Quick answer: in 2026, ongoing SEO for an Ottawa small business typically costs $750 to $3,500 CAD a month, with one-off audits around $1,000 to $3,500 and multi-location or e-commerce programmes reaching $5,000 to $10,000+ a month. Published Ottawa agency plans start near $1,000 to $1,750 a month, and dedicated AI-search (GEO) plans are listed from about $1,200 to $3,000 a month. These are typical market ranges, not 1 Club prices.
Most owners we talk to are not asking "what is SEO?" any more. They are asking why a competitor in Barrhaven shows up in the map pack, why ChatGPT recommends someone else for their service, and whether the $1,200 a month they paid last year did anything. This guide covers what SEO and AI-search work should cost and how to tell if you are paying for real work.
Typical SEO price tiers in Ottawa (2026, CAD)
- One-off SEO audit: about $1,000 to $3,500. A prioritised list of technical fixes, content gaps and local listing problems. Useful even if you do the work yourself.
- Local SEO, one location: roughly $750 to $1,500 a month. Google Business Profile, reviews, citations, a handful of service pages and monthly reporting. Right for a plumber in Orléans or a clinic in Westboro.
- Competitive local or multi-service SEO: roughly $1,500 to $3,500 a month. More content, link earning, landing pages for each service and area, and conversion work. Typical for law, renovation, dental and real estate in Ottawa.
- AI-search visibility (GEO / AEO): roughly $1,000 to $3,000 a month as a standalone plan, or bundled into the tiers above. Structured data, llms.txt, answer-style FAQs, consistent facts across directories, and tracking whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI answers mention you.
- Multi-location, e-commerce or national: $3,500 to $10,000+ a month. Many locations, large catalogues, French and English, and heavier content production.
- Hourly consulting: about $150 to $300 an hour across Canada, for owners or in-house marketers who want direction rather than delivery.
What drives the cost of SEO
- How competitive your service is. Ranking an emergency electrician across Ottawa is harder than ranking a niche B2B supplier, because more businesses are paying to win the same searches.
- How many locations and service areas. Covering Kanata, Nepean, Gloucester and Gatineau properly means real, distinct pages, not one template with the city name swapped.
- The state of your website. A slow site with thin pages needs fixing before monthly work pays off. Run the website checkup to see where you stand.
- Content volume. Service pages, FAQs and guides take time to write well. The more you need, the higher the monthly fee.
- Two languages. Bilingual SEO means keyword research, pages and listings in both French and English.
- AI-search tracking. Checking dozens of prompts across several AI assistants each month is real work and is usually priced in.
Red flags when buying SEO
- Guaranteed rankings or "page one in 30 days." Nobody controls Google or AI assistants. A guarantee usually means tricks that can backfire.
- No list of monthly deliverables. You should know how many pages, fixes and listings are being done each month.
- Reports full of vanity numbers. Impressions and "keywords tracked" mean little. Ask for calls, form fills and booked jobs from search.
- Long lock-in contracts. SEO takes months, but you should not be stuck for a year with no way out if nothing is happening.
- Automatic city pages. Dozens of near-identical "service + neighbourhood" pages can hurt more than help.
- AI-search sold as magic. GEO is mostly good SEO done carefully: clear facts, structured data, real answers and a trustworthy reputation.
How to get a fair SEO quote
Ask every provider the same four questions: what exactly will you do in month one, month three and month six; how will we know it is working; who owns the content and accounts if we stop; and what do you need from us. If you are still deciding whether SEO is worth it at all, read is SEO worth it for a small business first.
You can also do the first, cheapest wins yourself before paying anyone. Write one strong page with the service page guide, keep your Google Business Profile active, and turn your phone questions into a website FAQ, which also helps AI assistants quote you correctly.
Three ways to start
- Do it yourself, free: run the website and AI-search checkup and work through the fixes it lists.
- Done with you: we build a 90-day SEO and AI-search plan with you, and your team writes and publishes with our review.
- Done for you: we handle the site fixes, pages, listings, reviews process and AI-search tracking, and report calls and enquiries every week. You get a fixed quote after a short free call.