SEO costs $199 to $2,500 per month at Portland Peak SEO, published in full rather than quoted after a call. Across the market, monthly retainers usually run from a few hundred to several thousand, driven mainly by how many markets and service lines the work has to cover. Call (971) 280-2861.
Every quote here is scoped against the Uncharted Framework, the 17 method system this practice runs on its own sites before any client site, which is why the number reflects scope rather than negotiation.
Ours, in full, with nothing held back for a call. Monthly work is month to month, with no contract and no cancellation fee. Website builds are a separate one time cost and do not require a retainer.
| Monthly SEO | Price | Suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Local | $199 per month | One city, one service line |
| Growth | $950 per month | Several cities or several services |
| Authority | $2,500 per month | Metro or national coverage |
| Website build | $2,200 / $5,500 / $8,500 | One time, by page count |
Everything above is the same number quoted to every business, in every market. The pricing page carries the per tier detail.
A buyer guide to what search work actually costs across the market, what drives the spread, and how to judge whether a number is reasonable for your situation. Our own figures are stated once and linked, not scattered across the page.
Portland Peak SEO monthly: $199, $950, $2,500. Builds: $2,200, $5,500, $8,500. Full detail on the pricing page.
Do it yourself if you have more time than money and one market to cover; the fundamentals are learnable and our free audit is written to be usable without us. Hire help when the hours cost you more than the fee, when you cover several markets, or when a year of DIY has produced no movement. The honest middle path is starting with an audit, implementing it yourself, and returning only if you stall.
Orange County buyers compare on presentation and reputation, and they notice when a site looks dated. That shapes what a Irvine SEO program prioritizes first.
Send the form and a human reviews your site, not a script. You get a prioritized SEO report within 48 hours naming the highest impact fixes, whether you hire us or not.
Ask five agencies what SEO costs and you will get five answers spanning an order of magnitude. That is not evasion, and most of the spread comes down to three things that have nothing to do with skill.
Scope is the largest. A single market local program is a fundamentally different quantity of work from a multi state campaign, and no honest single number covers both.
Overhead is second. A firm carrying account managers, a sales team, and an office prices all of that into every retainer, because it has to. A founder led practice does not carry those costs and can price accordingly. Neither model is wrong, and you should know which one you are buying.
Pricing strategy is third and the least discussed. A firm that withholds its number until a discovery call is positioned to price against what it believes you can afford. That is why published pricing is rare and why it matters.
Five of these six are legitimate reasons a quote moves. The sixth is the reason so many firms will not put a number on a page.
| Driver | Effect | Fair or not |
|---|---|---|
| Markets covered | Large increase | Fair, each market is separate work |
| Service lines | Large increase | Fair, each needs its own demand map |
| Competitive field | Moderate increase | Fair, more depth is needed to enter |
| Site condition | May require a build first | Fair, content on a broken site is wasted |
| Agency overhead | Large increase | Real, and it does not reach your work |
| Your perceived budget | Increase | Not fair, and it is why prices get hidden |
There is a level beneath which nobody can do this properly. Demand mapping, technical repair, genuine content, and measurement take skilled hours. Programs priced under that floor do not do less of the work, they do a performance of the work, and the performance is usually a monthly report.
That is the uncomfortable truth behind very cheap SEO. The money goes somewhere, and where it goes is rarely into pages that would have ranked.
It is also why our entry tier sits at $199 rather than lower. It is deliberately narrow, covering one market properly, rather than deliberately thin across several. One market covered well beats five covered cosmetically every time.
The structure matters as much as the number, because each model creates a different incentive between you and whoever you hire.
| Model | Fits | Breaks when |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | Ongoing compounding work | Scope drifts down while the invoice holds |
| Hourly | Narrow advisory engagements | The work needs iteration, which it always does |
| Per project | Builds, audits, migrations | Applied to work that has no end |
| Performance based | Almost nothing in search | Attribution is contested, which is always |
Start from a closed customer, not from a percentage of revenue. What is one new client worth to you over the time they stay? A business where a customer is worth a few hundred dollars needs a different program from one where a customer is worth twenty thousand, and the second can justify spend the first cannot.
Then estimate how many additional customers the visibility would need to produce for the program to pay for itself. Divide the monthly figure by your average customer value and ask whether that number of extra clients looks achievable in your market. If it requires everything to go perfectly, the tier is too high for you right now.
Then check the time horizon honestly. Local and profile driven movement often shows within a quarter. Competitive terms compound over months. A budget that must return within six weeks is a budget for advertising rather than for search, and a good agency will tell you that before you spend rather than after.
A documented picture of what your buyers actually search, produced before any proposal exists. Without it, the page list is a guess with an invoice attached.
A baseline recording where you stand before work begins. Without it, nobody can prove what changed, including you, and that ambiguity almost always serves the party writing the report.
Deliverables named in nouns rather than adjectives. Comprehensive and strategic are not deliverables, they are mood. Pages, fixes, links with named sources, and a reporting cadence are deliverables.
And terms you can read in two minutes. What it costs, what ends it, and how much notice either side owes. Complexity at this price point is a choice rather than a necessity.
Setup or onboarding fees. The work of starting is the work, and charging separately for it is charging twice.
Reporting surcharges. Measurement is not an add on, it is the part that makes the rest of the spend checkable.
Content billed per piece above a quota that was never clearly stated. If cadence is part of the tier, it belongs in the tier.
Platform or licence fees that appear after launch. A site built on a proprietary platform carries ongoing cost by design, and that cost is a feature for whoever built it rather than for you. Ask before signing, not after.
