LOCAL SEO / PACKAGES
Most local SEO packages are sold as a table: Bronze, Silver, Gold, a citation count, a blog post, a price. The table tells you what you get but never why any of it should move a ranking, and the cheapest column explains itself once you know that work is wholesaled offshore for under two hundred US dollars a month. This page sets out what a package should contain, what the market actually charges, and the questions that separate a real engagement from a subscription you forget to cancel.
Whitespark's survey of 47 local search practitioners puts Google Business Profile signals as the largest factor group in map pack rankings, with your primary category the single biggest lever. So that is where a package's first weeks belong: categories, services, photos, hours and a guideline-clean business name, not a blog calendar.
Service and suburb pages built where the search data shows real volume, written to answer the query rather than to fill a monthly quota. A package that promises four posts a month without checking what anyone searches for is billing you for typing.
A repeatable ask built into how you finish jobs, plus a reply to every review. Two large consumer surveys in the last two years agree on why: almost nobody skips reviews when choosing a local business, and the most recent ones carry the most weight.
Name, address and phone made consistent across the directories that matter, duplicates removed, then stop. Practitioners who have tried to scale citation building put the number of directories worth having at sixty to seventy. Packages selling five hundred submissions are selling noise.
Call tracking, form tracking and Search Console wired up in week one, so every later claim about progress is checkable against enquiries and booked work rather than a screenshot of a graph.
PACKAGES
Since most package pages either hide pricing or bury it, here is the published market. In New Zealand, four independent pricing guides put local SEO at roughly NZD $800 to $2,000 a month, with low-competition regional trades at the bottom of that band and prices usually quoted before GST. In Australia, productised budget plans are advertised from about AUD $449 to $695 a month, while agency engagements commonly run from around AUD $1,100 to $4,700. Published US ranges sit at USD $500 to $3,000 a month. Those are market observations, not our price list: what your business should pay depends on your market, your competition and the state of your site and profile, which is exactly what a first call establishes.
The bottom of the market deserves a plain explanation. Wholesale white-label local SEO is openly sold to agencies from as little as USD $178 a month, which is how a $300 retail package can exist and still leave margin. Practitioners are blunt about what that money buys: some directory citations and perhaps one optimised page a month. That is not a scam, but it is not a growth plan either, and it is why the cheap column of a package table so rarely moves a ranking in a market anyone else wants.
PACKAGES
Red flags first. Guaranteed rankings top the list, because Google's own documentation says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google; anyone guaranteeing a position is guessing with your money. Auto-renewal clauses and long lock-ins are next: forums are full of owners who discovered a six or twelve month commitment only when they tried to leave. Citation-count headlines, vague deliverables like brand mentions, and reports that never show calls or enquiries round out the list.
Green flags are duller, which is rather the point. Month-to-month terms, because work that performs does not need a contract to hold you. Deliverables tied to reasons: this page because this search has volume, this fix because the profile violates a naming guideline. Reporting that shows keywords, positions, and the calls and enquiries that resulted. And a scope that starts with your Google Business Profile rather than a content calendar, because that is where the ranking evidence says the leverage is.
HOW IT RUNS
Whatever the tier is called, the sequence inside a competent package looks the same. If a proposal cannot describe its first ninety days in this shape, ask why. If you want ours scoped for your business, the call is where that happens.
Book the callThe audit, the profile rebuilt against Google's guidelines, tracking wired for calls and forms, and citations corrected once. Nothing new is published until the base is sound.
The review ask goes into your job-completion routine, and the first service and suburb pages go live where search volume is proven.
More pages only where data supports them, the first local links from real relationships (suppliers, associations, sponsorships), and the first report judged in enquiries.
The review base compounds, pages extend one suburb at a time, and anything that is not earning its keep gets fixed or dropped. The package should get more specific to your business every quarter, not less.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ENQUIRE
Pick a time and bring one workflow. Nothing is charged, and there is no form maze or sales script to sit through.
We look at your real figures, work out what the issue is costing you and pick the first thing worth fixing. If it does not stack up, we say so.
One workflow examined and one honest recommendation, whether or not you hire SevenLens. No obligation and no follow-up pressure.
CLIENT REFERENCE
Every project has solved a real business problem and saved a huge amount of manual work. We own everything we paid for, and we stay because we like working with Stuart, not because we are locked in.
WHO YOU WORK WITH
SevenLens is founder-led. Stuart Asta designs, builds and stands behind every engagement, with no account managers and no handovers.
You own everything: the code, the accounts, the data and the documentation. Another provider could take over tomorrow. Clients stay because the work earns its place, not because they are locked in.
About SevenLensHOW PRICING WORKS
SevenLens does not sell packages off a shelf. Every engagement starts with a dollar figure on the problem it solves, so you see the return before you commit. If the maths does not stack up, we tell you before you spend, not after.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Because a fixed public tier would be dishonest either to you or to us. The same work that shifts rankings for a Warkworth plumber is not enough for an Auckland law firm, and pretending one number covers both is how mystery-box packages happen. We publish the market ranges above so you can sanity-check any quote, including ours, and we scope real numbers on a call once we have seen your market.
For a low-competition market it buys citation work and perhaps one optimised page a month, which is roughly what practitioners say it should buy. If your suburb has three competitors, that may genuinely be enough. If you are in a contested market, it will be invisible. The honest answer depends on who you are up against, which is checkable before you spend anything.
No. Month to month, cancel with notice. Local SEO compounds, so we will tell you plainly that leaving after six weeks wastes your money, but the reason to stay should be the enquiry count, not a clause you missed on page four.
No, and you should walk away from anyone who does. Google states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. What we commit to is the work, the sequence and the reporting, and a plain recommendation to stop if the numbers say it is not paying back.
The keywords we target, where you rank for them and how that moved, and the calls, form fills and enquiries the work produced. If a report cannot connect rankings to enquiries, it is decoration.
Yes, all of it. The code, accounts, data and documentation are yours from day one. There is no lock-in, and another provider could take over if you ever wanted.
Stuart Asta, the founder. The person on your first call designs the work and stands behind it, with no account managers, no handovers and no offshore team you never meet.
We will tell you on the first call. A clear no is more useful than the wrong project, and it costs you nothing to find out where you stand.
WHERE TO START
Bring the package quotes you are comparing, or nothing at all. On a short call we will look at how your business shows up now, what a sensible scope costs in your market, and whether a package is even the right shape for you. If a cheaper path gets the same result, we will say so.
Book a call