SEO Budget Calculator
A realistic starting estimate, based on the same published ranges in our SEO pricing guide — not a fabricated number to justify a sales call.
Three inputs — number of locations, how competitive the market is, and the current state of your website — combine into a one-time "foundation" cost range and an ongoing monthly range, calculated from the same published pricing ranges as our full SEO cost guide.
It's built for a business owner about to have a first conversation with any SEO provider, us or otherwise, who wants a realistic number to sanity-check quotes against before getting into specifics that only a real audit of your site can surface.
SEO pricing gets quoted all over the map, partly because "SEO" covers wildly different scopes of work — a single-location business fixing an outdated site is a different project than a ten-location business trying to outrank aggressive, well-funded competitors. Anchoring your expectations to defensible ranges tied to concrete inputs is more useful than either a single flat number or no number at all.
How competitive is your market?
Current website status
SEO Foundation (one-time)
$1,500 – $4,000
Ongoing SEO (monthly)
$500 – $2,000/mo
This is a starting estimate based on published, real-world ranges — not a formal quote. See how much SEO actually costs for the full breakdown of what drives these numbers up or down.
How to use this tool
- Drag the "Number of locations" slider to match how many physical locations or service areas you're marketing.
- Select how competitive your market is — Low, Medium, or High — based on how many established competitors are already ranking well for your main services.
- Select your current website status — "No site yet," "Outdated," or "Decent" — depending on whether your existing site, if any, already has solid structure and load speed.
- Read the two numbers in the result box: the one-time foundation range and the ongoing monthly range.
- Open the linked cost guide below the calculator to see exactly what drives each range up or down before your next conversation with a provider.
What these two numbers cover
The one-time foundation range covers work done once: site structure and internal linking, on-page optimization for your core service and location pages, technical fixes, and analytics or tracking setup. The ongoing monthly range covers work that has to continue for results to hold — new content, local citation and review work, technical monitoring, and adjustments as competitors and search results change. Skipping the ongoing budget after the foundation is a common reason a business sees an initial bump and then a plateau: the foundation makes a site rankable, the ongoing work is what keeps it competitive.
Frequently asked questions
Is this an exact quote?
Why does competitiveness affect the ongoing estimate more than the one-time estimate?
What if my current site is fine — do I still need the full foundation?
Related guides
Want this handled for you instead?
We build the SEO foundation and handle the ongoing work — no long-term contract, no guaranteed-rankings sales pitch.