How Much Does GEO / AI SEO Cost for a Small Law Firm?
Published add-on pricing for generative engine optimization runs $3,000 to $6,000 a month on top of SEO. Here is what that buys, why it overlaps with work you may already pay for, and what a small firm should actually spend.
Short answer: Agencies that sell generative engine optimization as a separate product charge $3,000 to $6,000 a month on top of an SEO retainer, with the few published examples clustering around $3,000 to $6,000 for AIO/GEO add-ons. Most of that work overlaps with SEO's foundation. Isonn includes the AI layer in tiers of $2,000, $3,500 and $5,000 a month because the pages, profiles and reviews are the same.
What the market publishes
Almost no agency serving law firms prints prices for either SEO or GEO. The ranges that do exist come from blogs:
| Item | Published range |
|---|---|
| Law firm SEO, solo / small | $1,500–$5,000 / mo |
| Law firm SEO, mid-size | $3,000–$8,000 / mo |
| GEO / AI SEO sold as an add-on | $3,000–$6,000 / mo |
| National average SEO retainer | ~$7,500 / mo |
Stacked, a small firm buying both from a typical vendor is quoted $5,000 to $10,000 a month.
What GEO deliverables actually differ from SEO?
Ask any vendor selling GEO separately to list what is different. The honest list is short:
- Answer-first restructuring of practice pages (an editing pass, not new pages)
- Deeper schema:
LegalServicewithsameAs,Personper attorney,FAQPageretained - Entity consistency across directories (local SEO has always done this)
- Mention building on LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, bar associations (PR-adjacent)
- Crawler configuration for AI bots (a robots.txt edit)
- Citation measurement across engines (the genuinely new part)
Everything but the last two is work a competent SEO retainer should already include. Paying $3,000 to $6,000 more for it is paying twice for one set of pages.
What should a small LA firm spend?
It depends on practice area and sub-market more than on firm size:
- Estate planning, elder law, landlord-tenant in Pasadena, Encino or Whittier: competition is thin. $2,000 a month with the AI layer included is enough to become the default answer within months.
- Family, employment, criminal defense in Glendale, Burbank, Long Beach: moderate competition. $3,500 a month funds the content cadence and review program that separate cited firms from the rest.
- Language communities (Spanish, Armenian, Korean, Persian, Mandarin): native-language pages are the lever and the cost. $5,000 a month covers one language fully.
- Personal injury anywhere in LA: not $5,000. The market runs on $10,000 to $30,000 a month, which is why we decline it.
Questions to ask before paying for "AI SEO"
- Which deliverables differ from your SEO retainer? Get the list in writing.
- Which engines do you measure, how often, and can I see your own citation data?
- Is there a setup fee and a minimum term?
- Who writes, and does an attorney approve before publishing?
- What do you decline?
Our answers are on the pricing page. The free AI citation audit comes first either way, so you know what the money would have to fix.
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