★★★★★ 5.0 on Google from 43 small business owners
Small Business SEO Services
Our small business SEO services are built for local service businesses and home service contractors, on month-to-month contracts from a fellow small business owner.
- Leads That Convert to Customers, Not Just More Traffic
- No Long-Term Contracts
- No Subcontractors or Work Shipped Overseas
- Work With The Founder of MarketKeep
No long-term contracts. No sales pressure. No obligation.
Small Business SEO Services By The Numbers
4,356
Free SEO evaluation requests from small business owners since 2016.
235+
Small businesses served across the United States.
6+ Years
Average client tenure, on contracts they can cancel with 10 days’ notice.
80%
Average ranking improvement for current clients’ tracked keywords, from position 60+ to 12.3, measured in Google Search Console.
A Free Small Business SEO Evaluation That Doubles as Your 4 Month Ranking Plan
Most free SEO audits are a sales pitch with a PDF attached. Ours is the same process we run for paying clients, done on your website before you spend a dollar.
Here’s what we cover together over Zoom:
- Your real search demand. We look at your Google Search Console data to see what people are searching to find you, and what they’re searching when they don’t.
- Your competitors. We compare your website against your competitors to see what pages and blog posts they have. The quantity and quality of their backlinks, and how they optimize their Google Business Profiles.
- The keywords you can actually win. For each search term, you’ll see the keyword difficulty and roughly how many websites need to link to you to reach page one. (Scroll down to our plumber example to see exactly what this looks like.)
- A written 4 Month Plan. You leave with the pages to build, the listings to claim, and the links to go after, in the order that matters most.
Use the plan with us, with your current agency, or on your own. It’s yours either way.
No long-term contracts. No sales pressure. No obligation.
Small Business SEO Services By Industry
Why Small Business Websites Lose to Bigger Competitors on Google
Since 2016, 4,356 small business owners have requested a free SEO evaluation from MarketKeep. The same three patterns show up again and again, and none of them come down to budget.
About 76% are targeting a broad keyword with no location. The most common version we see is a flooring contractor asking Google to rank them for “flooring contractor” when the customers they want are searching for something like “hardwood flooring contractor in Baltimore.” The broad term puts them up against national directories and franchises. The specific one puts them in front of homeowners ready to hire. We walk through a full plumber example further down this page.
About 47% have never set up Google Search Console. Without it, there is no record of what people typed to find you, which pages Google has indexed, or which ones it has quietly dropped. It is the first account we ask about on every evaluation call.
Only about 4% have an unclaimed or incomplete Google Business Profile. Most owners have already handled that part, which is exactly why a profile alone rarely wins the map pack. The website behind it has to do the rest.
None of these are hard to fix. They are just hard to see from inside a busy business. That is what our small business SEO services are for: finding the terms you can realistically win, building the pages and listings that win them, and earning the links that keep you there.
What Small Business Owners Say About Working With MarketKeep
We’d rather let our clients do the talking. These reviews come straight from our Google Business Profile, written by local practices and small business owners we’ve worked with for years.
“We couldn’t be happier with our experience working with Patrick and his team at Marketkeep. From our very first conversation, Patrick took the time to really listen to our goals and understand what our business needed. He is incredibly patient and knowledgeable, and he developed a marketing strategy that made sense for us instead of offering a one-size-fits-all approach.
What we appreciated most was how available he and his team have been. They are always willing to meet with us, answer our questions, and discuss areas where we wanted to improve. Their team is kind, professional, and genuinely cares about helping their us grow. And just as importantly, they have helped bring meaningful growth to our business.
If you’re looking for a digital marketing agency that provides excellent customer service, strategic marketing, SEO, website marketing, and personalized guidance, I highly recommend Marketkeep. Their pricing is reasonable, and the value they provide is outstanding.”
★★★★★
Philip Barlow
North End Acupuncture & Chinese Herbs, Boston, MA
“Working with MarketKeep has truly been a game changer for our business. From day one, their team treated our brand like their own — digging into our industry, learning our goals, and building a marketing strategy tailored exactly to us. Their SEO, website design, and ongoing optimization have opened up a flood of high-quality leads that we never would’ve reached on our own.
Their communication is top-notch: they’re responsive, honest, and always willing to explain what they’re doing and why. More than once they’ve gone above and beyond — diving into data, refining our campaigns, and helping us adapt as our business evolved.
I can say with confidence: our business would not be where it is today without MarketKeep. If you’re a small business owner looking for a marketing partner who cares as much about your success as you do — this is it.”
