I built HouseCall SEO after a contractor showed me the SEO packages his old agency delivered: every page shared the same meta tag across 30 URLs. When he asked why, they said "it's just code." That moment is why prices are posted here.
A fixed monthly retainer that bundles search work into a defined scope: keyword research, on-page optimization, technical fixes, new content, Google Business Profile management, citations, and reporting. For home services in 2026, it also needs to cover AI search, the layer the typical marketer still skips.
US retainers for small service businesses run roughly $750 to $5,000 a month. Mine sit between $750 and $3,000, covering plumbers, HVAC shops, roofers, garage door companies, locksmiths, and chimney sweeps. Anything under $500 is almost always automated blasts from a content farm.
Generalist agencies sell the same playbook to dentists, lawyers, and HVAC shops. It breaks because the buyer journey is different. A homeowner with a burst pipe types "emergency plumber near me" or asks ChatGPT who fixes pipes in Denver at 2 AM. The winning page answers in ten seconds with a phone number, hours, and service area. Generic pages bury all of that.
Service-area targeting is the second failure. A plumber covers 30 cities. Generic builds one "service areas" page for all of them, and it ranks for nothing. I build individual city pages mapped to real neighborhoods, the same method I used for Or at Denver Garage Door to triple organic clicks. The local SEO for home services guide walks through it.
Every engagement runs the same four-step method. Volume changes between tiers. The process doesn't.
Home services only. No dentists, lawyers, or ecommerce:
If your niche isn't listed but a technician shows up at a house and does work, mention it in your free consultation.
Starter for revenue under $50,000 a month. Pro for $50,000 to $300,000. Custom for multi-location or above $300,000. All three run month to month. No annual contracts, no cancellation fees.
| What's included | Starter $750 | Pro $1500 | Custom $3000+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile optimization | 1 location | 1 location | 2 to 10 locations |
| New service pages per month | 2 | 4 to 6 | 8 to 15 |
| Existing page rewrites | 1 per month | 3 per month | 6 per month |
| Technical SEO audit | Quarterly | Monthly | Continuous |
| AI citation tracking (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode) | No | Yes | Yes, with weekly snapshots |
| Schema markup | Basic LocalBusiness | Full stack (FAQ, Service, Review, HowTo) | Full stack plus custom entities |
| Citation building | 10 per month | 25 per month | 50 per month |
| Review response monitoring | No | Yes | Yes, plus reputation strategy |
| Monthly reporting | 1-page summary | Full dashboard plus call | Full dashboard plus weekly checkpoint |
| Direct access to Lior | Email plus monthly call | Slack plus weekly call | |
| Contract length | Month to month | Month to month | Month to month |
| Setup fee | $0 | $0 | $0 |
Or runs Denver Garage Door. When he came to me, the marketing company he was with was charging four times what he now pays. The site had seven indexed pages, ten clicks a day from Google, zero AI citations. He had 13 reviews. His main competitor had 253.
Three changes flipped it: pricing in page titles, AI-citable content rewrites, and citation reverse-engineering for ChatGPT. By month 3.5, commercial install calls started. By month six, organic clicks had tripled. The AI engines were recommending Or first. His old agency said it publicly: "You with 13 reviews bring him more work than I do with 253." That's the Trust Stack. When you're choosing an SEO company, that kind of outcome is the only benchmark that matters.
| Feature | HouseCall SEO | Typical agency | Cheap SEO mill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price (small business) | $750 to $1500 | $1500 to $5000 | $199 to $499 |
| Pricing published on site | Yes | No | Sometimes |
| Contract length | Month to month | 6 to 12 months | Month to month |
| AI search optimization | Built in | Add-on or missing | Missing |
| Schema markup | Full stack | Sometimes basic | None |
| Content written by | Senior human writer | Junior or offshore | AI-spun |
| Direct founder access | Yes (Pro and Custom) | Account manager only | None |
| Niche focus | Home services only | Generalist | Generalist |
The typical agency: $2,500 on a 12-month contract, an assigned account manager, a monthly slide deck. Traffic going up is not the same as calls coming in.
Local SEO is in every tier: GBP optimization, citation building, review response, local schema, and city pages. About 70 percent of home service buyers click the map pack before anything else, so if you're not in the top three, you're losing calls before they reach your site. My local SEO for contractors guide breaks down the city page method.
