Guide 01 · Free · Nothing gated
What it costs, what it buys, and when not to buy it.
This guide gives real numbers rather than a range so wide it means nothing. It also spends a section on when a carpet cleaning business should not be spending on search at all, which is the part most agency pricing pages leave out.
Reading time About seven minutes
Gated No
Includes When not to buy
01 / 09
The short answer
For a one to five van operation, between $65 and $575 a month depending on how much of a metro you are trying to cover, plus a one-time website cost if the current one does not convert.
One van, modest market$65 to $125/mo
One to two vans, competitive metro$235/mo
Three to six vans, several service lines$325/mo
Multi-location or heavy restoration$575/mo
Website, if neededfrom $400 one time
Content, if wanted$26 to $480/mo
02 / 12
Why cost per booked job is the honest metric
A monthly figure tells you what leaves your account. It does not tell you whether it was worth it. One division fixes that.
Take the program cost. Divide it by the additional jobs the work is expected to produce in a month. That is your cost per additional booked job, and every operator can judge it in about two seconds against their own ticket.
Worked example. Sixty jobs a month, forty-five percent from search, a conservative twenty percent visibility lift. That is 5.4 additional jobs a month. On the Golden program at $235, that is roughly $44 per additional booking.
Against a $340 blended ticket, that is about thirteen percent acquisition cost on the first job alone, before any repeat visit, referral or protectant upsell. Compare it with a shared marketplace lead at $40 to $90 that arrives at three competitors simultaneously.
The same division tells you when to stop. If cost per additional job climbs past roughly a quarter of your ticket, either the tier is too large for your volume or your problem is on the phone rather than in the search results.
Do it with your numbers
The calculator does this arithmetic live and shows every step, including the blended ticket, so the result is never a figure you have to trust.
03 / 09
What each level actually buys
These are the published tiers on this site. The point of showing the table in a cost guide is that you can see what changes as the number rises.
SEO programs, month to month Setup fee waived on all tiers
| Feature | Basic | Silver | Golden | Platinum Best value | Titanium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $65 | $125 | $235 | $325 | $575 |
| One time | $75 | $140 | $260 | $380 | $620 |
| Domains | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Keywords | 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 100 |
| Guest posts (DA 20+) | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Web 2.0s (DA 50+) | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Amplification links | 1,500 | 3,000 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 |
| Keyword research | Standard | Standard | In-depth | In-depth | In-depth |
| Premium indexing | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| On-page technical audit | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Content gap analysis | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor traffic spy | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Toxic link check with disavow | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Turnaround | 8-10 days | 10-12 days | 12-14 days | 14-16 days | 16-18 days |
04 / 09
Where the money goes
Five cost centers sit inside any real program. Agencies differ mostly in how much of each they buy, not in what they buy.
- Placement cost
- Guest posts on sites with genuine domain authority cost real money because the sites publishing them are real. This is the largest single line in most programs and it is the one that scales most directly with price.
- Content production
- Writing, editing and publishing. Priced separately here, from $26 a month, because folding it into a retainer hides how much of your money is actually buying pages.
- Analysis
- Keyword research, audits, content gap and competitor work. Cheap to do once, expensive to do properly every month, which is why depth of analysis is what separates the middle tiers.
- Account management
- A named person who answers you. Included on every tier here. In agencies pricing on hours, this is frequently the largest cost and the least visible deliverable.
- Indexing and infrastructure
- Getting placements crawled, tracking rankings, and reporting. Unglamorous, and a link nobody has crawled is a link that did nothing at all.
05 / 09
When a cleaning business should not spend on search
Five situations. In every one of them the money does more somewhere else this quarter, and we will say so rather than take the order.
- You are under about fifteen jobs a month The modeled value of a lift is too small to cover the program. Get to a working schedule and the arithmetic changes on its own without you spending anything.
- Calls go to voicemail during working hours More visibility becomes more missed calls, which becomes worse reviews. Fix answering first. It is cheaper and it works immediately.
- You have fewer than ten reviews Reviews are most of prominence for a small local business. Spend the first quarter asking every customer, which costs nothing, before buying authority.
- There is no website worth pointing at Authority pointed at nothing does nothing. A basic site from $400 is the cheaper and more urgent purchase.
- You cannot commit past three months Search compounds over quarters. Three months of authority building stopped is money spent on a foundation nobody built on. If cash flow is that tight, wait.
06 / 09
Two worked scenarios
Modeled, not client results, using the same defaults as the calculator on this site.
Jobs per month 70
From search 45%
Visibility lift modeled 20%
Additional jobs per month 6.3
Blended ticket $340
Additional revenue per year $25,704
Illustrative scenario built from the calculator on this page. Not a client result.
Jobs per month 25
From search 40%
Visibility lift modeled 20%
Additional jobs per month 2.0
Blended ticket $280
Additional revenue per year $6,720
Illustrative scenario built from the calculator on this page. Not a client result.
07 / 09
Questions
Call 424-666-2202 with your job count and we will do the division with you.
What is a realistic monthly budget for a one-van carpet cleaner?
Between $65 and $150 a month for a program that compounds, plus a one-time website cost if the current site does not work. Anything much above that at one van is usually buying a bigger report rather than more booked jobs, because a single service area cannot absorb a hundred keywords.
Why are agency retainers usually so much higher than this?
Because most agencies price on hours and account management rather than on deliverables, and because they are usually built for businesses with a much larger customer value. That model is not wrong, it is just aimed at a different buyer than a one to five van cleaning operation.
What is cost per additional booked job and why does it matter more than the retainer?
It is the monthly program cost divided by the additional jobs the work produces. It matters because an operator can judge it instantly. Forty-four dollars to book a three hundred and forty dollar job is obviously good. A four hundred dollar retainer, on its own, is not obviously anything.
When is a carpet cleaning business not ready to spend on SEO?
Under about fifteen jobs a month, with no reviews, no working website, or no reliable way to answer the phone. In all four cases the money is better spent elsewhere first, and buying visibility before those are fixed converts into missed calls and bad reviews rather than revenue.
Do cheaper programs actually work or are they a way in?
They work more slowly, which is a real difference rather than a marketing one. Five guest posts a month build authority at one tenth the rate of fifty. For a single-van operator in a modest market that is often the correct pace, and it is honest to say that rather than to imply the small tier is a trial version.
08 / 09
09 / 09
Get the honest version for your business.
Send your job count, your average ticket and your domain. The free analysis includes a straight read on whether this is the quarter to spend, and the answer is sometimes no.
carpetcleaningseo.company
A service of Ultra SEO Solutions, since 2009. Ste 1200, 1309 Coffeen Avenue,
Sheridan, WY 82801. No local
offices. Not IICRC certified.