★★★★★
Derek Lambert
US Women’s Medical Center, St. Louis, MO
“Patrick and his team have helped me put all the missing pieces of my marketing plan together. Things I never thought about. Since he took over our SEO our telephone rings regularly from potential customers.”
★★★★★
Dawn James
Dawn James CPA, Towson, MD
Small Business SEO Case Studies From Local Practices and Home Service Contractors
Acupuncture SEO in Boston: From an Unfindable Website to #1 in the Map Pack
When Philip Barlow came to us in July 2024, North End Acupuncture had every service on one page, no Google Analytics, and no Search Console. We rebuilt the site with one page per service, targeted long-tail terms like “facial acupuncture in Boston,” and fully optimized his Google Business Profile.
The result: website traffic grew from 3 to 4 visitors a month to 376 visitors a month. Today the clinic ranks #1 in the Boston map pack for “acupuncture boston.” Philip has since doubled his office space and hired two additional clinicians.
Home Remodeling SEO in Bonners Ferry, Idaho: Back on Page One Within Weeks
The problem: A family-owned construction company with a four-page website, no SEO plugin, and a services page that only mentioned decks and fences.
What we did: Rebuilt the site in Divi with dedicated pages for home remodeling, home additions, siding, and windows and doors, each targeting its own keyword.
What happened: By the end of August 2026, K&L Construction and Design was back on page one for “home remodeling Bonners Ferry,” “home additions Bonners Ferry,” and “home contractor services Bonners Ferry, Idaho.” As of October 2026, K&L also holds the top spot in the Google Map Pack for “general contractor Bonners Ferry Idaho.”
Hardwood Flooring SEO Across Baltimore County, Harford County, and Beyond
Flawless Floors has been a MarketKeep client since 2017. Every month we publish two completed project pages built around real job photos, three blog posts, and updates to their service area pages for towns like Fallston, Towson, and Timonium. That steady rhythm is why a Perry Hall flooring contractor now ranks across Harford County, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, and parts of Howard and Carroll County.
Over the last 16 months, that work has earned Flawless Floors 3,540 clicks and 659,000 impressions in Google Search Console.
Kitchen Remodeling Leads in Gaithersburg, Maryland: Google Business Profile Interactions More Than Doubled
AC Remodeling, a kitchen remodeling company in Gaithersburg, Maryland, started working with MarketKeep in July 2026. Monthly Google Business Profile interactions, the calls, bookings, direction requests, and website clicks that come straight from Google, more than doubled between July and October, and October was not even over yet.
Roofing SEO in Maryland: A 273% Return on SEO Investment in 2026
Roofright has been a MarketKeep client since 2018. From January 1 through October 21, 2026, their SEO program returned 273% on what they invested in it. That is the payoff of steady, month-after-month work on the same website rather than starting over every year.
What’s Included: The Four Pillars of Our Small Business SEO Services
For small business owners to compete in today’s market, our small business SEO services focus on four areas:
Every campaign is built from the same data: your Google Search Console account, Ahrefs Keyword Explorer and Site Explorer reports, a content gap analysis against your competitors, and Google Keyword Planner. Below is how we put that data to work in each of the four areas.
Local SEO for Small Businesses
84% of consumers have searched for a local business in the past 3 months. This is data directly from BrightLocal’s Consumer Search Behavior report published in 2026. So if you are a small business owner looking to grow, local SEO is the first strategy you need to implement.
Focusing on Local SEO helps your business to generate more phone calls, contact form submissions, and website clicks for your business. Here at MarketKeep we do this by prioritizing your Google Business Profile and ensuring that the profile strength is at 100%. We do this by editing your profile description, asking every customer for a review, adding products and descriptions with SEO-friendly details, uploading photos correctly, and sharing offers, updates, and events through Posts.
Taking it a step further our team makes sure to claim Local Citations too. We claim and verify your business listings across the web for 3 main reasons.
- Google says local prominence is based on information it finds across the web, including directories, and citations show up as a local ranking factor in research from BrightLocal.
- Accurate local listings build trust.
- A Moz listings management study found that businesses listed on 10 or more directories see an average 67% increase in consumer actions. That is why we claim 15 citations in the first month alone.
On-Page SEO for Small Business Websites
When it comes to talking about search engine optimization, visuals help. So let’s use an example we see all the time with the keyword plumber.
Remember those 4,356 evaluation requests? About three out of every four fall into this category right here.
Almost every website struggling to rank is targeting a broad keyword. So a plumber who can’t figure out why he isn’t showing up is usually surprised to hear that the term he’s telling Google to rank him for is just plumber. No location, nothing.
