If you're an agency or consultant, you should charge $1,500–$5,000 CAD per month for ongoing SEO retainers in the Canadian market. The lower end works for local businesses with limited competition (think trades, single-location service businesses in smaller cities). The $2,500–$3,500 range fits most established businesses in competitive markets like Ottawa, Toronto, or Montreal. Above $4,000 typically requires multi-location clients, ecommerce with thousands of SKUs, or highly competitive verticals like legal or finance. Your pricing should reflect deliverables, not just hours. A $2,000 retainer might include technical audits and fixes, 2–4 optimized blog posts or service pages per month, local citation management, and basic link outreach. At $4,000+, you're likely adding advanced content strategies, aggressive link acquisition, conversion rate optimization, or managing paid campaigns alongside organic. Three things kill profitability at any price point: scope creep, underestimating content production time, and chasing links in saturated niches without a clear acquisition strategy. If you're spending 15+ hours monthly on a $1,500 client, you're losing money. If you promise page-one rankings in 60 days for a new domain in a brutal vertical, you're setting yourself up for churn. At Ottawa SEO, we run retainers between $2,000–$6,000 depending on domain authority, competitive landscape, and whether the client has existing content assets or we're building from scratch. We've found that clients paying under $1,800 monthly rarely see meaningful movement in competitive markets because the budget doesn't allow enough content and link velocity to move the needle. Don't charge hourly unless it's a one-off audit. Monthly retainers create predictable revenue and let you stack efficiency gains across clients. If a prospect balks at $2,500/month but expects first-page rankings for commercial keywords, they're not ready for SEO—they want magic. Price for the result you can actually deliver, then overdeliver on reporting transparency so they see where the money goes.