SEO PLANS & PRICING
SEO Pricing Plans and Monthly SEO Services in Houston
Every plan, every price and everything included, printed in plain sight. Local SEO plans start at $595 a month, Traditional SEO starts at $3,500, and none of them lock you into a long-term contract.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253
THE SHORT ANSWER
How much does SEO cost in Houston?
For a Houston small business, ongoing SEO usually costs a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month. The low end covers a hyper-local business with a few competitors. The high end covers law firms, specialty medical practices and manufacturers that fight for the same searches as companies with far bigger budgets.
Our own prices are on this page, because we think you should not have to sit through a sales call to learn them. Local SEO plans run $595, $1,250 or $2,500 a month, each with a one-time setup fee of $595 to $995. Traditional SEO for competitive and mid-sized companies starts at $3,500 a month with a $1,499 setup fee.
Beth Guide has taught SEO since 2003, and in her classes she breaks pricing into four models: hourly, monthly, project and performance. Monthly retainers win for most small businesses because SEO is not a one-time fix. Hourly work suits a single cleanup job. Project pricing fits a site launch. Performance pricing sounds safe but usually rewards the vendor for rankings that do not bring calls. We explain the trade-offs in our longer guide to what SEO services cost in Houston.
One rule from Beth’s classes before you compare any quote: look at who is number one for your main search, then look at how much content and how many links that company has. That is the real size of the job, and it is why two businesses in the same zip code can need very different plans.
LOCAL SEO PLANS
Local SEO packages for businesses that serve a radius
Local SEO is built around the map pack, where the top 3 businesses get most of the clicks for near-me searches. These plans are the same work behind our local SEO Houston service, sized by how far your customers travel.
Local SEO: 5 mile radius
Who this is for
- Operates in a 5 mile radius
- Entrepreneurs and solopreneurs
- Startups
- Low competition small business
- Boutiques
- Yoga studios
- Service shops: automotive, hair salon
- Restaurants and hospitality (per location)
What’s included
- Google My Business (Google Business Profile) w/posts
- Local Signals and Link Development
- Content Strategy (1 to 2 pages)
- Optimized Blog Posts
- Optimized Evergreen Articles
- Website Optimization to Support Local Objectives
- No Long Term Contracts
Pricing
Initial Setup/Optimization Fee: $595
Monthly Fee: $595
Web Design Fee $1000 (if needed)
Conversion to WordPress/up to 7 pages
Local SEO: 10 mile radius
Who this is for
- Operates in a 10 mile radius
- Small professional practice
- Primary care doctors
- General dentists
- Real estate agents
- Accountants
What’s included
- Google My Business (Google Business Profile) w/posts
- Local Signals and Link Development
- Content Strategy (1 to 2 pages)
- Optimized Blog Posts
- Optimized Evergreen Articles
- Website Optimization to Support Local Objectives
- Social Media Posts
- Reviews Management & Procurement
- Monthly Meeting
- No Long Term Contracts
Pricing
Initial Setup Fee: $595
Monthly Fee: $1250
Web Design Fee $1500 (if needed)
Conversion to WordPress/up to 10 pages
Local SEO: local, state or national footprint
Who this is for
- Local and state or national footprint
- Small firms
- Higher volume and visibility
- Legal firms
- Specialty medical practices
- Cosmetic dental practices
- IT firms
- Oil and gas or pipeline firms
- Manufacturers
- Competitive industries
- Annual sales generally over $1.5M a year
What’s included
- Content Strategy (4 to 5 pages)
- Optimized Blog Posts (approx 3)
- Optimized Evergreen Articles (approx 2)
- Optimized for Conversion
- Link Cultivation
- Technical SEO and structure
- Web Design Updates and Development as needed
- Google My Business (Google Business Profile) w/posts
- Local Signals and Link Development
- Customized and Optimized Graphics
- Website Architecture Optimization
- Social Media Posts
- Reviews Management & Procurement
- Monthly Reporting
- Monthly Meeting
- No Long Term Contracts
Pricing
Initial Setup & Optimization Fee: $995
Monthly Fee: $2500
Web Design Fee Starting at $1500 (if needed)
Conversion to WordPress
TRADITIONAL AND STARTER PLANS
SEO plans for competitive markets and small upstarts
Traditional SEO is for companies that sell statewide or nationally, or that compete in crowded industries. The Starter plans are for very small local businesses that need steady basics, not a full campaign.
