SEO pricing is the murkiest bill in small business marketing — so here are the real numbers. In the Chicago suburbs, agency retainers commonly run $750–$2,500 a month, freelancers $300–$1,500, and one-time "SEO packages" anywhere from $500 to $5,000. The spread isn't about quality; it's about what's actually inside the box.
Legitimate SEO work is boring and specific: fixing technical problems, building pages for services people actually search, feeding your Google Business Profile, earning links, publishing content mapped to buying-intent searches. Each of those is visible — you can be shown the page, the fix, the link. When a retainer can't show you artifacts, you're paying for a monthly PDF of graphs.
SEO pays best when a search has money behind it and locals make it often — "emergency plumber skokie" is worth ranking for; a hobby blog keyword isn't. If your service ticket is a few hundred dollars or more and customers find businesses like yours through Google, even one extra job a month usually covers a modest retainer. If your work comes purely from referrals and repeat clients, spend on reviews and email first.
Walk away from guaranteed rankings, "we'll get you #1 in 30 days," secret methods, and anyone who won't show artifacts. Google itself says nobody can guarantee position — a promise like that is a tell, not a perk.
My SEO work is either built into the site from day one — structure, schema, speed, local pages, all validated — or handled inside a Growing plan at $198/month where every month produces something you can click. Run the searches you want to win and see who's there now; then let's talk about what it would take: (847) 387-0244.
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