How Much Should I Charge for Local SEO?

What published surveys say local SEO costs

Published figures for a local SEO retainer run from about $500 to $3,000 a month. I opened each source below in October 2026 and copied the numbers as published. None of them is my rate or my agency's rate.

Most pages on this question are written for the business owner who is buying. This one is for the agency owner or freelancer writing the quote, so the figures come first and a method for setting your own fee follows.

The four sources, with what each one adds:

• Ahrefs. Its SEO pricing survey is the only one here that reports a local SEO average from providers: $1,557 a month, with agencies at $1,819 and freelancers at about $1,150.
• WebFX. Its local SEO pricing page gives the widest range, $500 to $3,000 a month, and lists its own local SEO service as starting at $575 a month.
• BrightLocal. The Local Search Industry Survey 2023 reports revenue per client by how long the client has stayed. It runs from $799 a month in the first year to $1,569 at two to three years.
• Backlinko. Its SEO pricing survey covers all SEO work and has no local figure. I include it as a second reading on hourly rates.

Why the sources give different numbers

The sources disagree because they ask different people different questions. The Ahrefs local average of $1,557 is almost twice BrightLocal's first-year figure of $799. Three things explain most of the gap:

• Seller or buyer. Ahrefs and Backlinko asked the people who sell SEO. WebFX asked people at companies that pay for it.
• Price or revenue. BrightLocal reports what a client pays in an average month. That figure includes small accounts and grows with the age of the account.
• Age of the data. The surveys date from 2023 to 2025. Check each page for an update before you quote a number to a client.

Use the table as a check on your own sum. If your fee lands far outside $500 to $3,000 a month for one location, read your scope again and make sure you can explain the difference.

One-off setup and the monthly retainer

Quote two prices: a fixed fee for setup and a monthly fee for the work that repeats. The first month of a local SEO job has tasks you will never do again. If you fold them into the retainer, you undercharge in month one or overcharge in month six.

Setup tasks, billed once as a fixed project fee:

• Complete the Google Business Profile
• Fix the name, address and phone number on the main directories (NAP consistency)
• Build or rewrite the location page
• Add LocalBusiness schema, which our LocalBusiness schema generator writes for you
• Fix the technical issues the crawl found
• Set up Search Console, GA4 and call tracking

Monthly tasks, billed every month for a fixed list:

• Ask for reviews and reply to new ones
• Update the profile with posts and photos
• Publish or improve one service page
• Earn local links and keep listings correct (local citations)
• Re-check the site for new technical issues
• Send one report with calls, leads and next steps

This is an example scope for one location. Remove the lines your client does not need before you count hours. WebFX's pricing page puts one-time local SEO projects at $500 to $5,000, which gives you a published band for the setup line.

Work out the monthly fee

The monthly fee is your monthly hours multiplied by your hourly rate. Count the hours from the written scope, one line at a time. The example below uses placeholder numbers to show the sum.

The four numbers in the example:

1. Monthly hours. 4 shared hours plus 6 hours for the location is 10 hours.
2. Hourly rate. The example uses $100 an hour. Use your own rate.
3. Monthly fee. 10 hours at $100 is $1,000. This is the lowest fee that pays for the work.
4. Customer value check. The owner says one new customer is worth $1,200. One new customer a month covers the $1,000 fee.

Every figure in that example is an illustration. The $1,000 result sits inside the published $500 to $3,000 range, and that is the only link between the example and the survey data.

How to set your own hourly rate

Your hourly rate has to cover your costs and your profit. Work it out once a year:

1. Add up what the business costs to run for a year, including pay.
2. Add the profit you want on top.
3. Count the hours you can bill in a year. Leave out sales, admin and holidays.
4. Divide the first total by the billable hours.

Then compare the result with the published bands. Ahrefs found $75 to $100 an hour was the most common rate for local SEO, and WebFX gives $75 to $200. If your number is below $75, check your billable hours first. An overcount of billable hours is the first thing I would look for.

One location or several

Each extra location adds its own hours, and the shared hours stay the same. Shared hours cover the website, the report and the client calls. Location hours cover one profile, one location page and one set of reviews, so they repeat for every address.

