SEO Packages — Real Prices, Month-to-Month, No 12-Month Lock-Ins

Most SEO package pages are designed to keep you from learning what SEO costs. Tier names get vague — Plus, Premium, Prime. Dollar amounts get gated behind contact forms. Contract length gets buried in the FAQ. Setup fees show up on the invoice after you've signed.

We publish four tiers, four real monthly prices, and every deliverable. Starter at $1,500/mo for SMBs under $500K revenue. Local at $2,500/mo for service businesses in 1–3 locations. Growth at $5,000/mo for mid-market and ecommerce. Scale starting at $10,000/mo for enterprise complexity.

Every tier is month-to-month after a 30-day satisfaction window with full refund inside that window. No setup fees. No annual prepay required. Direct access to the strategist running your account — not a sales rep, not a ticket queue.

If an agency you're vetting won't publish their prices, won't name the team doing the work, and won't tell you what's not included, that's three signals stacked. We publish all three on this page.

Rule27 is based in Phoenix, Arizona. Our team lives here — not a national agency with a Phoenix landing page. That matters for local clients (we've driven Camelback Road on a 115° day, we know what Maryvale Spanish-language search demand actually looks like, we have working relationships with AZBigMedia and Phoenix Business Journal) and it matters for national clients too, because real geographic grounding is the difference between content that names cities and content that lives in them.

We run all four package tiers nationally. Roughly 40% of our client base is in Arizona (Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Scottsdale, Chandler, Tempe, Gilbert), another 25% is in adjacent Southwest markets (Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso, Denver), and the remaining 35% spans the US from Florida to Seattle. The package pricing is identical regardless of geography. Local-pack work is included in tiers where it's relevant; national keyword scopes scale with the Growth and Scale tiers.

The practical advantage of an AZ-based team running national accounts is timezone overlap with both coasts (Mountain Standard Time, no DST), faster-than-East-Coast-agencies turnaround for West Coast clients, and a lower-than-NYC-or-SF cost structure that lets us deliver the same scope at lower retainer prices.

Most SEO package pages are designed to keep you from learning what SEO costs. The tier names are vague — Plus, Premium, Prime. The dollar amounts are gated behind "Get a custom quote." The contract length is buried in an FAQ at the bottom. The setup fee shows up on the invoice after you've already signed.

We think that's broken. So this page does the opposite.

Four tiers. Four real monthly prices. Every deliverable spelled out. Month-to-month after a 30-day satisfaction window. No setup fees. No annual prepay games. If after reading this you still need a 45-minute discovery call before you know what we charge, we've failed.

What an SEO package actually is

An SEO package is a recurring monthly retainer that bundles the work an agency commits to doing for you, every month, until you cancel or scope changes. The good ones include technical SEO maintenance, on-page optimization, content production, off-site authority building, and reporting. The bad ones include three of those five and call it "comprehensive."

Industry pricing in 2026 spans a wide range. Mainstreethost lists a $99/month SEO Essentials tier that requires annual prepay — the real commitment is $1,188 in cash up front. Loganix publishes $500/month Standard with a $500 setup fee, two guest-post links monthly, month-to-month after that. OuterBox shows $2,000/month Essentials, $3,000/month Pro, and Enterprise starting at $7,000. ClickReady stacks four tiers from $1,050/month Local Visibility+ to $5,500-and-up Multi-Location. eSEOspace, in its guide page, cites $1,500–$4,000/month for local SEO, $4,000–$10,000 for SMB and ecommerce, and $10,000–$25,000+ for enterprise.

The AI Overview synthesis for seo packages puts most businesses in the $500–$3,000/month range, with content-only retainers around $1,500/month and full-service work between $5,000 and $20,000+/month for larger sites.

Our four tiers are calibrated to those bands, transparent at every level, and structured so you can compare us against any of the agencies above without doing math.

What's in every Rule27 SEO package

Before the tier breakdown, here's what shows up in every single retainer regardless of price. We bake these into the cheapest tier because if an agency charges for them as add-ons, they're charging for table-stakes work.

