How to read these numbers
The figures below are ranges we have observed in proposals, public rate cards and conversations with Denver-area business owners during 2025 and 2026. They are market observations, not a survey with a sample size, and not a recommendation of what you should pay. Individual quotes fall outside every range here for legitimate reasons. Use them to spot the outliers, then ask why.
SEO pricing confuses buyers because the same monthly number can buy wildly different amounts of work. A $3,000 retainer at one firm might fund 20 hours of a senior strategist's time; at another it might fund four hours of account management wrapped around templated deliverables produced offshore. The price tells you very little. The scope tells you almost everything, which is why every section below ends with the questions that make the scope visible.
Hourly consulting
Hourly is the least common model for ongoing work and the most common for specialist help: a technical audit of a site that is losing traffic, a migration review before a redesign goes live, a second opinion on an agency's proposal, or training for an in-house marketer.
| Who | Range | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Junior freelancer, under 3 years | $50–$90 | Content edits, citation work, basic on-page tasks |
| Experienced freelancer or consultant | $125–$200 | Audits, strategy, GBP recovery, migration oversight |
| Senior technical specialist | $175–$250 | JavaScript rendering, large-site crawl budget, international or e-commerce architecture |
| Agency blended rate | $150–$225 | Rarely quoted directly; implied by retainer divided by hours delivered |
Below $50 an hour in this market usually means an offshore contractor resold through a local intermediary, which can be fine for mechanical tasks and poor for anything requiring judgement about your business. Above $250 is justified for a narrow specialist with a track record you can verify, and rarely for generalist work.
Scope questions for hourly work
- Is time billed in 15-minute or hour increments, and is there a monthly minimum?
- Does the rate include tool costs (crawlers, rank tracking, call tracking) or are those passed through?
- What is delivered at the end: a document, a list of tickets, or implemented changes?
Monthly retainers
Retainers are the standard model for ongoing SEO because the work compounds. Denver quotes cluster into four tiers, and the tier labels mean nothing without the contents, so each row below lists what a buyer should reasonably expect to see.
| Tier | Monthly range | Should include | Usually fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $750–$1,500 | GBP management, citation upkeep, light on-page fixes, one short content piece, a basic monthly report. Roughly 5–10 hours of work. | Single-location service businesses in low-competition niches or suburbs; a solo practitioner testing the water. |
| Core | $1,500–$3,000 | Everything above plus a technical fix backlog worked each month, two to four pages or articles, conversion tracking, quarterly strategy review. Roughly 10–20 hours. | Established trades, clinics, firms and restaurants competing across Denver and the inner suburbs. |
| Growth | $3,000–$6,000 | Dedicated strategist, content program of four to eight pieces, digital PR or earned-link outreach, structured data, AI-search monitoring, multi-location GBP. Roughly 20–40 hours. | Multi-location businesses, competitive categories (personal injury, dental implants, HVAC, roofing), regional e-commerce. |
| Enterprise or regional | $6,000–$15,000+ | Team of specialists, custom reporting, development time for site changes, content at scale, national or multi-state footprint. | Franchise systems, healthcare groups, SaaS and e-commerce brands headquartered in Colorado. |
Two patterns are worth knowing. First, prices at the Starter level have compressed because AI tooling made basic deliverables cheap to produce; be more skeptical, not less, of a $500 package, because the content it buys is likely to be unreviewed. Second, the Growth tier is where the widest variance lives. The same $4,000 might be 30 hours of senior time at a founder-led boutique or 8 hours at a firm with a large sales operation. Divide the fee by the hours they will commit to in writing and you get the only number that is comparable across proposals.
Scope questions for retainers
- How many hours, or which specific deliverables, does this fee cover each month? Will that be written into the agreement?
- Who performs each kind of work, and where are they located?
- What happens to unused hours? What happens if a month needs more?
- Are development changes to the site included, or will fixes be handed to my web developer?
- Which tool subscriptions am I paying for inside this fee, and do I keep access to them if we part ways?
- What is the initial term, and what is the notice period after it?
Project pricing
Fixed-fee projects suit work with a clear end: a technical audit, a site migration, a Google Business Profile recovery, a content hub built in one push, or an initial setup phase before a smaller retainer begins.
| Project | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Technical and content audit, small site | $1,500–$4,000 | Should produce a prioritized list with effort estimates, not a 90-page PDF of tool exports. |
| Audit, large or e-commerce site | $4,000–$12,000 | Crawl analysis, log files, indexation, faceted navigation, template-level recommendations. |
| Site migration or redesign SEO oversight | $2,500–$10,000 | Redirect mapping, pre- and post-launch checks. Cheap insurance against losing years of rankings in a weekend. |
| GBP suspension recovery | $500–$2,000 | Outcome depends on the cause; beware anyone guaranteeing reinstatement. |
| Local landing-page build, per page | $300–$900 | Research, copy, markup and internal links. Thin location pages are a liability, so cheap is not a bargain. |
| Keyword and content strategy | $1,500–$5,000 | Deliverable is a 6–12 month editorial plan tied to revenue services. |
Scope questions for projects
- What exactly is the deliverable, and will I be able to act on it without buying a retainer?
- Does the fee include implementation, or only recommendations?
- What is the timeline, and what do you need from me to hit it?
Performance and pay-per-lead models
A minority of Denver firms offer pay-for-performance SEO: a reduced base fee plus a bonus when agreed terms reach agreed positions, or a per-lead price for calls generated through assets the agency controls. Observed structures include $500–$1,500 monthly base plus $250–$1,000 per ranking milestone, and $25–$150 per qualified lead for trades.
Be cautious. Ranking-based bonuses reward the agency for picking easy terms. Pay-per-lead arrangements almost always mean the agency owns the site, phone number and listing that produce the leads, so you are renting a pipeline that disappears if you stop paying, and competing with your own brand in search. If a performance deal appeals to you, tie the performance measure to leads attributed through tracking you own, and require that every asset is in your name.
Scope questions for performance deals
- Who owns the domain, phone number and Google Business Profile that generate the leads?
- How is a "qualified" lead defined, and who decides disputes?
- Which terms count toward the bonus, and what is their monthly search volume in Denver?
What legitimately moves a Denver quote
- Competition in your category. Personal injury, dental, cosmetic surgery, HVAC and roofing in Denver proper are expensive to compete in; a niche B2B manufacturer in Commerce City is not.
- Number of locations and service areas. Each additional location adds GBP management, pages and reporting.
- The state of your site. A fast, well-structured site on a mainstream CMS costs less to work on than a legacy build with a custom theme nobody understands.
- Who does the work. Senior, local, in-house people cost more than junior or offshore people. This is the single biggest driver of variance between two quotes for the same scope.
- Content volume and expertise. Medical, legal and financial content needs subject-matter review, which costs more than general copy.
Too cheap, too expensive
A quote well below the ranges here is not a bargain unless you can see how the firm makes money at that price. Usually the answer is automation without review, templated content, or a plan to upsell you once the listing is in their control. A quote well above the ranges is reasonable only when the scope is correspondingly bigger or the specialist is demonstrably rare. Either way, the question is the same: show me the hours and the people.
Pricing is one of ten criteria on the vetting scorecard; pricing transparency, not price level, is what earns the points. Once you have a quote you understand, check the agreement against the contract red flags and score the firm on the interactive scorecard.