Technical SEO decides whether the rest matters. Broken canonicals, duplicate metas, slow load, missing schema will sink any content effort. None of the top five competitors for this query deploy schema on their own pricing page. I deploy the full stack on every client site, which makes pages eligible for AI Overview citations and rich results. The why schema markup is important page covers it.
With a $400 ticket and 60 percent close rate, Starter breaks even at three extra jobs a month. Most clear that by month three. Pro needs six to eight extra jobs; most Pro clients hit 15 to 25 by month six. A page published in month 2 still pulls calls in month 22. Custom needs $20,000 to $40,000 in new monthly revenue to justify $4,000 in spend.
Customers verify ChatGPT on Google and Google on ChatGPT. When they see you in both places, trust compounds, and those clients convert at a noticeably higher rate. Or's clients said it directly: "I found you on ChatGPT, then Googled you and you showed up there too, so I called." Pro and Custom target both signals in parallel, so the same page earns both citation channels at once.
I do not run private blog networks, fake reviews (an FTC violation since 2024), AI-spun content, keyword stuffing, or inflated reporting. Every page is written by a human. Reports show what shipped, not vague "ongoing optimization" line items.
A retainer that skips the technical foundation, schema, crawl health, indexing, Core Web Vitals, fails before content gets a chance. The content layer needs a page for every query your buyers type. The visibility layer (GBP, citations, reviews, AI citations) is what puts those pages in front of real buyers. Miss any one and you're paying for a partial job. A retainer that hits only one is a la carte work in a subscription costume.
Each month starts with reviewing the previous month's data to set the next month's priorities. Work ships against that scope, and the report shows exactly what went live. The fee covers a fixed scope of pages, rewrites, citations, and audits. Scope shifts on the data. Price stays put.
I'm Lior Daniel, a software developer and SEO specialist with 6+ years in the field, including work at IDF Home Front Command and El Al Israel Airlines' website. I work home services only, so I go deeper faster than any generalist. Pro and Custom include direct access to me. The Trust Stack hits ChatGPT and Google together, which is the only way home services win search in 2026.
Local business SEO packages run $500 to $5,000 a month across the industry, with $1,500 around the median for real work. Anything under $500 is almost always a content farm. My three tiers are $750, $1,500, and $3,000+, all month to month with no setup fee.
Ranking wins usually land by month three, traffic lift by month five, revenue impact between months six and nine. Pro and Custom produce faster because monthly output is higher and AI citation work runs in parallel.
Under $50,000 monthly revenue, start with Starter. Between $50,000 and $300,000, pick Pro. Over $300,000 or multi-location, go Custom. Custom also covers national SEO packages and organic SEO packages across multiple territories. The free consultation maps the right tier to your numbers.
If you don't appear when a buyer asks ChatGPT or Google AI Mode about your niche, you're invisible to a growing share of the market. Most home service sites carry zero AI citations. I measure yours inside the free audit.
Posted pricing, a defined monthly deliverable count, GBP optimization, citation building, schema, and reporting that shows actual work. Skip guaranteed-ranking promises. Skip contracts over six months. Ask for case studies with live client URLs.
Yes, if the business has a ticket above $200 and a sustainable close rate. Three extra closed jobs at $400 each is $1,200 against $750 in spend. Most Starter clients beat that by month four.
I run a free audit ahead of every consultation: technical issues, content gaps, competitor benchmarks, and AI citation status. If the site is mostly fine, I'll tell you. I turn away about 1 in 4 prospects because the math doesn't work.
I'm Lior Daniel, founder of HouseCall SEO. Book your free SEO audit and I'll walk you through the gaps. Or read about the boutique SEO agency model if you want the philosophy first.
I specialize in home services SEO – taking websites that sit invisible on page three and turning them into the business Google and ChatGPT recommend first. I started on the developer side, writing software and doing SEO on the side, until I saw how much home-service owners were overpaying for work that quietly hurt them. So I built a method that fixes the broken technical work and the outdated thinking behind it.
From garage door companies to plumbers, roofers, locksmiths and cleaning services, the playbook is the same: rank where your customers actually search, earn real reviews, and back it with a fast site that books the job. No PBNs, no bought reviews, no directory spam – only work that survives Google’s next five updates. See exactly how it’s priced on the pricing page.
Send me your site and I’ll send back a free audit: what’s broken, what it’s costing you in calls, and the first three fixes.
No spam and no sales pitch. Just a clear look at what’s leaking leads.
