Paying $2,000 a month for local SEO?
Run the free scan and check their work against it. It takes 30 seconds, costs nothing, and it is worth doing whether or not you ever hear from us again.
- The same recurring work
- 79 US$, not a retainer
- No contract, no notice
- Visible on your own profile
What you pay now, and what the work costs
Most local retainers buy a monthly report, and a report is not work. The question is not whether your agency is lazy — it is whether you could name one thing they changed on your profile last month.
A local SEO retainer
$1,500–5,000 a month, 6–12 month contract
- A monthly report of impressions and reach that rise on their own.
- Work happening somewhere you cannot see, between invoices.
- An account manager, an onboarding call, and a minimum term.
Rank Pilot
Los primeros 7 días gratis79 US$ a month, cancel any time
- Your actual position, measured from 49 points around you.
- Every action visible on your own profile before it goes public.
- Nothing to sign, and nothing to un-sign later.
$2,000 is the middle of what local retainers ask. Put your own number against it — the arithmetic holds at $800 and it holds at $5,000.
Why the retainer keeps renewing anyway
None of this is because owners are careless. It is because the thing being bought is genuinely hard to see from where the buyer is standing.
You cannot see what you are buying
Local ranking is invisible from your own phone. You are signed in, standing at your own address, and Google puts you at the top — so the only view you get is the one that arrives by email.
The report measures the wrong thing
Impressions, reach and profile views drift upward with the seasons on their own. None of them is a call, and none is where you sit when somebody three suburbs away searches.
Cancelling feels like losing ground
It usually is not. All of this happens on the Google profile you own, and corrected categories and answered reviews do not un-fix themselves the month you stop paying.
- Impressions in the reportNow 172
- Calls from your profileNow 100
Four questions. One email. See what comes back.
Send these to whoever you pay, word for word, and judge the reply rather than the invoice. Every one of them has a right answer that takes a competent agency two minutes to give.
Ask them this
- 1“Where do I rank right now, measured from more than one point?”A single rank number means nothing — position changes street by street. Anyone doing this properly has grid data and can send it.
- 2“What did you change on my profile last month?”Not monitored, not reported on. Changed. There should be a list of edits, and you should be able to see each one yourself.
- 3“How many reviews arrived, and how many did you answer?”Review recency moves local ranking more than almost anything else. A flat count with unanswered replies means it is not being worked.
- 4“What happens to all this if I cancel today?”Work done on your own profile stays yours. If the results leave with them, you were renting a dashboard rather than buying work.
An agency that answers all four in one reply is doing the job and you should keep paying them. A dashboard screenshot instead is also an answer.
La captación de reseñas llega pronto. Rank Pilot todavía no pide reseñas a sus clientes: esta página describe lo que hará. Responder a las reseñas que ya tiene funciona hoy.
The recurring work, itemised
Strip a local retainer back and the same short list is underneath it: keep the profile complete, get reviews arriving, answer them, post, watch the competition, report. Real work — and almost all of it recurring, which is the kind an agent does better than a person carrying forty other accounts.
- Done on a daily cycle rather than in the week before a report is due.
- Each action shown to you before it reaches your public profile.
- No kickoff call, no discovery phase, nothing to bill for setting up.
- It happens on your own profile, so you never take anyone’s word for it.
- Categories, services and hours corrected12 edits
- Every review answered in your voice31 replies
- A request after every finished job88 asked
- A post a week, with your own photos4 posted
- Rank tracked from 49 points, rivals watched1 alert
Ask it what your money actually bought
Rank Pilot is a chat, not an account manager. Ask what was done, in the words you would use on the phone, and it answers with the list — each line something you can go and check.
- “What did you do this month?” — every edit, named.
- “Where do I rank?” — your position from 49 points, not impressions.
- “Cancel” — from your account, without a call.
Here is the month, line by line. Every one of these is on your profile now — go and look at any of them.
- Categories, services and hours corrected12 edits
- Every review answered in your voice31 replies
- A request after every finished job88 asked
- A post a week, with your own photos4 posted
- Rank tracked from 49 points, rivals watched1 alert
- What did you do this month?
- Where do I rank?
- Audit my profile
- Reply to my reviews
- Write a post
And none of the things you were paying around
A retainer carries the cost of the people between you and the work. This does not have any of them, which is most of the difference in the two numbers above.
No account manager
Nobody to chase for an update, and nobody translating your question into a ticket for somebody else.
No onboarding phase
Connect the profile in about two minutes. There is no discovery period, and nothing to invoice for having one.
No notice period
Cancel from your own account in the month you would rather not spend it, without a retention call.
Lo que cuesta
Un plan. Todo incluido.
Sin cuota de alta, sin extras, sin contrato. Cancele desde su cuenta, sin llamar a nadie.
79 US$por local, al mes
Los primeros 7 días gratis
Para el análisis no hace falta tarjeta. Cancele desde su cuenta cuando quiera, sin llamar.
Todo esto, desde el primer día
- Posiciones medidas desde 49 puntos a su alrededor
- Ficha rehecha y mantenida al día
- Petición de reseña después de cada visita (próximamente)
- Respuesta redactada para cada reseña
- Publicaciones semanales y fotos nuevas
- Seguimiento de la competencia cercana
- Aviso el mismo día si baja su posición
- Un informe al mes, de una página
Lo que cuesta el mismo trabajo en otros sitios
- $1,500–5,000
- Agencia de SEO localal mes · contrato de 6–12 meses
- $299–449
- Podium / Birdeyepor local · más extras
- 79 US$
- Rank On Maps AIpor local · sin contrato
Precios de lista públicos, verificados en julio de 2026.
A good agency is worth keeping
If yours answers those four questions properly, stay with them — a person who knows your market and picks up the phone is worth more than 79 US$ a month. This page is about the many retainers that are a report and a renewal, and about the fact that you can now check which one you have.
Los primeros 7 días gratis
- Cancele cuando quieraDesde su cuenta, sin llamadas
- 30 días de devoluciónEscríbanos, sin preguntas
- Sus datos son suyosExportación a petición
Audit them. It costs you nothing.
Scan your own business, forward the result to whoever you pay, and ask them about the gaps. Either they fix them, or you have learned something worth a retainer.
- Where you actually rank
- What is still unfixed
- Who is above you, and why
Respuestas claras
Las preguntas que ibas a hacer de todos modos.
¿Cuánto tardaré en subir de posición?
Rank Pilot empieza con los arreglos del perfil y las reseñas la primera semana, y las dos cosas se ven. Las posiciones suelen moverse en 30 o 90 días. Nadie puede ir más rápido, y quien te prometa lo contrario te está mintiendo.
¿Me vais a poner el primero?
No lo prometemos. Nadie controla Google, y todo el que diga lo contrario te está vendiendo algo. Te enseñamos qué cambió y qué te ha dado, cada mes.
¿Necesitáis mi acceso a Google?
Para el escaneo no. Si te suscribes, conectas tu perfil una vez para que Rank Pilot pueda hacer los arreglos. Te enseña todo antes de publicarlo y puedes desconectarlo cuando quieras.
¿Son reseñas falsas?
No. Rank Pilot se las pide a tus clientes reales después de visitas reales. Las reseñas falsas hacen que Google suspenda negocios, así que no las tocaremos nunca. La captación de reseñas llega pronto.
¿Hay contrato?
No. Mes a mes, y cancelas desde tu cuenta.
¿Puedo ver qué encuentra antes de pagar?
Para eso está el escaneo gratis. Te enseña tu mapa, tus carencias y los negocios que van por delante de ti, sin ocultar nada y sin pedirte la tarjeta.