• 30-minute intake call with the strategist who'll run your account — not a sales rep
• Full technical SEO audit in week one (the real one, not a Screaming Frog export)
• Keyword research mapped to your service pages and intent stages
• Google Analytics 4 + Google Tag Manager setup or audit
• Google Search Console setup or audit (and we give you the login)
• On-page optimization (titles, meta descriptions, headers, internal links)
• Schema markup deployment (Organization, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList at minimum)
• Monthly performance report with the data, the decisions, and what's next
• Direct access to your strategist via email and Slack — no ticket queue
• Live Looker Studio dashboard you can log into any time
• 30-day satisfaction window: full refund if you cancel inside 30 days, no questions
• Month-to-month after that, 30-day notice to cancel
• No setup fees
• No annual-prepay requirement (annual offered with 10% discount, never required)

If an agency you're vetting won't include all of that at their lowest tier, ask why.

The four Rule27 SEO packages, side by side

The headline numbers first; deep-dives on each tier below.

| Package | Monthly price | Best for | Keywords tracked | Pages optimized/mo | Content pieces/mo | Authority links/mo | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Starter SEO | $1,500/mo | Small businesses, single location, under $500K revenue | Up to 25 | Up to 10 | 2 | 2 | | Local SEO | $2,500/mo | Local service businesses, 1–3 locations, $500K–$2M revenue | Up to 50 | Up to 20 | 4 | 4 | | Growth SEO | $5,000/mo | Mid-market, ecommerce, multi-location, $2M–$10M revenue | Up to 100 | Up to 40 | 6–8 | 6–8 | | Scale SEO | $10,000+/mo | Enterprise, complex sites, regulated industries, $10M+ revenue | 100–500+ | Custom scope | 10+ | Custom scope |

Every tier is month-to-month after the 30-day satisfaction window. No setup fees. No annual prepay required. Every tier includes everything in the what's in every package list above.

The comparison agencies you'll see when you search seo packages usually publish two or three tiers and hide the fourth behind a quote form. We publish all four with real numbers because every business above $10M in revenue can sniff out a stalled sales process from a mile away, and pretending otherwise wastes your time and ours.

Starter SEO — $1,500/month

Best for: small businesses with a single location, under $500K in annual revenue, fewer than 25 target keywords, and a website that's been live for at least six months.

This tier exists for the business that's been told you need SEO but doesn't have the budget for the $5K-and-up agencies. It's not the discount knock-off — it's the same Rule27 team running a tighter scope.

What you get every month at $1,500:

• Up to 25 keywords tracked in rank-monitoring with weekly updates
• Up to 10 page on-page optimization passes (titles, metas, headers, image alts, internal links)
• 2 long-form articles (1,200–1,800 words each) produced and published
• 2 authority backlinks placed via legitimate outreach (no PBNs, no link farms)
• Monthly technical site audit and prioritized fix list
• Google Business Profile optimization (single location) with weekly Posts and Q&A seeding
• Schema markup expanded as content publishes
• Monthly 30-minute strategy call to walk through what changed
• Direct strategist access via email

What you should expect timeline-wise: local-pack movement in 30–60 days if your GBP is the bottleneck; long-tail keyword rankings starting around days 60–120; meaningful organic traffic lift around month four to six. Anyone promising faster results at this budget is either lying or using tactics that get sites penalized.

This tier is intentionally not a cheap SEO package. The $99–$399/month tiers from Mainstreethost and EZ Rankings require annual prepay (real cost: $1,188–$4,788 up front), give you 1–2 content pieces handled by offshore mills, and don't include backlink outreach or technical fixes. We don't compete with that pricing because we can't deliver real work for $99/month, and we'd rather tell you that openly than dress up a worse product to match.

Local SEO — $2,500/month

Best for: local service businesses (HVAC, dental, legal, contractors, real estate) with 1–3 locations, $500K–$2M in annual revenue, and a geographic service area covering a single metro and its suburbs.

This is the tier that hits the seo packages for small business sweet spot most agencies aim at — except we run it with mid-market rigor instead of small-business shortcuts.

