How much does AI search optimization cost?
Industrial-specialist SEO and GEO agencies typically charge $2,500–$15,000 per month with six- to twelve-month minimums, and the budget tier generally starts around $1,500 per month. Foundvale's pricing sits deliberately below that floor: a $500 fixed-scope audit and a $1,250 per month engine, month-to-month with 30 days' notice.
The market bands
| Tier | Typical monthly | Commitment | What you generally get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise / full-service industrial agency | $5,000–15,000+ | 6–12 months | Strategy, content, technical, paid, dedicated team |
| Mid-market specialist | $2,500–5,000 | 6 months typical | Content program plus technical SEO |
| Budget / entry specialist | $1,500–2,500 | 3–6 months | Limited content volume, less senior attention |
| One-off audit | $1,500–5,000 | Project | Findings and recommendations, no execution |
| Foundvale | $500 pilot · $1,250/mo | None — 30-day notice | Audit, 4 articles/mo, page rewrites, schema, tracked queries |
Sources for the agency bands: manufacturing-seo.agency pricing survey, Marketing LTB industrial agency roundup, and OuterBox SEO pricing. Figures are 2025–2026 and vary by scope and region.
Why there is a gap under $1,500
Specialist agencies have a client floor set by their cost to serve — account management, strategists, senior writers who understand tolerances and certifications. Below roughly $1,500/month, that model does not clear. So companies in the $2–25M revenue band with zero or one marketing person tend to face a choice between paying above their comfort level for a program sized for someone larger, doing nothing, or hiring a generalist freelancer who writes confident nonsense about your process.
That gap is the segment we built for. It is not a discount on the same service — it is a narrower service with less of what that band does not need: no standing calls, no account manager, no strategy deck, no minimum term.
What drives cost, whoever you hire
- Content volume and depth. Technical industrial writing costs more than generic B2B because a wrong spec in front of an engineer is a failure, not a typo.
- How much SME time is required. Programs that need weekly calls with your engineers cost you more than the invoice says.
- Whether they publish for you. Handing over documents is cheaper than getting CMS access and doing implementation.
- Tracking. Some firms resell an AI-visibility tool subscription at a markup. Ask whether the monthly report is a dashboard export or an actual analysis.
- Commitment term. Long minimums are usually priced as risk transfer from the agency to you.
What to ask before signing anything
- What exactly ships each month, in countable units?
- What happens in a month when we are slow to give you input?
- Who owns the content, and in what format is it delivered?
- How do you measure AI visibility, and can I see a sample report?
- What is the notice period, and what does month one actually look like?
If a proposal guarantees rankings or AI citations, treat it as a reason to walk. Nobody controls what a model outputs, and the engines change constantly. What a vendor can legitimately commit to is deliverables — and you should hold them to those precisely.
Find out who gets named in your niche
The $500 audit runs 15 real buyer queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, logs who gets cited query by query, and comes back with a 90-day content map and two ready-to-publish articles. Fixed scope, two weeks. The fee is credited to your first retainer month if you continue.
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