Free marketing audit for your business. No commitment.
- (425) 954-3452
- info@kihanmarketing.com
- Seattle, WA | Serving Nationwide
How to choose an SEO company: the questions to ask, typical pricing tiers, red flags to walk away from, and how to judge results in the first 90 days.
Google's guidance on helpful content is the standard being applied here, and it is short enough to read in full.
QUICK ANSWER
Choose an SEO company by checking three things: whether they diagnose your site before quoting, whether they can name exactly what ships each month, and whether you own every asset they create. Ask for their process, not their promises. Walk away from anyone guaranteeing rankings. Expect early movement in weeks and meaningful traction in 60 to 90 days, on a month to month agreement.
You are buying a monthly allocation of specialist time pointed at three things: fixing what stops Google from reading your site, publishing pages that answer what your buyers search for, and building enough authority that those pages outrank the sites that got there first. Every honest SEO engagement is some mix of those three. If a proposal does not tell you which mix you are getting, it is not really a proposal.
The right mix depends entirely on your situation. A five page site with no content needs pages built before anything else. An older site with hundreds of URLs usually needs technical cleanup and consolidation first. A single location service business needs Google Business Profile work and strong location pages far more than it needs blog volume. Ask every company you shortlist which of these your business needs, and make them explain why.
Most small business SEO retainers in the US land somewhere between roughly $1,000 and $5,000 per month, and price tracks hours and seniority rather than any special technique. Below about $750 a month there is rarely enough time in the budget to do technical work, content, and authority building at once. Above about $5,000 you should expect a named strategist, not just an account manager forwarding a checklist.
Treat the table below as market context, not a quote. Two agencies at the same price can deliver wildly different work, so always compare what ships each month rather than the headline number. Ask each one to translate their fee into deliverables: how many pages, how many technical fixes, how many hours of strategy, and who specifically does each part.
| Monthly budget | What it typically covers | Best fit |
|---|---|---|
| Under $750 | One or two tasks, often automated reporting and light content | Rarely enough to move a competitive market |
| $750 to $1,500 | Local SEO basics, Google Business Profile, a few pages per month | Single location businesses in low competition markets |
| $1,500 to $3,000 | Technical fixes, ongoing content, on page work, some link earning | Most small businesses that need real organic growth |
| $3,000 to $7,500 | Strategy, content at volume, digital PR, conversion input | Multi location, ecommerce, or competitive B2B |
| One off audit, roughly $1,000 to $5,000 | Diagnosis and a prioritized roadmap, no execution | Owners who want a second opinion before committing |
| Consulting, roughly $100 to $250 per hour | Direction and review for an existing in house team | Businesses already doing the work themselves |
Where Kihan Marketing sits
SEO starts at $1,500 per month and growth packages start at $3,000 per month, month to month with no long term contract. Website design starts at $5,000. If SEO is being bolted onto a site that cannot convert, we will say so before you spend a dollar on rankings.
Ask questions that force specifics, because vague answers on a sales call become vague work later. The single most revealing question is the second one on this list: a company that has not looked at your site before speaking to you is selling a package, not a solution. Anyone serious will have spent twenty minutes in your Search Console data or at least crawled your homepage and top pages.
Listen for how they handle the questions they cannot answer. Good practitioners say “I would need to look at your backlink profile before I promise that.” Weak ones answer everything instantly and confidently. Confidence without diagnosis is the clearest signal you are talking to a salesperson rather than the person who will do your work.
End the conversation over any guarantee of rankings, because no agency controls Google’s systems and everyone in the industry knows it. The second hard stop is ownership. If the contract keeps your website, content, or Google accounts in the agency’s name, you are renting your own marketing and you will lose everything the day you leave.
The subtler red flag is a company that cannot explain last month’s work in plain English. SEO is technical, but it is not unexplainable. If you ask what they did and get jargon instead of a list of pages, fixes, and links, either nothing happened or they do not understand what their own subcontractors delivered.
One test that filters fast
Ask for the login to your own Google Search Console and Google Business Profile before you sign anything. If that is complicated or resisted, you have learned everything you need to know about how the relationship ends.
Judge the first ninety days on movement and shipped work, not on revenue. SEO compounds, so the early signals are impressions rising in Google Search Console, more of your pages getting indexed, and average position improving on specific queries even before anyone clicks. Those are leading indicators. Waiting for sales before forming an opinion means waiting six months to learn something you could have known in six weeks.