Traditional SEO
Who this is for
- Small to mid-sized companies
- Possible ecommerce website with under 500 products
- Manufacturing companies
- Higher volume legal firms
- Specialty medical practices
- Cosmetic dental practices
- IT firms and other midsized business
- Competitive industries
- Annual sales generally over $2M a year
What’s included
- Content Strategy (5+ pages)
- Optimized Blog Posts (approx 3)
- Optimized Evergreen Articles (approx 2)
- Optimized for Conversion
- Link Cultivation
- Technical SEO and structure
- Web Design Updates and Development as needed
- Google My Business (Google Business Profile) w/posts
- Local Signals and Link Development
- Customized and Optimized Graphics
- Website Architecture Optimization
- Traditional Marketing/Public Relations
- Social Media Posts
- Reviews Management & Procurement
- Monthly Reporting
- Monthly Meeting
- No Long Term Contracts
Pricing
Initial Setup & Optimization Fee: $1499
Monthly Fee Starting at: $3500
Web Design Fee Starting at $3500 (if needed)
Conversion to WordPress
SEO Starter Plan: hyper-local
Who this is for
- Small hyper-local business
- Plumbers
- Roofers
- Electricians
- Florists
What’s included
- 1 to 2 pages per quarter of localized content
- Google My Business Posts
- Local Citations and References
- Technical SEO
- Monthly Reporting
Pricing
Quoted on request after a free website audit.
SEO Starter Plan: small business
Who this is for
- Small upstarts
- Annual revenue under $500K
- Home based businesses
- 1 or 2 employees
What’s included
- 1 to 2 pages per quarter of localized content
- Google My Business Posts
- Local Citations Links
- Technical SEO
- Monthly Reporting
Pricing
Quoted on request after a free website audit.
*Website management available on request.
WHAT YOUR MONEY BUYS
What is included in monthly SEO services?
Monthly SEO services are the work that keeps your website and Google Business Profile earning leads after the first round of fixes is done. The mix changes by plan, but the order of the work does not, and all of it is done by our in-house team.
THE CASE FOR VERTICAL WEB ON SEO PRICING
Prices you can see, work you can check
HOW THE WORK MOVES RANKINGS
How do monthly SEO services improve your rankings?
Rankings move when Google sees a site that answers the search better than the pages above it, loads cleanly and is trusted by other sites. Monthly SEO works on all three at once, and each month builds on the last.
Keyword research and strategy. Every plan starts with the searches your customers actually type, how many people search them, what intent sits behind them and which competitors already rank. That research decides which pages to improve first and which new pages to write for your budget.
On-page SEO. Title tags, meta descriptions, headings, internal links and the copy itself. Beth calls the title tag the most valuable piece of real estate on a page, and it is often the fastest win: a page that already sits on page 2 can climb once its title says what the business does and where.
Content creation. This is where most of the monthly hours go. New service pages, optimized blog posts and evergreen articles give Google more reasons to show your site and visitors more reasons to call. Our content marketing team writes for your customers first and the search engine second.
Links and off-page SEO. Local citations, earned backlinks from relevant sites and a steady flow of Google reviews. Quality links from real businesses carry weight. Links bought in bulk can hurt you, and part of the job is saying no to them.
Technical SEO. Crawling, indexing, site speed, Core Web Vitals, broken links and architecture. When a fix needs development, our Houston web design team handles it in the same building, so you are never stuck between two vendors pointing at each other.
Tracking that ties to leads. A page that ranks but never produces a call is not doing its job. That is why we set conversion goals at the start and report against them every month, the same approach we use for ROI tracking.
CHOOSING A PLAN
How to choose the right monthly SEO plan for your budget
The right plan is the one that matches how competitive your market is, not the lowest price on the page. Three questions settle most decisions.
