How much does SEO cost for contractors?

Contractor SEO costs $1,500–$5,000 per month at an agency (usually on a 6–12-month contract), $75–$200 per hour from a freelance consultant, or from $99 per monthwith software that automates the publishing work. Here's where the money actually goes at each price, and how to decide which one makes sense for your business.

What agencies and freelancers charge

The typical contractor SEO retainer runs $1,500–$5,000/month, almost always on a 6–12-month contract — so a $3,000/month quote is really a $36,000 decision dressed up as a monthly fee. Freelance consultants bill $75–$200/hourand can be great for a one-time audit or site fix, but SEO is monthly work, and hourly consultants either become a de facto retainer or quietly stop doing the recurring parts. Watch for setup and “onboarding” fees on top — $1,000–$5,000 up front is common, and it's mostly margin.

Where the agency money actually goes

A good agency spends the retainer on three things: writing (service pages, city pages, and articles — the slowest, most expensive part when humans do it), links (outreach to get other sites pointing at yours), and reporting (the monthly PDF and the account manager who walks you through it). A mediocre agency spends most of it on the third one. Before signing anything, ask one question: what percentage of the fee produces pages and links, versus producing reports about them? The answer is usually uncomfortable — which is why our first product decision was a live dashboard instead of a PDF.

The hidden comparison: what $500/month of leads buys

Most contractors already have an SEO budget — it's just going to Angi, Houzz, or Thumbtack. At $30–$150 per shared lead, $500/month buys you maybe 4–15 leads, each sold to three to five contractors at once. Close one in ten and that's roughly one job per month or two — and the meter resets to zero every month, forever. The same $500 buys five months of software that builds pages you own permanently. The full head-to-head is in is SEO worth it for contractors.

DIY: the “free” option that costs your nights

You can do all of this yourself — the entire playbook is free in our complete contractor SEO guide. The real price is time: keyword research, writing city and service pages, publishing consistently, checking rankings — call it 10–20 hours a month, done at the kitchen table after 10-hour days on site. That's a real option for a slow season. It's rarely sustainable through a busy one, which is why most DIY contractor SEO dies at article four.

The software price point

SEO for Contractors costs $1 for a 3-day trial, then $99/month — no contract, cancel in two clicks. The price is possible because software does the labor: ~30 SEO articles a month written and published straight to your own site (it works with WordPress, Wix, Shopify, and Webflow), plus rank tracking in a live dashboard. Full breakdown on the contractor SEO pricing page. What software doesn't do: answer your phone, manage your Google Business Profile, or ask your customers for reviews — those stay your job either way. And if you cancel, every page stays live on your site: that's The Keep-Everything Guarantee.

When the agency IS worth it

Honesty section: sometimes the retainer is the right buy. A multi-city franchisejuggling ten markets needs strategy and coordination software doesn't provide. A commercial GC chasing $5M contractsis playing a reputation game where one placement pays for a decade of retainers. If that's you, hire good humans — and automate the content volume underneath them anyway. The mistake at every size is paying retainer prices for the volume work software now does.

Decide with your own numbers

Anchor every quote to a job value: if your average remodel nets $40,000, a $3,000/month retainer needs about one job a year to break even, and a $99/month tool needs a fraction of one. No route gets you rankings overnight — expect 30–90 days for measurable movement regardless of what you pay. Before spending anything, check why your contracting business isn't showing up on Google to see what's actually broken, look at what contractor SEO results look like month by month, then get your free SEO plan to see where your site stands today.