Set the checkpoints in writing at the start. Agree on a target keyword list, screenshot the baseline in Search Console, and book a ninety day review before work begins. That way the review is a data conversation rather than an argument about what was promised. Any agency that resists a defined ninety day checkpoint is telling you something.
| Time window | What you should see | Too early to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 3 | Audit delivered, tracking verified, first technical fixes shipped | Ranking changes |
| Weeks 3 to 8 | Early movement on long tail and branded terms, impressions rising | Meaningful lead volume |
| Weeks 8 to 13, the 60 to 90 day window | Meaningful traction: target pages moving up on your agreed keywords, first non branded inquiries | Full return on spend |
| Months 3 to 6 | Compounding growth and a clearer link between keywords and revenue | A finished job, SEO is ongoing |
The one number to watch early
Impressions in Google Search Console move before clicks do. Rising impressions with flat clicks means Google is starting to trust the pages but your titles and positions are not there yet. That is progress, not failure.
Nail down ownership, scope, and exit terms, in that order. Ownership is the one that ruins businesses: agencies that build your site on their account, register your domain in their name, or publish content under their own license can hold your marketing hostage. Every asset created on your behalf and paid for by you should be yours the moment it exists, with no handover fee.
Scope should read like a list of deliverables, not a bundle of hours. “Twenty hours of SEO” is unmeasurable. “Four optimized service pages, technical fixes from the audit backlog, monthly Search Console review, and two earned links” is something you can hold someone to. Then keep the notice period short so performance, not paperwork, keeps the relationship alive.
Location matters less than most owners assume, with two real exceptions. The first is genuinely local search. If you serve a defined geography, an agency that knows the market, the competitors, and how local buyers phrase things has a practical edge over one working from a keyword tool three time zones away. The second is accountability: some owners simply hold a local partner to a higher standard, and that is a legitimate reason to choose one.
Beyond those, judge on the work. A remote specialist who has ranked twenty businesses in your exact industry usually beats a local generalist. What matters more than a shared zip code is whether the same person you interviewed is the one doing the work, and whether they can explain their reasoning in language you understand.
Talk it through
If you want a straight read on whether SEO is the right spend for your business right now, call Kihan Marketing at (425) 954-3452. SEO starts at $1,500 per month, growth packages start at $3,000 per month, and everything is month to month with no long term contract.
Most small business SEO retainers in the US fall somewhere between roughly $1,000 and $5,000 per month, with single location local work at the lower end and competitive ecommerce or multi location programs at the higher end. Price mostly tracks hours and seniority, not secret methods. At the bottom of that range you are usually buying a handful of junior hours, and toward the middle you are buying a strategist plus real execution. Kihan Marketing starts SEO at $1,500 per month and growth packages at $3,000 per month, month to month with no long term contract.
Expect early movement within weeks and meaningful traction in 60 to 90 days. In the first few weeks you should see technical fixes shipped and impressions starting to climb in Google Search Console, usually on longer, more specific queries first. Ranking gains on the terms that actually drive revenue typically appear in the second and third month, then compound. Anything faster is usually branded search or a keyword you already ranked for. Six months of a flat line in Search Console deserves a hard conversation, not another invoice.
No, not for a first engagement. Long contracts protect the agency, not you. A confident SEO company will work month to month because results keep you around. If a company insists on twelve months, ask what happens in month four if nothing has moved, and get that answer in writing before you sign. A fair middle ground is a fixed scope for the first ninety days, then month to month after. Kihan Marketing works month to month with no long term contract, which is a reasonable benchmark to hold other quotes against.
No. Nobody controls Google’s ranking systems, so nobody can honestly guarantee a position. A company that guarantees page one is usually doing one of three things: targeting keywords so obscure that ranking there means nothing, counting your own brand name as a win, or planning to be gone before you check. What a legitimate company can commit to is process, meaning a defined scope of work each month, agreed target keywords, transparent reporting, and forecasts grounded in your current rankings and real competitor difficulty.
It depends on scope. A strong freelancer is often better value below roughly $1,500 a month, because you get senior attention without agency overhead. An agency makes more sense when the work spans technical development, content production, design, and link building at once, since one person rarely does all four well. Ask both the same questions: who does the work, what ships each month, and what happens when that person is on vacation, sick, or pulled onto a bigger account.
A monthly report should show organic clicks and impressions from Google Search Console, positions for your agreed target keywords, exactly what shipped that month, and what is planned next. Leads, calls, or sales belong in there too, because rankings that produce no revenue are a vanity metric. Reports that show only traffic totals, or a scoreboard of tasks completed with no outcome attached, are usually hiding thin work. You should be able to read the whole thing in five minutes and know whether the money is working.
Ask for a list of every page, link, and technical change made in the last ninety days, then verify a handful yourself. Open Google Search Console and compare impressions and average position for the last six months against the six before. Check whether the new pages they claim to have published actually exist and are indexed. If they cannot produce a specific list of shipped work, or Search Console shows a flat line across six months, you already have your answer.
Kihan Marketing gives you a written scope and price within one business day. No pressure, and nothing to sign to see it.
Or call us directly: (425) 954-3452
Tell us about your project and we will be in touch within one business day.
Three simple steps from first hello to real results.
Fill out the form and tell us about your goals.
A custom strategy and design built to rank and convert.
Launch, then measurable growth month over month.
