SEO packages bundle recurring tasks into predictable monthly retainers or one-time project scopes. A typical package might include technical site audits, keyword research, on-page optimization for 5–10 pages per month, backlink acquisition, and monthly reporting. Agencies structure them this way because SEO requires sustained effort over 6–12 months to move rankings, and clients prefer knowing what they get for a set cost instead of hourly billing. Most packages fall into tiers—starter, growth, enterprise—based on how competitive your market is and how much content or link building you need. A local Ottawa contractor might pay $1,200–$2,500 CAD monthly for 10–15 optimized pages and a handful of local citations. A national e-commerce site competing in crowded verticals could need $5,000–$15,000 monthly for technical work, 20+ pages of content, and aggressive link acquisition. The catch: packages often lock you into services you may not need every month. If your site's technical foundation is solid, paying for monthly audits wastes budget better spent on content or links. Conversely, cookie-cutter packages rarely address unique issues—maybe your site has a JavaScript rendering problem or needs schema markup for rich snippets, and the package doesn't cover custom dev work. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we avoid rigid packages for our portfolio sites. We allocate budget where the data says it matters—sometimes that's building 50 backlinks in a month, sometimes it's rewriting 30 product pages, sometimes it's fixing Core Web Vitals. For client work, we outline package tiers but adjust scope quarterly based on what's actually moving the needle. If your rankings plateau, throwing the same package at it for another six months is just theater. Good packages should define deliverables (number of pages optimized, links built, keywords tracked) and outcomes (traffic or ranking targets). If a proposal just says "SEO services," walk away.