Here is what that term looked like in Ahrefs as of August 2026. A keyword difficulty of 63, and roughly 148 websites would need to link to you before you crack the top ten. Yes, it gets 333,000 searches a month. But look at who currently holds the number one spot: a Roto-Rooter franchise in Wichita, Kansas. Almost nobody searching “plumber” is a homeowner in your service area with a leak.
Now watch what happens when you add a city.
“Plumber baltimore” drops the difficulty from 63 to 19, and the number of sites you’d need linking to you falls from about 148 to about 21. Here’s the part we love pointing out to business owners: the top result right now is a Reddit thread of people asking each other for a recommendation. That is an opening. When a forum post is outranking every plumbing company in the city, there is room for a real business to move in.
Then narrow it one more step.
“Plumber towson” has a keyword difficulty of 8, and you’d need roughly 9 websites linking to you to reach the top ten. That is an achievable number for a small business. It gets 150 searches a month instead of 333,000, and that is exactly the point. Those 150 searches are homeowners in Towson who need a plumber today. The other 332,850 are not.
The top result for that term is a plumbing company with a page built specifically for Towson. Not a homepage, not a generic services page. One page, one town.
That is what on-page SEO is. Choosing the terms you can realistically win, then building the pages that win them. It’s the difference between competing with 148 websites for traffic that will never call you, and competing with 9 for traffic that will.
Off-Page SEO and Building Your Website Authority
When an SEO company talks about your website’s authority, they’re talking about how much other websites vouch for you. Search engines can’t visit your shop. What they can see is who links to you, who mentions you, and whether the businesses and directories in your industry treat you as legitimate. That accumulated evidence is authority, and it’s a large part of why one plumbing company outranks another when both have equally good websites.
Off-page SEO is how you build it. Step back and look at small business SEO as a whole and you’ll see how much the pieces depend on each other. Local SEO and off-page SEO overlap more than most people expect.
The starting point is local citations: the places across the web listing your business name, address, phone number, and website URL. That’s the same work that drives local SEO, which is why we treat citations as the foundation rather than the finish line.
From there, relevance beats volume every time. A handful of links from suppliers, trade associations, and publications in your industry will outperform a website that bought 500 links from sites with no connection to the services you offer or the areas you serve. Google can tell the difference. So can the person clicking.
Here is how we build off-page authority at MarketKeep:
- We claim and verify your local citations. Consistent name, address, phone, and URL everywhere your business appears.
- We run a link intersect report. We compare your backlink profile against your top competitors, find the sites linking to them but not to you, and go after those. If a supplier or association is already linking to three of your competitors, they’re the most likely to link to you.
- We build content worth linking to. Pages and posts that other sites in your industry reference on their own, because the information is useful to their readers.
- We pursue industry-specific placements, guest posts, and PR opportunities. Publications, trade sites, and local press that carry weight in your field.
One honest note: guest posting and PR are part of our All-In package. For most small businesses starting out, citations, a link intersect campaign, and content are where the return is, and adding outreach before that foundation is in place rarely moves the needle.
AI Search Visibility
AI search, also called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or LLM SEO, is how your business shows up when customers ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google Gemini, or Microsoft Copilot for a recommendation. Our small business SEO services build it on the same foundation as traditional search.
The core of that work is schema markup: structured data in the backend of your website that spells out who you are, what you offer, and where you work. We attach the appropriate schema to every page, post, and project on your website, so search engines and AI tools can read your site without having to guess.
Schema markup is included in every package, because the same structured data that helps you rank in Google also helps AI tools understand your business.
Four Commitments Behind Our Small Business SEO Services
No Guaranteed Rankings
Anyone who guarantees you the #1 spot on Google is selling ads or leaving something out. What we guarantee is a clear report every month showing what we did and what it produced.
Winnable Keywords Before Vanity Keywords
We’d rather get you to the top for the 150 searches from homeowners in your town than chase 333,000 searches from people who will never call you.
Local Landing Pages Built One Town at a Time
Google rewards a page built for a specific town. So we build one for each place you serve, never a single page with a list of cities pasted at the bottom.
You Talk to the People Doing the Work
No account managers relaying messages. The team building your pages and links is the team on your Zoom calls, with Patrick one email away.