How far do your customers travel? A business serving a 5 to 10 mile radius around Kingwood, Katy or the Galleria usually needs local SEO focused on the map pack. A firm selling statewide or nationally needs Traditional SEO with more content and link building.
How crowded is your industry? A florist and a personal injury law firm can both be local, but the law firm competes against much larger budgets and needs a bigger monthly scope to move.
How much content does the site need? A site with 7 thin pages needs more writing in year one than a site that already covers every service. If the site itself is the problem, each plan lists an optional web design fee for converting it to WordPress.
Here is the candor part. If you need leads next week, SEO is the wrong first purchase. Paid search is faster, and our PPC management team can run it while SEO builds underneath. And if a $595 plan will do the job, we will not sell you the $2,500 one.
Whoever you hire, ask the same things before you sign: what the deliverables are each month, who does the work, how results are reported and whether you can leave without a long-term contract. Our guide on how to choose an SEO company lists the rest, and our Houston SEO company page shows how we run campaigns end to end.
Agency vs in-house
Cost of SEO services in Houston: hiring an SEO agency vs doing it in-house
Every business owner asks the same question before signing a retainer: should we pay an SEO agency, or hire someone and keep it in-house? The honest answer depends on the size of the job and the expertise you already have on staff.
One in-house hire is one person. Search engine optimization needs a strategist, a writer, a technical person, someone who understands local listings and someone who reads the data every month. A single employee rarely has all of that experience, and the cost of the salary, the tools and the training usually runs higher than a monthly SEO plan. An agency spreads that cost across a team that has already made the mistakes on someone else’s budget.
Where in-house does make sense is content you know better than anyone. Many of our clients write first drafts about their own work, and our team turns them into pages that rank. That approach keeps your cost down and puts your real experience on the page, which is exactly what Google and AI engines want to see.
If you do hire an agency, hire a partner, not a vendor. A good SEO agency explains the strategy, shows the data behind every recommendation and tells you when a dollar would do more somewhere else. Our Houston SEO company page walks through how we run a campaign from the first audit to the monthly report.
What drives the price
SEO charges explained: what makes one Houston SEO package cost more than another
SEO charges are not random. Four things decide where your business lands on the pricing table above, and you can check every one of them yourself before you ask for a quote.
Competition in your market. A florist in Kingwood and a personal injury law firm downtown are both local, but the law firm is fighting agencies with large budgets for every click. More competition means more content, more link building and more hours each month to move the same distance.
Your industry. Healthcare, legal and financial pages are held to a higher standard because the advice affects people’s health and money. A healthcare practice needs content written with real expertise, reviewed carefully and backed by authority signals such as citations and mentions from trusted sites. That work takes longer, so it costs more.
The state of your website. A site with slow pages, broken links or thin copy needs repair before new content pays off. Sometimes the best investment is fixing what is already there. Our SEO repair work handles the cleanup so the monthly plan can focus on growth.
The scale of your footprint. One location serving nearby customers is a very different campaign from a company selling across Texas or nationally. Scale changes how many pages you need, how many listings must match and how much reporting it takes to see what is working.
Results you can measure
What results should you expect from monthly SEO packages in Houston?
SEO builds over months, not days. The first month is research, technical fixes and a strategy. The months after that are content, links and steady improvement. Anyone who promises a number one ranking is selling something no agency controls.
What you should expect is a measurable result you can see in your own data. Clicks from Google Search Console. Calls and form fills tracked as goals. Map pack visibility for the searches your nearby customers type. An increase in pages that rank in the top 10. We report those numbers every month, so you can judge the investment by leads, not by a vague traffic chart.
Ask any provider for a case study in your industry, and ask what the client was ranking for before the work started. Real success has a starting line. If an agency cannot show you one, be careful.
Beth’s rule in class is simple: if a page ranks but never makes the phone ring, it is not done yet. That is why conversion work sits inside every plan, and why our ROI tracking ties rankings back to revenue.
SEO in the age of AI
Is SEO dead in 2026, or is the strategy just changing?
