Columbus, OH
Affordable Seo Services in Columbus
The first invoice tells you what the last provider left behind — before you commit to anything ongoing.
We publish our prices. See what moves the number.
Comparing quotes?
Three things worth checking on every quote you have, ours included:
- Who writes the content, and is it in the price?
- Is conversion tracking configured, or just analytics pasted in?
- Who owns the code, domain, and accounts at the end?
What is included — and what usually is not
Compare this against the cheapest quote you have. The gap is rarely in the design.
| Included with us | Typical budget build |
|---|---|
| A bounded, fixed-price audit before any ongoing commitment | Template you will recognise on three competitor sites |
| A redirect inventory and a list of what is indexed that should not be | Analytics pasted in, no conversions defined |
| Identification of pages competing with each other for the same term | Forms email an inbox nobody monitors |
| Tracking checked for breakage and double-counting before anything is measured | Unoptimised images, slow on cellular |
| Duplicate business listings identified and consolidated rather than added to | Built on a platform the site cannot leave |
| A ranked cleanup list with an estimate against each item | No redirect mapping — rankings reset at launch |
| The before-state recorded for anything changed, so it can be reversed | Support ends when the invoice clears |
| An honest answer if the cleanup is the whole job and no retainer is warranted | Template you will recognise on three competitor sites |
More on seo & local search and what moves the price.
Affordable · price transparency
Audit first, then decide what the ongoing work is
Start with a bounded audit, not a retainer. A defined piece of work with a fixed price that establishes what is actually there: the redirect inventory, what is indexed that should not be, pages competing with each other, tracking that is broken or double-counted, profile and listing state, and anything a previous provider did that needs unwinding. It ends with a ranked list and an estimate for each item.
Then you decide, with real information. Sometimes the cleanup is the whole job and there is no case for an ongoing retainer at all — fix six things and stop. Sometimes the site is in better shape than expected and the money should go straight to content. Either way you are choosing rather than discovering, and the audit is small enough to be worth it even if you then go elsewhere.
What cleanup usually consists of. Consolidating pages that compete for the same term. Fixing redirect chains and loops accumulated across rebuilds. Removing or noindexing thin pages generated by a previous provider. Claiming and merging duplicate business listings. Removing plugins and scripts nobody can justify. And repairing tracking, which is very often silently broken and makes everything else unmeasurable.
What we will not do. Rip things out because they look unfamiliar. Some of what a previous provider left is load-bearing, and the instinct to tidy is how sites lose rankings during a cleanup. Document first, change deliberately, and keep a record of the before-state so anything can be reversed.
What it costs. Basic plans start at $1,000, published and national. The audit is a defined piece of that; ongoing work is scoped afterwards from what it found. Content, if we write it, is roughly $150 to $300 a page.
The hidden cost of skipping the audit is a year of forward work built on a broken foundation — new pages added to a site with duplicate content problems, content written for terms the site cannot rank for because of technical issues nobody looked at, and reporting nobody can trust because the tracking was wrong from the start.
Terms. Monthly in advance for ongoing work, cancellable with notice, no twelve-month lock.
Most engagements here start with a mess someone else made
Columbus has roughly 913,000 residents as of 2023 and enough businesses on their second, third, or fourth SEO provider that the typical starting condition is not a clean site. It is a site carrying the accumulated residue of everyone who came before: pages built for a strategy nobody remembers, redirects pointing at things that no longer exist, plugins installed for one purpose and never removed, and a Business Profile last edited by someone whose email address stopped working two years ago.
Almost nobody prices for this. A new provider quotes a monthly retainer based on the work they intend to do, discovers the state of things in week two, and then either absorbs the cleanup quietly — which means less of the work you are paying for actually happens — or raises it as a change of scope, which feels to you like a bait and switch even when it is not.
The honest structure is to look before quoting anything ongoing. Cleanup and forward work are different jobs with different sizes, and separating them is what stops the first six months disappearing into a problem neither party priced.
Get started
What would this cost for your business?
Five questions and you get scope, price, and a timeline back — usually within one business day. If we are not the right fit for a Columbus business your size, we will say so.
- Fixed price agreed before any work starts
- No obligation and no follow-up sequence to escape
- You own everything we build
Columbus industries we work with
Franklin County’s economy leans on insurance and finance, logistics and distribution, and higher education, and the inherited mess looks different in each.
Insurance and finance. The characteristic problem is page proliferation — a page per product, per audience, per campaign, added over years by different agencies, many saying nearly the same thing. Consolidation is usually the highest-value cleanup available, and it is also the most delicate, because published copy passes compliance and merging pages means re-approving language.
Logistics and distribution. Here it is usually location pages: a previous provider generated one for every city within a radius, most with the name swapped and nothing else changed. Those compete with each other and with the real service pages. Removing them improves things, but only if the URLs redirect properly rather than simply disappearing.
Higher education. Enormous sites with content going back a decade, multiple contributors, and no ownership. The audit typically finds a substantial number of pages nobody knew still existed, some of them ranking for terms the institution no longer wants to be associated with. This is a sector where the cleanup genuinely is the whole job for the first several months.
Downtown, the Short North, German Village and Easton also support different customer bases, and location pages built for all of them without real content are the most common inherited problem in this metro.
How the project runs
Audit
We review what you have now and where enquiries are being lost. You keep the findings either way.
Scope
Fixed price, fixed deliverables, and a launch date, all in writing before work starts.
Build
Design, build, tracking, and follow-up wired together and tested end to end.
Launch
Redirects mapped so you keep your rankings, every form and phone link checked by hand.
On results: we publish no anonymous case studies and no percentage lifts. Those figures are unverifiable and easy to select for. Ask on a call and we will go through real engagements with real context, including audits that concluded the client did not need an ongoing retainer.
What we will commit to in writing: a fixed-price audit, a ranked findings list with estimates, tracking that demonstrably fires, and a monthly report you can audit line by line. What we will never commit to is a ranking position, in any tense. The full process is here.
Questions from Columbus business owners
How much do SEO services cost in Columbus?
Basic plans start at $1,000. We would normally begin with a bounded audit at a fixed price, then scope ongoing work from what it finds — because quoting a retainer before seeing the state of the site means one of us is guessing. Full pricing here.
Our last provider left and we do not know what they did. Where do we start?
With an inventory rather than a cleanup. List the redirects in place, the plugins and scripts installed, the pages indexed, and any duplicate business listings. Change nothing until you know what is load-bearing — the instinct to rip out anything unfamiliar is how sites lose rankings during a tidy-up. Document first, then reverse deliberately.
Do you have an office in Columbus?
No. Our office is in Salt Lake City and we work with Columbus businesses remotely. We do not list addresses we do not occupy — and in local search particularly, publishing an address you do not hold creates a problem rather than an advantage.
What if the audit says we do not need ongoing help?
Then we say so and you have a ranked fix list you can hand to anyone, including your own team. That happens often enough to be worth mentioning, particularly for businesses whose real constraint turns out to be a handful of technical faults rather than a lack of ongoing activity. The audit is deliberately bounded and priced so it is worth buying even in that outcome.
Other services in Columbus
Nearby areas we serve
Need seo services in Columbus?
Tell us what you need and you will get scope, price, and a timeline back — usually within one business day.