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
Les 7 premiers jours offerts79 $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 collecte d’avis arrive bientôt. Rank Pilot ne demande pas encore d’avis à vos clients — cette page décrit ce qu’il fera. Répondre aux avis que vous avez déjà fonctionne dès aujourd’hui.
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.
Ce que ça coûte
Une offre. Tout est compris.
Pas de frais de mise en service, pas d’options, pas d’engagement. Résiliez depuis votre compte, sans appel.
79 $USpar établissement et par mois
Les 7 premiers jours offerts
Aucune carte requise pour l’analyse. Résiliez depuis votre compte à tout moment, sans appel.
Tout cela, dès le premier jour
- Classement mesuré depuis 49 points autour de vous
- Fiche refaite, puis tenue à jour
- Demande d’avis après chaque visite (bientôt disponible)
- Réponse rédigée pour chaque avis
- Publications hebdomadaires et photos récentes
- Concurrents proches surveillés
- Alerte le jour même si votre classement baisse
- Un rapport par mois, sur une page
Ce que le même travail coûte ailleurs
- $1,500–5,000
- Agence de SEO localpar mois · engagement 6–12 mois
- $299–449
- Podium / Birdeyepar établissement · plus les options
- 79 $US
- Rank On Maps AIpar établissement · sans engagement
Prix publics affichés, vérifiés en juillet 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.
Les 7 premiers jours offerts
- Résiliable à tout momentDepuis votre compte, sans appel
- Remboursé sous 30 joursUn e-mail suffit, sans question
- Vos données sont à vousExport sur demande
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
Réponses directes
Les questions que vous alliez poser de toute façon.
Dans combien de temps vais-je monter ?
Rank Pilot commence par les corrections de fiche et les avis dès la première semaine, et vous voyez les deux. Les positions bougent en général en 30 à 90 jours. Personne ne peut aller plus vite, et quiconque vous promet le contraire vous ment.
Allez-vous me mettre premier ?
Nous ne le promettrons pas. Personne ne contrôle Google, et tous ceux qui prétendent le contraire ont quelque chose à vendre. Nous vous montrons ce qui a changé et ce que ça vous a rapporté, chaque mois.
Avez-vous besoin de mes accès Google ?
Pas pour l’analyse. Si vous vous abonnez, vous connectez votre fiche une fois pour que Rank Pilot puisse faire les corrections. Il vous montre tout avant la mise en ligne, et vous pouvez déconnecter à tout moment.
Ce sont de faux avis ?
Non. Rank Pilot sollicite vos vrais clients après de vraies visites. Les faux avis font suspendre les établissements par Google, donc nous n’y toucherons jamais. La collecte d’avis arrive bientôt.
Y a-t-il un engagement ?
Non. Au mois, résiliable depuis votre compte.
Puis-je voir ce qu’il trouve avant de payer ?
C’est exactement ce qu’est l’analyse gratuite. Elle montre votre carte, vos manques et les établissements devant vous, sans rien retenir et sans demander de carte bancaire.