Business
Pricing local SEO work
A useful local SEO price starts with your delivery costs, the agreed scope and the client’s business context. This guide provides a method for working through those inputs.
10 min read · Updated 13 October 2026
Published price ranges can provide context, but check what work, market and service level each figure includes. An advertised package is not automatically a representative market benchmark. Compare those examples with your own measured delivery costs before choosing a price.
This article gives you a method instead. It has three inputs you can actually measure: what delivery costs you, what a customer is worth to the client, and how much risk each side is carrying.
Start with what delivery costs you
Measure delivery on a real client for a real month, including communication, reporting and administration. Repeat across several account types before treating one month as a dependable baseline.
- 1
Log hours on one client for one month
Everything: the work, the reporting, the email, the call where nothing was decided, the invoice chasing. Especially the last three.
- 2
Apply a real hourly cost
Salary plus employment costs plus a share of overhead, divided by realistically billable hours — which is far fewer than contracted hours.
- 3
Add the hard costs
Tools, data, scans, anything you buy per client. These are small individually and not small in aggregate.
- 4
Multiply by the number of clients
Then compare the total with revenue and inspect the margin for each tier. Account complexity and support time may explain differences that client count alone misses.
Then find out what a customer is worth to them
This is one question, asked early, that changes everything: what is a new customer worth to you, roughly, over the time they stay? Most owners know within a wide range, and a wide range is enough.
A trade business where one job is worth a few thousand and a customer returns for years can justify a retainer that would be absurd for a business whose average transaction is twenty dollars. Same work, same effort on your side, completely different sensible price. Pricing without knowing this means pricing the work instead of the outcome, and the work is the less valuable of the two.
It also tells you when to say no. If the arithmetic means your fee needs six new customers a month to break even and their market realistically produces two, you have learned that before taking the money rather than after.
Choose a model that matches the risk
| Model | Works when | Fails when |
|---|---|---|
| Flat retainer | Work is ongoing and roughly steady; both sides want predictability | Scope expands without a corresponding review of fees or delivery capacity |
| Packaged tiers | You have standardised delivery and want to sell without quoting every time | Your tiers were priced by guesswork rather than measured cost |
| Project plus retainer | There is real setup work — listing cleanup, citations, a site fix — before the ongoing phase | The project is priced to win the retainer and loses money on its own |
| Per location | Multi-location clients where effort genuinely scales with count | Locations differ wildly in difficulty and you priced them identically |
| Performance-based | You control enough of the outcome and trust the client's tracking | The parties disagree on attribution, qualification or how the outcome is measured |
On discounting
A discount reduces the margin on the agreed work unless costs or scope also change. Before offering one, specify its duration, eligibility and review date. Model the account at the discounted price and decide whether the commercial reason justifies the lower margin.
If the budget is lower than the proposed fee, consider a smaller scope with clear priorities. Compare that option with a time-limited discount and check the economics of each. Neither approach guarantees a healthy account; delivery effort, payment reliability and support expectations still matter.
Raising prices on existing clients
Everyone puts this off. The practical approach is to raise new-client pricing first, live with the gap for a quarter, and then bring existing clients up with notice and a reason — ideally alongside something they can see they are getting.
A client may decline an increase for several reasons, including budget, changed needs or perceived value. Review those reasons individually rather than assuming that price-sensitive clients are unprofitable. Explain the proposed change, follow the agreed notice terms and discuss a revised scope where it makes sense.
The costs you can actually put in the model
For the tooling side of the equation, here are this product's real numbers rather than an estimate, so you can put them straight into the calculation above.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Freelancer plan | $39/month billed annually ($49 month to month) — 5 clients, up to 2 users, 1,500 credits |
| Agency plan | From $143/month billed annually ($179 month to month) — 15 clients, unlimited users, 4,500 credits; add clients in blocks of 15, up to 75 (75 clients is $399 month to month) |
| Powerhouse plan | $397/month billed annually ($497 month to month) — up to 150 clients, unlimited users, 25,000 credits that roll over |
| 61-point Google Maps scan | 25 credits (49 with fast delivery) |
| Progress Report | 150 credits |
| A typical client month | 5 keywords × 61-point Maps scan + a Progress Report = 275 credits |
One last thing
Price reviews should be on a calendar, not triggered by a cash-flow scare. Once a year, run the cost exercise again on your two largest and two smallest accounts. Allow enough time to reconcile the data and record which prices or scopes need further review.
