SEO with the hours written down.
Every SEO quote you have had names a price and hides the unit. This one names both: what $600/mo is resourced for, what ships in month one, and what arrives every month after that.
The SEO audit in the askotter portal. Example workspace, invented data.
How much do small business SEO services cost, and what do they include?
For a single-location small business in 2026, $600 to $1,000 a month is the working range for managed SEO and $1,500 to $3,000 is typical at a traditional agency. askotter charges $600/mo for managed SEO, which is resourced for roughly 12 to 16 hours of work a month across keyword research, technical fixes, content production, publishing and reporting, with the owner approving each change before it goes live. Self-managed is $99/mo, where the same analysis runs and the owner ships the changes.
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Month one is an audit, the technical fixes and the first two pages; visible ranking movement usually starts in month three or four, and any provider promising results sooner is guessing. Reporting comes from the business's own Google Search Console and Analytics rather than a dashboard the provider controls. askotter is not the right fit for a national brand needing enterprise strategy, or for a business wanting guaranteed positions, which no provider can honestly sell.
- What it is
- Monthly SEO for local and service businesses: keyword research, technical fixes, content, publishing, reporting, and your approval on each change.
- Price
- $600/mo managed. $99/mo self-managed and compute-metered, where the analysis runs and you ship the changes.
- Hours
- Managed SEO is resourced for roughly 12 to 16 hours a month. The breakdown by activity is published on this page.
- First results
- Technical fixes and the first content ship in month one. Ranking movement usually becomes visible in month three or four.
- Reporting
- From the business's own Google Search Console and Analytics, with every change made listed and timestamped beside the numbers.
- Not for
- National brands needing enterprise strategy, businesses wanting guaranteed rankings, or anyone needing results inside 30 days.
Six steps, every month, in this order.
SEO fails at small businesses when it is a project rather than a loop. The same six steps run every month, each one feeding the next, and the last one is always yours.
Keyword research
What your customers actually type, pulled from your own Search Console impressions rather than guessed from a tool. The terms you already rank on page two for are the cheapest wins and they get worked first.
Technical fixes
Crawl, index coverage, page speed, mobile rendering, broken links, redirect chains, schema markup, and the Google Business Profile. Anything stopping a page from being read gets fixed before anything is written.
Content
Service pages, location pages and answers to the questions customers ask on the phone. Drafted by AI against your own data, then edited by a person who reads it as a customer would.
Publishing
The work goes live on your site, with internal links, schema and the AI search layer attached. Material updates are submitted to the search engines rather than waiting to be found.
Reporting
Clicks, impressions, positions and conversions from your own Search Console and Analytics, with every change made listed and timestamped beside them, so a movement can be traced to a cause.
Your approval
Nothing in steps 02 to 04 publishes without a yes from you. You get the proposed change, what it is for and what it replaces, and it waits until you reply. See one go through.
The hours, and what comes out of them.
Managed SEO at $600/mo is resourced for roughly 12 to 16 hours a month. AI does the first pass on the research, the drafting and the audits, which is why the same money buys several times the output it bought in 2022. A person reviews every deliverable before it ships.
| Attribute | Hours per month | What ships |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword and competitor research | 2 to 3 hours | A ranked list of terms worth working, taken from your own impression data, with the page that should own each one. |
| Technical SEO | 2 to 3 hours | Crawl and index fixes, speed and mobile issues, schema markup, redirect and link repairs, Google Business Profile maintenance. |
| Content production | 4 to 6 hours | Two to four published pages or substantial rewrites a month, depending on length. Drafted by AI against your data, edited by a person. |
| Publishing and internal linking | 1 to 2 hours | Everything live on your site with internal links and schema attached, and material updates submitted to the search engines. |
| Reporting and review | 2 hours | A report from your own Search Console and Analytics, every change timestamped beside it, and the next month's priorities proposed. |
| Answer engine optimization | Included | The AI search visibility work, at no add-on price, with a monthly report of which prompts returned you. What that involves. |
These hours are what the plan is resourced for rather than a timesheet you are billed against. A month with a technical emergency in it spends differently from a quiet one, and the total is what holds.
Month one, month two, and every month after.
