue where each ranking position materially impacts the bottom line. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we start small service businesses around $1,200–$1,800 monthly because that funds real technical work, 2–4 pieces of optimized content, and enough link building to move needles in 90–180 days. Anything less and you're rationing effort across too many必要 tasks to gain traction. If budget's tight, a $2,500 audit with a 6-month DIY execution plan often outperforms a $600/month retainer that barely touches the site.