What you get every month at $2,500:

• Everything in Starter, expanded
• Up to 50 keywords tracked across head terms and long-tail variations
• Up to 20 page on-page optimization passes per month
• 4 long-form articles (1,500–2,000 words each) produced and published
• 4 authority backlinks via outreach (local media, trade publications, niche-relevant DA40+ sites)
• Full Google Business Profile management for up to 3 locations with weekly Posts, Q&A, and review-response templates
• NAP citation audit and cleanup across the 30+ directories that actually move local rankings
• City × service page builds where search volume justifies (Phoenix, Tempe, Scottsdale, Chandler, etc. for AZ clients)
• Local LLM and voice-search optimization (the Hey Siri, find a [service] near me query path)
• Conversion tracking setup: CallRail for phone calls, GA4 enhanced events for forms, Slack notifications for new leads if requested
• Monthly 45-minute strategy call
• Bi-weekly Slack updates between calls

Local SEO is the highest-leverage tier in the lineup because the work-to-revenue ratio in local service verticals is unbeatable. A dentist who picks up two new patients a month from organic search and the local pack pays back the entire $2,500 retainer at the first crown. We've watched HVAC clients in Phoenix add $400K–$800K in annual revenue from one summer of properly executed local SEO. The math is brutal and the math is consistent.

This tier maps roughly to ClickReady's $2,200/month Regional Growth tier and EZ Rankings' top local plan. We're priced $300/month above ClickReady because we publish the strategist's name on your engagement, run weekly GBP work (not monthly), and don't gate the backlink quality behind tier upgrades.

Growth SEO — $5,000/month

Best for: mid-market businesses with $2M–$10M in annual revenue, multi-location service businesses (4–10 locations), ecommerce operations with 500+ SKUs, SaaS companies past product-market fit, or service businesses competing at the national level.

This is where the work stops being get found locally and starts being win categories. The $5,000/month tier is the most common Rule27 engagement because it's the tier where SEO actually compounds.

What you get every month at $5,000:

• Everything in Local SEO, scaled
• Up to 100 keywords tracked, segmented by funnel stage and search intent
• Up to 40 page on-page optimization passes per month
• 6–8 long-form articles (1,800–2,500 words each), including pillar pages and topic clusters
• 6–8 authority backlinks per month from DA40+ niche-relevant domains
• Digital PR campaign: 2–3 pitches per month to outlets like AZBigMedia, Phoenix Business Journal, Forbes Councils, Inc., HARO/Connectively responses
• Multi-location GBP management with location-level reporting
• Programmatic SEO for service × city or product × use-case page builds (for ecommerce and multi-location)
• AI search optimization: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) for featured snippets, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overview citation
• Schema markup depth pass: nested schema, sameAs entity linking, FAQPage with rotated questions, HowTo where applicable
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO): one structured A/B test per quarter on a high-traffic page
• Internal linking audit and rebuild every 90 days
• Competitor monitoring: rank tracking + content gap analysis for your top 5 competitors
• Monthly 60-minute strategy call + weekly Slack standups
• Quarterly business review with C-suite if applicable

This tier maps to OuterBox's $3,000/month Pro and ClickReady's $3,500/month Market Leader but at a $1,500–$2,000/month premium because we run digital PR in-house (most agencies outsource or skip it), our content team writes to a college-level editorial standard, and the AI search optimization isn't a buzzword line item — we publish AI citation logs in your monthly report.

Expect organic traffic to roughly double inside 9–12 months at this tier, assuming a normal starting point. Expect 25–40% of that traffic growth to come from AI search referrals by month 12 — a channel most agencies aren't even measuring yet.

Scale SEO — starting at $10,000/month

Best for: enterprise businesses, large ecommerce ($10M+ GMV), multi-brand portfolios, regulated industries (healthcare, finance, legal), international operations, sites with 1,000+ indexable pages, or any operation where SEO is a top-three revenue channel.

This tier is the only one we customize the scope on. $10,000/month is the floor; most Scale engagements land between $12,000 and $25,000/month depending on site size, vertical complexity, and ancillary services (international expansion, content production volume, dedicated team size).

What a Scale engagement typically includes:

• Dedicated SEO team: lead strategist, technical SEO specialist, content lead, link-building lead, analytics engineer
• Custom keyword scope (100–500+ tracked terms, segmented by brand, vertical, and geography)
• Custom on-page optimization scope (40–150+ pages per month)
• 10+ long-form content pieces per month plus pillar/cluster strategy execution
• Custom link-building scope (typically 10–20+ authority links per month)
• Full digital PR program: dedicated outreach lead, monthly story pitches, quarterly major-publication placements
• International SEO: hreflang implementation, multi-region keyword research, localized content production
• Programmatic SEO at scale: automated page generation with editorial review, dynamic schema, internal link automation
• Multi-site or multi-brand SEO management
• Enterprise reporting: custom Looker Studio dashboards, monthly executive summaries, quarterly board-ready decks
• Duplicate-content strategy, canonical management, indexation control for large sites
• Advanced technical SEO: log file analysis, render-blocking diagnostics, crawl budget optimization, JavaScript SEO if SPA or PWA
• CRO program: ongoing A/B testing across high-traffic landing pages
• AI search visibility program: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overview citation tracking with monthly delta reports
• Weekly check-ins, monthly strategy reviews, quarterly business reviews with executive stakeholders