The commonest reason a small business cancels SEO in month three is that nothing visible happened in month one and nobody told them it would not. Here is the honest shape of it.
| Attribute | What gets done | What you can see |
|---|---|---|
| Month one | Full audit. Every technical fix worth making. Google Business Profile cleaned up and made consistent with the site. The first two pages written and published. Conversion tracking wired to calls and forms. | A fixed site and a baseline report. Rankings have usually not moved yet, and that is expected. |
| Month two | The second content batch. Internal linking across what now exists. The first round of rewrites on pages that gained impressions but no clicks. The AI search baseline audit. | Impressions rising on more pages. Early position movement on the page-two terms worked first. |
| Month three and four | The loop at full speed: research, fixes, content, publishing, reporting. Rewrites driven by what the first two months' data actually showed. | Ranking movement on the worked terms usually becomes visible here. Calls and forms start moving after it. |
| Ongoing | The same six steps every month, plus the monthly prompt report and whatever the data says to fix next. Seasonal work planned ahead of the season. | A monthly report from your own Search Console, with every change listed and timestamped beside the numbers. |
Nobody can promise a position or a date. A competitive term in a large metro takes longer than a service term in a small one, and a site with a penalty or a long history of thin content takes longer still.
What the loop did across the book.
Measured on one matched pair of 90-day windows in each client's own Google Search Console rather than in a tool askotter controls: organic clicks grew +16% on average per client, and the number of pages earning impressions grew +323% on average.
Those are averages of each client's own percentage change. The spread is wide, the median sits below the mean, and at least one client declined over the window. The cohort size, the inclusion rules and the grew-against-declined counts are published on the methodology page, which exists so those caveats can be checked rather than taken on trust.
Two prices, one loop.
The analysis is identical on both. What changes is who ships the change once it has been proposed.
You drive the builder and ship the changes Whiskers suggests. The platform does the analysis.
| What is included | Self-managed$99/moWebsite, SEO and the platform. Compute-based after that. |
|---|---|
| Website and SEO | |
| AI web builder, unlimited edits | Included |
| Your site hosted on your own domain | Included |
| SEO: keywords, on-page, schema, rank tracking | Included |
| AI content recommendations, ready to publish | Included |
| Answer engine optimization | Included |
| askotter platform and data lake | Included |
| Paid channels | |
| Google Ads + Meta Ads, connected and tracked | Add per channel |
| AI bidding and budget recommendations | With each channel |
| True ROAS against your real revenue | With each channel |
| How it runs | |
| Who ships each change | You |
| A person reviews every change before it ships | Not included |
| Ad accounts | Yours, you keep them |
| What moves the price | The compute you use |
| Cancel anytime | Included |
| Start free | |
The $99/mo covers your website and SEO on the platform. After that the price is compute-based. Ask Whiskers to run more analysis, or to watch more ad channels for you, and the bill scales with how much you use.
No setup fee. Ad spend is billed to you by Google and Meta.
Want a person to run it for you?
Our team builds and runs it. A person reviews every AI recommendation before it ships.
| What is included | PopularManaged SEO$600/moWe build it and run the SEO. | Managed + Ads$1,000/moEverything in Managed SEO, plus Google Ads and Meta Ads run by our team. |
|---|---|---|
| Website and SEO | ||
| We build and host your website | Included | Included |
| Monthly SEO, done for you | Included | Included |
| Content written, reviewed and published | Included | Included |
| Answer engine optimization, run for you | Included | Included |
| One site refresh per year | Included | Included |
| askotter platform and data lake | Included | Included |
| Paid channels | ||
| Google Ads + Meta Ads management | Not included | Included |
| Monthly performance reviews | Not included | Included |
| Ad budget | Not needed | Under $10K/mo |
| How it runs | ||
| Who ships each change | Our team | Our team |
| A person reviews every change before it ships | Included | Included |
| Email marketing waterfall | Setup | Fully managed |
| Strategy calls | Not included | Monthly |
| Website is yours after six months | Included | Included |
| Get a free audit | Get a free audit | |
No setup fee. Cancel anytime. Ad spend is billed to you by Google and Meta.
Want to talk it through first? Book a 20-minute demo
Prefer to run it yourself?
Working out which side you are on? The self-managed versus managed decision page costs both out in hours as well as dollars. Weighing an agency instead? askotter vs a local SEO agency.
Questions about small business SEO
How much should a small business pay for SEO?
How long before I see results?
What exactly do I get for $600 a month?
Do I have to approve the changes?
Do you guarantee rankings?
Is answer engine optimization extra?
Can I do it myself for less?
Start with the audit.
The free audit runs the same technical and keyword pass month one would run, and you keep the findings whether or not you sign up.
Self-managed is $99/mo and scales with the compute you use. Our team runs it from $600/mo.