Small Business SEO Services Compared: Doing It Yourself vs. a Typical Agency vs. MarketKeep
At the end of the day, as a small business owner you need to do what is right for your business. We hope that we get the chance to work with you based on the merit of our work, and the data that we present in your free SEO Evaluation with our team, but if you need to see how we stack up against the competition here are just a few of the things that we believe help us stand out.
| Doing It Yourself | Typical SEO Agency | MarketKeep | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | You, after hours | An account manager, often with subcontracted or offshore writers | Our in-house team, with direct access to the founder |
| Keyword strategy | Broad terms like “plumber” | Chosen by search volume | Terms you can realistically win, sized by difficulty and links needed |
| Contract | None | 6 to 12 month commitment | Month-to-month, with a 10-day out clause |
| Pricing | Your time | Quoted after a sales call | Published right on this page |
| Reporting | Whatever you check | Rankings and traffic charts | Rankings, traffic, calls, and form fills, reviewed together on Zoom |
| Before you commit | Guesswork | A sales pitch | A free evaluation and written 4 Month Plan |
Small Business SEO Packages and Pricing
While every SEO campaign is unique they do share similar characteristics. Here at MarketKeep we have three different types of SEO packages that we offer.
The Foundation
Ranges between $450 to $550 per month. Best for brand new businesses
What’s included?
Perfect for business owners just starting out on their SEO journey, or businesses with defined service radiuses, the Foundation SEO Package combines the power of local, on-page, and off-page SEO with the benefit of a cost-effective budget. Clients who elect to utilize the Foundation SEO package routinely find that through our small business SEO services they are able to reach more customers and increase their website traffic through important sources such as Google Business Profile and Organic Website Traffic. Elements of The Foundation SEO Package include:
- 20+ target keywords tracked and reported monthly
- Initial Keyword Audit/Analysis
- Competitor Analysis (2)
- Monthly Site Audit
- Google Business Profile Optimization
- 15 Local Citations (one-time)
- Up to 5 relevant backlinks per month
- All current pages are optimized with proper Meta Tag Titles/Descriptions
- All current pages revised for on-page SEO success
- Schema markup on every page, post, and project
- 5 new pages developed per month
- 2 new blog posts per month
** Budget is determined based on the size of the website, and competition level, all of which is discussed in your initial SEO evaluation.
The Proven
Ranges between $650 to $850 per month. Best for established businesses looking to rank higher in search and in a large search radius
What’s included?
For business owners that want a powerful SEO campaign while still protecting their digital marketing budget, The Proven SEO Package is an aggressive style SEO campaign designed to scale quickly and maximize organic search traffic on a regional level. So whether you are a one-store location or a business with a large service radius you can be sure that your customers will find you regardless of where they are searching from. Elements of The Proven SEO Package include:
- 35+ target keywords tracked and reported monthly
- Initial Keyword Audit/Analysis
- Competitor Analysis (4)
- Monthly Site Audit
- Google Business Profile Optimization
- 35 Local Citations (one-time)
- Up to 15 relevant backlinks per month
- All current pages are optimized with proper Meta Tag Titles/Descriptions
- All current pages revised for on-page SEO success
- Schema markup on every page, post, and project
- 10 new pages developed per month
- 4 new blog posts per month
** Budget is determined based on the size of the website, and competition level, all of which is discussed in your initial SEO evaluation.
The All-In
Custom Small Business SEO Services plans starting at $1,250.00. Best for established businesses looking to rank in multiple counties, states, or online
What’s included?
Ready to make a splash online? The All-in SEO Package is designed for business owners that are ready to dominate online search. Whether it’s an aggressive local SEO campaign designed to draw customers in, or maximize a website’s reach nationally or internationally, The All-In SEO Package is designed to dominate local SEO, and organic SEO anywhere. Essentially connect with your customers anywhere. Elements of The All-In SEO Package include:
- 50+ target keywords tracked and reported monthly
- Initial Keyword Audit/Analysis
- Competitor Analysis (6)
- Monthly Site Audit
- Google Business Profile Optimization
- 85 Local Citations (one-time)
- Up to 30 relevant backlinks per month
- All current pages are optimized with proper Meta Tag Titles/Descriptions
- All current pages revised for on-page SEO success
- Schema markup on every page, post, and project
- 20 new pages developed per month
- 4 new blog posts per month
- Guest posts, industry placements, and PR outreach
- Weekly SEO Meetings
** Budget is determined based on the size of the website, and competition level, all of which is discussed in your initial SEO evaluation.
Backlink counts are a ceiling, not a quota. We only build links from websites relevant to your industry or service area, so some months you may see fewer, and that is by design.
Meet Patrick, The Founder of MarketKeep
Patrick Kurowski founded MarketKeep in 2016. At the time, he was newly married and had a three-month-old, so naturally, the perfect time to start his own business!
Starting out working from a desk he purchased from IKEA for a whopping $30 he had 3 clients and a total of $750 in billing.