Scale clients sign a 90-day initial engagement to give the team time to onboard and execute the technical baseline. After day 90, the engagement converts to month-to-month with 60-day notice to cancel. The longer notice period is a function of scope, not a contract trap — ramping a 5-person team down responsibly takes 60 days.

This tier maps to OuterBox's Enterprise ($7,000+/month) and the eSEOspace guide's $10,000–$25,000+ enterprise band. Logical Position runs enterprise in the same band but doesn't publish pricing. We do, with a real floor.

What's not in any Rule27 SEO package

Honest agencies tell you what's not included up front. Here's what no Rule27 tier covers — these are real costs you'll either pay separately to us or to a third party.

• Paid ad spend. SEO retainers cover SEO work. Google Ads or Microsoft Ads budgets are paid directly to the ad platforms. We offer paid-search management as an add-on at $1,500/month or 15% of ad spend, whichever is greater — priced separately and disclosed up front.
• Web hosting and domain registration. Not our scope. We'll recommend hosts (Kinsta, WP Engine, Vercel depending on stack) and help with the migration if asked, but the bill is yours.
• Full website rebuilds. Rule27 does web design and development separately. If your site needs a rebuild before SEO can work, we'll quote the build as its own project. We won't bake $40K of dev work into a $5K retainer and pretend it's covered.
• Third-party tool licensing. Ahrefs, Semrush, Screaming Frog, CallRail — we use them on your behalf via our own seats. If you want your own logins or your own dashboard accounts, those are separate.
• Press release distribution fees. When we land you a press placement, the placement itself is included; if you want a paid wire distribution (Business Wire, PR Newswire), that's a third-party cost.
• Legal review of content. Healthcare, financial, and legal verticals often need attorney review. We'll write content to your compliance team's standards; their billable time isn't in our scope.
• Ad creative production. Banner ads, video ads, social creative for paid campaigns — separate scope, handled by Rule27 Creative or by your agency of choice.

If an agency you're vetting won't list what's not included, that's the line item where they're planning to upcharge you in month four.

Which package fits your business?

A quick decider, based on the three numbers that matter most.

By revenue:

• Under $500K/year revenue → Starter SEO ($1,500/mo)
• $500K–$2M/year revenue → Local SEO ($2,500/mo)
• $2M–$10M/year revenue → Growth SEO ($5,000/mo)
• $10M+/year revenue → Scale SEO ($10,000+/mo)

By geographic scope:

• Single city, single location → Starter or Local
• 2–3 cities in one metro → Local
• Multi-metro or statewide → Growth
• National or international → Scale

By competition:

• Low-competition niche or rural market → Starter
• Mid-competition metro (Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque) → Local or Growth
• High-competition metro (Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta) → Growth or Scale
• Saturated national category (legal, dental, insurance, mortgage) → Scale

If two tiers feel equally plausible, pick the lower one and upgrade after 90 days when the data tells you to. We've never upsold a client from Local to Growth before month four because the data has to justify the step.

How we're different from the agencies you're comparing us against

When people search seo packages in 2026, the top of the SERP is dominated by Logical Position, Mainstreethost, eSEOspace, Fiverr, EZ Rankings, Clutch, Loganix, OuterBox, ClickReady, and SEOReseller. We've audited all of them. Here's the shorthand on how we're structurally different.

vs. Mainstreethost ($99–$999/mo annual prepay): their headline price is $99/month when billed annually. Real commitment is $1,188 up front for SEO Essentials, $11,988 up front for SEO Custom. We charge month-to-month at our published number. No prepay games.

vs. Loganix ($500–$1,000/mo + $500 setup): Loganix is link-building-as-a-product, not full-service SEO. Two guest posts a month is a link package, not an SEO program. We include link building in every tier, plus the technical, on-page, and content work Loganix doesn't.

