SEO costs vary wildly based on what you're trying to rank for and who's doing the work. A local plumber in Ottawa might spend $750/month for citation building, GMB optimization, and basic on-page work. A national e-commerce brand competing against Amazon and Wayfair might burn $8,000/month just staying visible. The range exists because SEO isn't one service—it's technical audits, content production, link acquisition, and ongoing optimization packaged together. Most Canadian agencies price three ways: monthly retainers ($1,500–$5,000 is common for mid-market), project-based fees ($3,000–$15,000 for site migrations or audits), or hourly consulting ($150–$300/hour). Retainers make sense when you need sustained link building and content. Projects work for one-time technical overhauls. Hourly is rare unless you're hiring a specialist for a specific problem. What drives cost up: competitive keywords (personal injury lawyer Toronto costs more than Ottawa pool installer), content volume (20 blog posts monthly vs. 4), link quality (real editorial placements vs. directory spam), and technical complexity (enterprise platform vs. WordPress). What drives it down: doing some work in-house, longer contract terms, or focusing on less competitive long-tail queries first. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we run retainers starting around $2,000/month for local service businesses and scale up based on domain authority goals and content needs. A 500-domain portfolio taught us that cheap SEO either means you're getting directory links and thin content, or you're working with someone subsidizing your work with other clients. Neither ends well. Watch out for fixed $299/month packages that promise page-one rankings—they're either selling you software access or pre-written content that won't move the needle. Real SEO requires custom strategy, and custom strategy requires hours. If the math doesn't work for the agency to profit while doing actual work, they're cutting corners you'll pay for later when Google devalues those links or that content.