AI search optimization pricing is genuinely confusing right now, partly because the service itself is new and partly because it overlaps heavily with SEO you might already be paying for. Here's a clear breakdown of what AEO/GEO work typically costs for a London, Ontario business, and why it's rarely priced as a fully standalone service.
Typical pricing ranges
As a standalone service, AI search optimization (also called AEO or GEO) for a small local business typically runs $300-$800 per month. In practice, most London businesses don't buy it standalone - it's more commonly bundled as an add-on to an existing SEO package, adding roughly $150-$400 per month on top of a base SEO retainer, since a substantial share of the underlying work overlaps. Our full SEO pricing breakdown covers the base SEO ranges this typically sits on top of.
Why it's usually an add-on, not a separate service
A large portion of what makes a business AI-visible - technical site health, consistent citations, genuine multi-platform reviews, structured data - is the exact same work that supports traditional SEO and Map Pack rankings. Pricing AI optimization as a completely separate line item would mean paying twice for overlapping work. The genuinely additional cost is narrower: direct-answer content rewrites, expanded schema coverage, and ongoing AI-specific visibility monitoring.
What actually drives the price
- Existing structured data gaps: A site with no schema markup at all requires more setup work than one that just needs expansion.
- Citation and NAP cleanup needed: Businesses with years of inconsistent directory listings need more cleanup before AI visibility work pays off.
- Number of pages needing direct-answer rewrites: A five-page site is a smaller project than a 40-page site with a large service catalog.
- Category competitiveness: Categories where competitors have already started AI optimization require more work to stand out than ones where almost nobody has started.
- Ongoing monitoring scope: Whether the price includes periodic manual checks across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews, or is limited to the initial setup.
Is it worth paying for right now?
For most London businesses, yes - precisely because so few local competitors have done any AI-specific optimization yet. The relative cost of standing out is lower now than it will be once this becomes standard practice across the market, similar to how basic SEO was a real differentiator a decade ago and is now simply table stakes. Waiting doesn't reduce the eventual cost; it just means competing for the same visibility once more businesses have already claimed it.
How our pricing works
We scope AI search optimization the same way we scope everything else - based on your current gaps rather than a flat, one-size-fits-all number. A free SEO audit includes an AI visibility check as part of the process, so any quote we give is based on your actual starting point. See our AI search optimization service page for the full scope of what's included.