vs. ClickReady ($1,050–$5,500+/mo): ClickReady runs four solid tiers with transparent pricing — the closest direct comp to our model. Our Local tier is priced $300/month above their Regional Growth tier because we run digital PR in-house and publish AI citation logs; theirs includes paid ad budgets bundled into the price (which inflates the comparison).

vs. OuterBox ($2,000–$7,000+/mo): OuterBox is ecommerce-specialist SEO and is very good at it. If you're a Shopify or BigCommerce operation, get a quote from them and from us; we both publish pricing, and the comparison is honest. For non-ecommerce verticals, we're the broader option.

vs. Logical Position and SEOReseller: both hide pricing behind contact forms. We can't compare directly because they won't show their numbers. That's the comparison.

vs. EZ Rankings ($149–$299/mo published, rest gated): EZ Rankings publishes their two cheapest tiers (Local Starter and Basic) but gates everything above. The published prices are below our Starter for a reason — the scope is below our Starter's scope.

vs. the eSEOspace blog guide: eSEOspace's blog post is a guide, not a service page. Their pricing ranges ($1,500–$25,000+) are industry averages, not their actual offering. They're listed in the top 10 for seo packages because the content is thorough, not because they're competing on price.

How long until SEO actually works

This is the single most-asked question on every SEO package page, and most agencies answer it with a hedged paragraph that means nothing. Here's the actual breakdown.

• Days 1–30: GBP rebuild lifts local-pack visibility for local businesses with GBP problems. Technical baseline gets shipped (schema, Core Web Vitals fixes, indexation cleanup). Some clients see their first ranking movement here; most don't.
• Days 30–60: Long-tail keyword rankings start appearing. The content published in month one starts getting indexed and ranking for low-competition variants. Local pack movement continues for local clients.
• Days 60–120: Mid-competition keywords start showing rankings on page 2–3. Authority links placed in month one start passing equity. Traffic curve begins to bend upward.
• Days 120–180: First meaningful organic traffic lift, typically 25–60% above baseline depending on tier and starting point. Mid-competition rankings move to page 1. AI Overview citations begin appearing for content built around question intent.
• Days 180–365: Pillar keywords rank. Compound growth kicks in. Domain authority lifts, which means new content ranks faster, which means the program accelerates. This is when the math gets good.
• Year 2: Maintenance phase for stable rankings; expansion phase for new keyword targets. The clients we keep past month 18 stay because the SEO has paid for itself many times over and the agency switch cost outweighs any savings.

The industry-standard line, verbatim: no one can guarantee a specific ranking on Google. That includes us. Anyone who guarantees a specific ranking is selling a tactic that gets penalized; the question is when, not if.

The 30-day satisfaction window, explained

Every Rule27 SEO package includes a 30-day satisfaction window. If you cancel inside the first 30 days for any reason, we refund 100% of what you've paid. No questions, no clawback fights, no "per our contract" emails.

After day 30, the engagement converts to month-to-month with 30-day notice to cancel (60-day for Scale tier). You can leave any time; we just need 30 days to wrap up handover, transfer GSC access back to your team, document what we did, and stop scheduled work.

We offer this because the SEO industry's contract-lock-in standard is broken. Most agencies require 12-month minimums because they know if you could leave in 90 days you would. We'd rather build a product that keeps you voluntarily.

The 30-day window is also a structural commitment to ourselves: it forces us to put real work in front of you in month one, not month four. The agencies who hide behind 12-month contracts don't have to perform until month six — we have 30 days.

Ready to pick your package?

The shortest path to figuring out which tier fits is to talk to us. We don't run a sales process — it's a 20-minute call with the strategist who'd actually run your account, and we tell you in that call whether SEO is the right channel for your business. Sometimes the honest answer is paid search is faster for your situation, go run that for two quarters first. When that's the answer, we say so.

If you'd rather see something tangible before a call, download the SEO Package Comparison PDF below. It's the same four tiers laid out in side-by-side feature columns, with the seven competitor pricing structures mapped against ours. No email gate — it's just a PDF.

And if you want to see what we'd actually do in your first 90 days before you sign anything, request a custom audit. Real PDF, 24-hour turnaround, audits your GBP, your top 10 pages, your local-pack presence, and your nearest three competitors. We deliver it even if you don't hire us. No upsell.