Today MarketKeep works out of its office at 40 West Chesapeake Avenue in Towson, Maryland, and has grown to serve over 235 clients throughout the United States and beyond. Learn more about MarketKeep.
His favorite SEO phrase to use is “helping our clients connect with their customers when it matters most to them.”
Oh and that wife and son? Patrick has been happily married now for over 10 years, and has three sons now. If you can’t find him at work, you will find him coaching his kids youth sports teams!
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Small Business SEO Services
Here is a sample of the Small Business SEO questions we get asked the most:
What do SEO services for small business owners actually include?
Good small business SEO services cover four areas: local SEO (your Google Business Profile and local citations), on-page SEO (keyword research, service pages, and location pages), off-page SEO (backlinks and brand mentions that build authority), and AI search visibility (making sure tools like ChatGPT and Google Gemini can find and recommend you). Every MarketKeep package includes all four. The difference between packages is how many pages, links, and citations we build each month, which depends on how competitive your market is and how large an area you want to cover.
How do I choose the best SEO company for my small business?
Start by asking to see their work on websites like yours, not just their own rankings. A good small business SEO company will show you real Google Search Console data from past clients, explain which keywords they would target for your business and why, and tell you up front what it costs and how long you are committed.
Be cautious of anyone who guarantees rankings, won’t share pricing until after a sales call, or asks for a 6 or 12 month contract before you have seen results. And read their Google reviews. Other small business owners will tell you quickly what working with a company is actually like.
That is why we publish our SEO packages and pricing on this page, keep every contract month-to-month, and let our 43 Google reviews speak for us.
How long does SEO take?
The answer is it depends. It depends on the type of keywords that you’re competing for, the quality of your website, and the strength of your competitors. Some long-tail keywords can rank within a few weeks. K&L Construction and Design was back on page one for its Bonners Ferry service terms within weeks of its rebuild. More competitive search terms usually take between 3 and 6 months. These are things that we help you uncover during your initial SEO evaluation with our team.
Do you optimize my existing content?
Yes, absolutely. The first thing we do when working with our clients is audit their existing content to see what can be improved and where the foundation for their website is. Instead of completely gutting a website or immediately suggesting a website redesign, we always try to salvage what’s there. Most of the time, you can do that, but it starts with editing your existing content, improving it, and building from there.
Do you create new content for my website?
Yes. As part of our ongoing on-page SEO services,
we make sure to create authoritative content on a consistent basis for your website. That includes:
- adding new services when appropriate
- adding in areas we serve pages as your business expands
- developing high-quality content through a blog that helps to drive new traffic to your website, increase your website’s authority, and encourage backlinks from other websites
How often do we meet?
We like to joke that in the beginning there’s a lot of hand-holding. No matter which package you start with, we meet more often around launch, sometimes several times in a single week. As the campaign builds momentum, we move to the meeting schedule for your package: monthly Zoom meetings for The Foundation and The Proven, and weekly SEO meetings for The All-In.
That doesn’t mean that you don’t hear from us more than that. We’re constantly emailing you and providing updates in regards to how your website is performing, asking questions to you in the hopes of helping to further bolster the performance of the website, and just staying in touch when we see things that we think need to be brought to your attention.
How long are your contracts?
Unlike traditional SEO agencies who expect six- or 12-month commitments or retainers, our SEO contracts renew on a month-to-month basis. We always ask for about 45 days to showcase our work, but we want our clients to feel comfortable with the SEO process too, which is why we don’t ask for long-term commitments and have 10-day out clauses with our SEO campaigns and packages.
What type of businesses do you work with?
One of the cool things about being a small business SEO company is the fact that we get to work with a variety of businesses. We prioritize working with small business owners because that’s what we’re passionate about. We work with small business owners in fields such as:
- carpet cleaners
- deck builders
- electricians
- flooring contractors
- painting contractors
- roofing companies
- fence contractors
- and more
To see a complete list of the industries we serve, check out our Industries We Serve page.
What information do you need in order to get started?
It’s pretty simple. We actually just need five items:
- a signed contract
- access to your website
- access to your Google Business Profile
- access to your Google Analytics account
- access to your Google Search Console account
Once we have all five, it’s off to the races, and we typically can get started within 24 to 48 hours.
Get Your Free Small Business SEO Evaluation and 4 Month Ranking Plan
Meet with our team over Zoom and see your website the way Google sees it. We’ll review your local SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO, compare your traffic against your competitors, and hand you a written 4 Month Plan you can use with or without us.
No long-term contracts. No sales pressure. No obligation.