Portland Peak SEO publishes monthly tiers at $199 for Local, $950 for Growth, and $2,500 for Authority. Every one is month to month with no setup fee, no minimum term, and no cancellation fee.
Website builds are separate because they are projects with a defined end, quoted fixed at $2,200, $5,500, or $8,500 depending on scope.
The pricing page carries the full breakdown of what each tier includes, what is deliberately excluded, and how to choose between them. This page links there rather than restating it, so the two can never disagree.
It is worth setting search spend against the alternatives rather than judging it in isolation, because every marketing budget is a choice between channels.
Paid search buys traffic for exactly as long as the card is being charged. Stop the spend and the traffic stops the same day. That is not a criticism, it is the nature of the channel, and it makes paid the right instrument when you need customers this month.
Search buys a position, which is an asset rather than an expense. A page that ranks keeps producing after the invoice stops, which means the same monthly figure buys a growing return rather than a flat one over time.
The honest comparison is therefore not cost per click against cost per month. It is whether you need traffic now or ground later, and most businesses need some of both.
Any agency should be able to describe this split for its own pricing. An answer that cannot be broken down usually means the work cannot either.
| Line | Share | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Analysis and content | Largest | Demand mapping, competitive review, the pages that answer real searches |
| Technical | Front loaded | Site health, speed, structure, schema, repaired then defended |
| Authority | Ongoing | Earned links, real reviews, consistent mentions |
| Measurement | Small and essential | Baseline, tracking, the monthly read that keeps claims checkable |
What is my baseline and who records it. If a proposal arrives without one, nobody will be able to prove what changed.
What exists in ninety days, in nouns. Named pages, named fixes, named cadence. A discovery and strategy phase is not a deliverable.
Where do links come from. Editorial and earned is the only correct answer. Volume promises mean purchased or exchanged links, and that exposure attaches to your domain.
What happens in a month where nothing moves. A firm that says it will not happen is either inexperienced or not being straight with you, because search does not advance evenly for anyone.
And how do I leave. Read the cancellation clause before the scope. It is the shortest section in any agreement and the most revealing.
Published guides put typical small and mid sized business retainers well above the ceiling on this page. Those figures are real and they are averages, which means they blend a solo operator serving one town with an agency running a national account.
An average across scopes that different is close to meaningless for an individual buyer. What is useful is comparing like with like: a single market program against another single market program, quoted with the same deliverables named.
That comparison is exactly what hidden pricing prevents, which is the practical reason so few firms publish. When you cannot line two quotes up, the higher one is not obviously worse, and that ambiguity is worth money to whoever created it.
Take a free audit from someone. Ours documents current visibility, maps what your buyers actually search, and records a baseline, and the findings are yours to keep whether or not anything follows.
Then decide from evidence rather than from a brochure. If the demand map shows thin volume for what you sell, a search program is the wrong instrument and no price makes it right. If it shows real demand and weak incumbents, the arithmetic usually settles itself.
And if the budget is not there yet, implement the audit yourself. The report is written to be usable without us, ordered by impact and effort. Several businesses have done exactly that and returned a year later. That is a good outcome, not a lost sale.
Across the market it varies enormously, and most of the spread is explained by scope and overhead rather than skill. Portland Peak SEO publishes $199, $950, and $2,500 monthly, month to month with no contract. Firms carrying account management and sales teams price higher because that overhead reaches every retainer.
Three things drive almost all of it. Scope, because a single market program is a different quantity of work from a national campaign. Overhead, because a founder led practice carries costs a mid sized agency cannot avoid. And pricing strategy, because a firm that hides its number prices against what it thinks you can pay.
Below a certain floor the money stops buying pages that could rank and starts buying reports. Demand mapping, technical repair, real content, and measurement take skilled hours, and hours cost money. A business spending two hundred dollars a month for a year has not bought a cheap program, it has bought very little slowly.
Work backwards from a closed customer rather than forwards from a budget. What is one worth over the time they stay, and how many more would the program need to produce to pay for itself. If that number looks obviously achievable in your market the spend is rational. If it needs everything to go perfectly, start smaller.
Many do, and it is worth asking why. Competition changes how long results take and how much content is needed, which is a scope question. It does not change the hourly value of the work. A firm charging a legal practice triple what it charges a plumber for identical scope is pricing your margin rather than its own effort.
Monthly suits ongoing search work because results compound and hourly billing punishes iteration. Hourly suits narrow advisory engagements where the deliverable is judgment. Project pricing suits work with a real ending such as a build, an audit, or a migration. Performance pricing creates attribution disputes exactly when the stakes are highest.
It depends on competitive field and customer value, and any specific promise is a guess dressed as a commitment. What is consistent is the shape: technical and local movement first, competitive terms later, compounding after that. A recorded baseline is what lets you judge progress against reality rather than against a sales projection.
Portland Peak SEO builds are quoted fixed at $2,200, $5,500, or $8,500 depending on scope, itemised across page count, design depth, content, integrations, migration, and timeline. Market pricing for professional small business sites commonly lands well above the budget end, and quotes are only comparable once both are itemised.
There should not be, and asking directly is the cheapest protection available. Common ones across the industry are setup fees, onboarding charges, reporting surcharges, content billed per piece above a quota, and platform fees that appear after launch. None of those exist here, and any cost that would surprise you later gets named upfront.
On the pricing page, which is the single source of truth for every figure Portland Peak SEO charges. Monthly tiers at $199, $950, and $2,500 and one time builds at $2,200, $5,500, and $8,500. Nothing on this page contradicts it because this page states them once and links there for the detail.