About half of what an SEO service in Abbotsford sells you, you could do yourself on a wet Sunday afternoon. The other half is either tedious enough that you won't, or technical enough that you shouldn't. The trick is knowing which half is which before you pay for the whole thing. So here is what's actually inside the service, piece by piece, with what I would do about each.
Rank tracking. This is the measurement: which searches you show up for, where, and whether that's changing. You can do a crude version yourself by searching from your phone, but you'll get a personalized result that knows where you are and what you've clicked before, which is why owners so often think they rank better than they do. A proper check runs from a neutral browser, located in your city, on a schedule, and keeps the history. That's what RankTrack does for us and for clients, at $79 a month per location, and I'll be blunt: this is the one part I think almost nobody should skip, because without it every other dollar is spent blind.
Google Business Profile upkeep. Categories, hours, photos, the service area, the description. The initial fix is absolutely a do-it-yourself job; I wrote the ten-minute version of it earlier this month. The part that tends to slide is the upkeep. New photos every month or two. Holiday hours before the holiday. Checking that a "suggested edit" from a stranger hasn't quietly changed your category. It's not hard. It's just that nobody remembers until something's wrong. If you'll genuinely put it in your calendar, do it yourself. If you know you won't, that's the from-$99-a-month Local SEO work, and it's cheap for what it prevents.
Google Business Profile posts. The short updates that show up on your listing. Free, takes five minutes, and easy to forget. You can write one about a job you just finished on the Bradner side, or a seasonal thing (furnace tune-ups before the cold), and post it. Twice a month is plenty. Do this yourself if you can write three sentences. They're included in the $199 plan for owners who'd rather not have to remember.
Local content. Short pieces, on your blog and your profile, about specific services in specific places. "Hot water tank replacement in Clearbrook" is a page a plumber can rank for; "Our Services" is not. Can you write these yourself? Yes, if you can write and you'll do it twice a month, every month, through the busy season. Writing one is easy. Writing the fourth, in the middle of the busy season, is where it usually stops. This is the part of the service I'd say is worth paying for precisely because the value is in the consistency, not in any single piece. Two a month, published for you, is the $199 Local Content plan.
Reviews. Asking for them, and answering every one. You should absolutely ask for reviews yourself; a text from the person who did the work beats any automated request. Answering them is where it slides. The one-star that sits unanswered for six weeks does damage every single day it's there. Review Management at $99 a month is the answering: the listing checked every 15 minutes once your Google account is connected (about once a day if it isn't), a reply drafted in your voice for every review, approved by you with one tap and posted by us, and removal quoted for the ones that break Google's rules. Worth it if you have a steady stream of customers and no one in the office whose job it is. Not worth it if you get four reviews a year; just answer those yourself.
Site fixes. The page titles, the first paragraphs, the service pages that don't exist yet, the broken contact form nobody noticed since the last plugin update. Some of this is DIY if you're comfortable in WordPress. Some of it isn't, and the way to tell is whether the word "database" makes you nervous. A site that's actually broken is a Site Rescue, $149 one time. A site that was built in 2013 and can't be fixed is a redesign from $899, and we'll tell you if that's what you've got rather than selling you SEO on top of it.
Citations and directory listings. Making sure your name, address and phone number read identically across the handful of directories that still matter. Tedious, mostly a one-time job, and easy to get subtly wrong (an old phone number on one listing can confuse things for years). You can do it. It's part of the Local SEO work if you'd rather not.
What's not in the SEO service: paid ads, social media posting, and anything that promises a position. Ads are a different discipline with a different budget, and we don't sell them. Social media posting is its own service on our team, Self-Edit Social. And a guaranteed ranking isn't something anyone can sell honestly, so we don't.
Start with the measurement. Two months of the $79 tracking will tell you which of the rest you need, and the pricing page has no contract on any of it, so you can add pieces only where the chart says you're missing.