SEO is not dead. It is changing, and the businesses that adapt are winning more search traffic, not less. People still type questions into Google. More of them also ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and those AI engines pull their answers from sites that already show strong authority, clear structure and consistent facts about the business.
That shifts where the budget goes. A modern SEO strategy covers classic search engine optimization, your Google Business Profile, listings that match everywhere, digital PR that earns mentions on trusted sites, and pages written so a user and an AI engine can both pull a clear answer from them. Our AI SEO services cover the AIO side of that work.
The good news for a small business is that the fundamentals did not change. A fast website, a strong brand, honest content written from real experience and a clean technical setup still win. The difference is that shortcuts get caught faster, so a bargain plan that skips the fundamentals now costs you twice.
It is also why we fold SEO, PPC and the rest of your digital marketing into one plan when it fits. A digital marketing agency that sees the whole picture can tell you which channel should carry the load this quarter, and which one can wait.
QUESTIONS
SEO pricing questions we hear every week
Most Houston small businesses pay between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars a month for ongoing SEO. At Vertical Web, Local SEO plans are $595, $1,250 or $2,500 a month with a one-time setup fee of $595 to $995, and Traditional SEO starts at $3,500 a month with a $1,499 setup fee. The right number depends on how far your customers travel and how crowded your industry is.
Monthly SEO services are an ongoing plan where the same team works on your website and Google Business Profile every month instead of as a one-time project. Search results change, competitors publish new pages and Google keeps adjusting how it ranks sites, so the work that earns rankings has to continue to hold them. At Vertical Web every part of that work is done in-house.
No. Every plan on this page is offered with no long-term contract. We earn the next month by showing progress in your monthly report and, on the larger plans, in a monthly meeting with you.
Local SEO is for businesses that serve customers within a set radius. It centers on the map pack, your Google Business Profile, citations and local signals. Traditional SEO is for companies that compete statewide or nationally. It adds more content each month, link cultivation, technical SEO and website architecture work.
The first month carries the heaviest work: keyword research, a technical audit, fixing titles and headings, cleaning up listings and setting the traffic and conversion goals we report against. The setup fee pays for that groundwork once so your monthly fee goes to new progress.
SEO builds over months, not days. Technical fixes and Google Business Profile work can improve map pack visibility sooner, while new content and links compound over time. Because every campaign sets traffic and conversion goals at the start, your monthly report shows whether the work is moving you toward them.
Yes. The same content, structure and technical work that helps you rank in Google also helps AI engines understand and cite your pages. If showing up in ChatGPT, Gemini or Google AI Overviews is a priority, our AI SEO services go further on that goal.
For most businesses that depend on local or online leads, yes, as long as the plan matches the market. SEO costs the same whether one visitor or one thousand arrive, so the return grows as rankings improve. If you need leads next week, paid search is faster, and we will tell you so.
Most businesses see early movement in rankings and Search Console data within the first few months, and stronger lead growth as content and links build. The timeline depends on how competitive your market is and how much repair the site needs first.
SEO takes strategy, writing, technical work, local listings and reporting. One employee rarely has all of that expertise. An agency gives you a whole team for less than the cost of a full-time hire, and you can still contribute your own industry knowledge to the content.
Houston is spread out, so local SEO depends on where your customers are. A business in Katy, Kingwood or the Galleria competes in a different map pack than one downtown. Many Houston industries, such as energy, healthcare and law, are also highly competitive, which affects the cost.
Ask who does the work, what you get each month, how results are reported and whether you can leave without a long-term contract. Ask for examples in your industry. A good partner explains the strategy in plain English and tells you when SEO is not the best place for your next dollar.
Our SEO plans cover organic search and local search. PPC is a separate service with its own management fee and ad spend. Many clients run both, because paid search brings leads quickly while SEO builds long term results.
Not sure which plan fits your business?
Start with a free website audit. We show where your site stands today, which monthly work would move it first and which plan, if any, makes sense for your budget.
Galleria 713-703-3030 | Kingwood 281-852-8253 | info@verticalweb.com