The same placeholder numbers, at 4 shared hours and 6 hours per location:

• 1 location: 4 shared hours plus 6 location hours is 10 hours, or $1,000 at $100 an hour.
• 3 locations: 4 shared hours plus 18 location hours is 22 hours, or $2,200.
• 5 locations: 4 shared hours plus 30 location hours is 34 hours, or $3,400.

In this example the fee for five locations is 3.4 times the fee for one. The client pays less per location as the count grows, and you can show the owner why. None of the sources I read publishes a per-location rate. WebFX says only that a business with several locations can expect to pay more.

Check the fee against what one customer is worth

Ask the owner what one new customer is worth, then divide your monthly fee by that number. The answer is how many new customers a month cover the fee. The owner supplies the number.

• Ask the question plainly. "What is one new customer worth to you in the first year?"
• Do the division with them. In the example, a $1,000 fee and a $1,200 customer means one new customer a month covers it.
• Let the owner judge. They know whether that count of new customers is realistic for their trade and town.

If you are still looking for the client, two sibling posts cover the step before the quote: how to find local SEO clients on Google Maps and how to get local SEO clients with an AI answer pitch.

Size the work with CrawlRaven prompts

The hardest hours to estimate are the ones on the client's website. You can size them by hand first. Before a prospect gives you access, you can only see the public site, so use a crawl and free tools:

• Internal link analyzer for pages with few or no internal links
• Robots.txt tester for pages that crawlers cannot reach
• Schema validator for structured data errors
• The CrawlRaven local SEO audit for the technical side of the pages behind the profile

Once the client connects Search Console and GA4, CrawlRaven joins both with a 200-point crawl into one ranked plan. With the MCP server connected to your AI assistant, one prompt replaces an afternoon of exports. Replace the bracketed parts with the client's details.

Using CrawlRaven for [client site]: list the open opportunities and group them by type of fix. For each group, give the number of pages affected and say whether it looks like one change to a template or a page-by-page job. I am estimating one-off setup hours for a local SEO quote.

Using CrawlRaven for [client site]: for the last 90 days, list the pages that get impressions for queries containing [city] or [service], with clicks and average position. Mark the pages sitting in positions 4 to 15. I am deciding how many pages to improve each month.

Using CrawlRaven for [client site]: show the GA4 totals for the last 90 days for organic search, then break them down by landing page. I want a starting count of visits from search before I quote a monthly fee.

The first prompt reads the opportunity list. The second reads the Search Console query and page reports. The third reads the linked GA4 property. The MCP documentation lists every tool. A free plan covers one site, and lifetime licences launched at $49 for three sites. Lifetime pricing steps up as licenses sell, so check the pricing page for the current batch.

What the prompts cannot answer

The prompts size the website work. Setting the price stays with you, along with four things the data does not hold:

• Market rates. CrawlRaven holds no pricing data. The published figures are in the table at the top of this page.
• Work outside the website. CrawlRaven does not audit Google Business Profiles, reviews or directory listings. Count those hours by hand.
• Customer value. Only the owner knows what a new customer is worth.
• Your costs. Your hourly rate comes from your own books.

An audit is often the first paid job with a new client. If you want to price that step on its own, see how much a professional SEO audit costs.

Set your fee in six steps

Work through these in order for the next quote you write:

1. Write the scope. List every task in plain words the owner can read.
2. Split setup from monthly work. One-time tasks go on a setup line. Repeating tasks go on a monthly line.
3. Count the hours. Separate shared hours from hours per location.
4. Multiply by your hourly rate. The result is the lowest fee that pays for the work.
5. Add hours for each extra location. Shared hours stay the same. Location hours repeat.
6. Check the fee against customer value. Divide the fee by what the owner says one new customer is worth.

Then compare your number with the published band of $500 to $3,000 a month. We are also launching an AI SEO tool soon. Join the waitlist to hear when it opens.

Sources used in this answer

• Ahrefs – SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost?: survey of 439 SEO providers, updated August 2024. Local SEO monthly average, agency and freelancer averages, hourly band and per-project average.
• WebFX – Local SEO Pricing: read October 2026. Monthly, hourly and one-time ranges, the $575 starting price and the note on several locations.
• BrightLocal – Local Search Industry Survey 2023: 534 respondents, published August 2023. Revenue per client by client lifespan and billing methods.
• Backlinko – SEO Pricing: survey of over 300 SEO professionals, updated December 2025. General SEO monthly, hourly and project figures.