Free tool

SEO ROI calculator

This calculator models the return on a local SEO retainer from four numbers you already know: what a customer is worth, how many leads you close, what the retainer costs, and how many additional leads you assume it produces. It outputs breakeven leads per month and a 12-month net — as a model, not a promise.

What the retainer returns

Breakeven

2.4 leads/mo

At $1,500 per customer and a 25% close rate, each lead is worth $375. The retainer pays for itself at 2.4 additional leads per month; everything past that is revenue, before your cost of delivery.

Conservative

half your assumption

Additional leads / mo: 3
New customers / mo: 0.8
Added revenue / mo: $1,125
Net after retainer / mo: $230
12-month net: $2,760

8% on top of your current $15,000/mo.

Moderate

your assumption as entered

Additional leads / mo: 6
New customers / mo: 1.5
Added revenue / mo: $2,250
Net after retainer / mo: $1,355
12-month net: $16,260

15% on top of your current $15,000/mo.

This is a model of your own assumptions, not a projection or a promise — no agency controls how many leads search produces, and the flat 12-month figure ignores the slow early months of real SEO.

How long does SEO take to produce a return?

Local SEO takes months to produce a return, not weeks — it compounds: listings and entity work land first, rankings and calls follow over three to six months. Any model showing profit in month one is describing a mature engagement, not a new one. Judge a retainer at month six, not month two.

This is why our retainers carry a six-month initial term — roughly the point where local search work produces defensible results. It is also why the 12-month net above is the honest horizon for the decision. The flat model overstates the early months, when the work is foundational and the lead flow has not yet moved, and understates the later ones, because it ignores compounding and repeat business entirely. Both simplifications are visible, which is the point.

What does this calculator actually assume?

The SEO ROI calculator makes four assumptions, all visible and all yours to change: an average customer value, your close rate on leads, a retainer cost, and a monthly count of additional leads. The calculator applies no growth curve, no compounding, and no industry benchmarks — the output is arithmetic on your inputs, nothing more.

The additional-leads figure is your assumption, not our forecast. The conservative scenario simply halves it.
Customer lifetime value is deliberately left out. If your customers repeat or refer, the true return is higher than shown.
Average customer value hides a wide spread — if your small and large jobs differ by an order of magnitude, run the model once for each.
The retainer defaults to $895 a month because that is where our Foundations tier starts. Any agency's figure works.

Why does AI-referral traffic change the ROI math?

AI-referral traffic changes the ROI math because visit counts undersell it. Traffic arriving from AI assistants converts at a large multiple of ordinary organic search traffic, so a small stream of AI-referred visitors can carry a disproportionate share of new customers. A leads-based model captures that; a traffic-based one misses it.

That asymmetry is why this calculator asks for leads rather than sessions. A session count treats a drive-by and a ready buyer as the same event, and in AI search they are emphatically not. It is also why the channel is systematically undersold in analytics: a large share of AI-referred sessions arrive with no referrer and are logged as direct traffic, so the dashboards undercount the very visits most likely to become customers.

The measured conversion multiple, the visitor-to-signup split behind it, and the size of the under-counting are all set out on our AI visibility tracking page. If you want the same arithmetic applied to your own visibility rather than your own leads, the AI search work and the published pricing start there.

What would make this model wrong?

A changed close rate is what most often makes the SEO ROI model wrong. Leads from search and AI assistants close differently from referrals — more intent than cold traffic, less trust than a friend's recommendation. If your measured close rate moves, the breakeven line moves with it. Re-run the model with real numbers each quarter.

Treat the first quarter of any retainer as calibration: measure the close rate on the new lead source separately, replace the assumption with the measurement, and let the model earn or lose the renewal on real numbers. An agency that discourages that comparison is telling you something.

Common questions

Can Hitman Marketing guarantee the numbers this calculator shows?: No, and no honest agency can — search and AI assistant results are non-deterministic, and anyone promising a specific position or lead count is selling. What can be committed to is deliverables, crawler accessibility, entity consistency, and measured share of voice. The calculator exists so you can test any retainer against your own economics before a call.
What close rate should I enter?: Your own, measured: leads received against jobs won over the last few months, pulled from your CRM, calendar, or invoice stack. Do not borrow a benchmark — close rates vary enormously by trade, ticket size, and speed of follow-up. If you genuinely do not know yours, count last month by hand before trusting any model built on it.
Why does the retainer default to $895 a month?: Because that is where our Foundations tier starts — one city, one profile, the listings and entity work that has to happen first. The field is editable precisely so you can model any proposal in front of you, including a competitor's. The arithmetic does not care whose retainer it is.

Find out whether your territory is open

One contract per industry per city. If yours is open you can execute at the published price today; if a competitor already holds it, the nearest open market is the one to look at.

See open contracts Request a territory — $497

The survey is credited in full against the contract if your territory opens and you take it.