What website and search management costs

Website and local search management for an RV park is $499 a month here, with a one-time $499 onboarding charge. The onboarding is charged once, at the start.

One thing worth stating immediately, because it is where comparable services differ: the Google Business Profile work is inside that price. It is not a separate line.

A build and a management service are different purchases

The most common confusion on this subject, and it changes what a quote means.

A build is a one-time project producing a website. A management service is ongoing work keeping a site current, findable and converting. A park can buy either without the other, and many buy a build and then nothing.

That is the usual reason a park has a site that looked good in 2021 and has not been touched since. What a build itself costs is on what an RV park website costs.

What the onboarding charge is for

• A full audit of the current site, listing and search position.
• Fixing what is broken: redirects, canonicals, indexing faults, forms that stopped sending.
• Image and speed work, which at a park is usually the largest single win.
• Structured data, built correctly per schema markup for RV parks.
• Analytics and Search Console set up so results can actually be measured.
• The Google profile brought fully up to standard, rather than partially.

It is front-loaded because the first month is repair. Charging a flat monthly for that work would either overprice the ongoing service or underdeliver the fix.

What the monthly covers

• New pages, written and published, on the topics campers actually search.
• Existing pages kept current as rates, seasons and amenities change.
• Technical maintenance: speed, links, forms, security updates.
• The Google profile managed, including hours, photos, posts and unanswered questions.
• Local search work, including directory and citation consistency.
• Monthly reporting against leads rather than rankings alone.

Why no competitor ranges appear here

None were verified. The published figures available sit on the marketing pages of agencies selling the service, and they disagree with each other.

Ongoing website and search management also varies enormously in what it includes. A $300 quote and a $1,500 quote can describe genuinely different amounts of work. That makes any published range close to meaningless without the scope behind it.

What to check in any quote

1. How many new pages per month, actually written, not merely planned?
2. Is the Google profile included, or is it a separate charge?
3. Who owns the website at the end, and can the park leave with it?
4. What happens to the site if the service stops? A site that goes dark is a hostage, not a deliverable.
5. Is there a contract, and what notice is required?
6. What is reported, and does it include leads or only rankings and traffic?
7. Who does the work, and is any of it subcontracted?
8. Does the onboarding fee buy fixes, or only an audit document?

Questions three and four matter most and are asked least. A park that cannot take its own website elsewhere has bought a subscription rather than an asset.

When this is not the right purchase

Worth saying plainly, since it is the largest service sold here.

A park whose reviews are thin and whose phone goes unanswered should fix those first. Both are cheaper, both move faster, and website work compounds better once a park is already converting the interest it has.

Review Automation at $149 is the usual starting point for exactly that reason. The order is set out in agency versus doing it yourself.