Pricing

Automotive SEO pricing in the open. Three tiers, real numbers, no sales call.

Core, Compete, and Command are the three car dealership SEO packages below, each priced per rooftop per month. Groups get a volume discount that scales with store count. Everything runs month-to-month, and nothing on this page hides behind a form.

Three car dealership SEO packages, priced per rooftop per month

Every package runs the same automotive SEO services underneath: technical SEO, schema and entity work, content production, and AI-visibility reporting. The tier sets how much of each runs per month, how often it gets reported, and how far the scope extends past the site itself.

Tier 01
Core
$1,165per rooftop / mo
$1,000 onboarding, flat · month-to-month
Includes
  • 6 content actions per month
  • AEO schema and entity setup
  • Monthly AI-visibility reporting
  • Technical SEO
  • Custom dashboard
  • Monthly strategy call
Single-rooftop dealers and small groups getting AI-search visibility built in for the first time.
Start with Core
Tier 02
Compete
$1,615per rooftop / mo
$1,500 onboarding, flat · month-to-month
Everything in Core, plus
  • 12 content actions per month
  • Biweekly AI-visibility reporting
  • Answer-first content and pre-search strategy
  • Aggregator review-site monitoring (CarGurus, Cars.com)
  • Biweekly strategy sessions
Multi-rooftop groups actively working to take share in a competitive market.
Start with Compete
Tier 03
Command
$2,425per rooftop / mo
$2,000 onboarding, flat · month-to-month
Everything in Compete, plus
  • Max content: 18+ actions per month
  • Full AEO answer hub and advanced schema
  • 3P and digital-PR citation push
  • Aggregator review-site management (CarGurus, Cars.com, DealerRater)
  • Executive reporting
  • Paid-integrated landing pages
Large groups running AI-search visibility as a core revenue channel.
Start with Command
Group pricing

The per-rooftop rate comes down as the group gets bigger.

The numbers above are the single-rooftop rate. A group doesn't pay that number times the store count. The discount is banded by rooftop count and applies to every store in the group, not just the ones past the threshold, because the audit, the schema baseline, the entity work, and the reporting infrastructure get built once and then serve every rooftop.

There's no rooftop cap. A fifteen-store group is priced the same way a three-store group is, just further down the curve. Onboarding is charged once per group, not once per store. The work behind the rate is scoped as dealer group SEO, not a single-store engagement sold fifteen times over.

Every rate below is the real number. Send a rooftop count and the current platform and you'll get the total back in one email, but you can work it out yourself first.

Get the group rate
Volume discount, per rooftop per month
RooftopsOffCoreCompeteCommand
10%$1,165$1,615$2,425
2–310%$1,048$1,454$2,182
4–720%$932$1,292$1,940
8–1428%$839$1,163$1,746
15+32%$792$1,098$1,649

The band applies to every rooftop in the group. Onboarding is charged once per group at the tier's flat rate, regardless of store count.

Worked example · six rooftops on Compete
Six rooftops lands in the 4–7 band20% off
Compete list rate, per rooftop$1,615
Group rate, per rooftop$1,292
Onboarding, once for the whole group$1,500
Monthly, all six stores$7,752

Want paid media bundled in, or running something unusual? Rooftop count is never the blocker, but scope outside the three tiers gets a direct quote instead of a posted number.

Contact us

No platform tax

A managed SEO platform bundles a platform fee into every SEO line item, whether the dealer needs the platform underneath it or not. VulcanAX charges for the operator layer only. That's why the number above sits under a comparable platform tier while including more work.

What dealership SEO pricing is indexed to

How much dealership SEO costs at VulcanAX comes down to three inputs, all of them visible in the table above. Rooftop count, because the audit, the schema baseline, the entity work, and the reporting infrastructure get built once and then serve every store in the group. Content throughput, because 6 actions a month and 18 actions a month are different amounts of production. Reporting depth, because biweekly AI-visibility reporting and an executive readout take more to build than a monthly dashboard.

Market size, brand count, and local-pack difficulty are not inputs. Those change the strategy, not the invoice. A group in a major metro and a group in a rural county pay the same posted rate at the same rooftop count on the same tier. Pricing in this vertical usually runs the other way, quoted against what a market looks like it can absorb, which is part of why the number only appears after a discovery call.

Real AEO vs. a checkbox line item

Answer engine optimization has started showing up as a line item on managed-platform menus. Most of what's sold there is a thin, templated bolt-on: no real content engine behind it, no visibility tracking, and a reporting cadence tied to nothing. VulcanAX builds AEO in from the first month, as the core of the retainer rather than an add-on SKU.

Dealership SEO pricing stays in the open

Every direct tier is posted above with a real monthly rate and a real onboarding fee. There's no gated quote form standing between a dealer group and the number, and no call required just to find out whether the budget is in range. The scope sitting behind each rate is documented in full on the car dealership SEO page.

Comparing this against the best automotive SEO companies in the vertical is the expected next move. Few of them post a number to compare against, which is itself a data point. Price is one input among several, and how to evaluate an SEO agency covers the others.

Month-to-month, on purpose

There is no annual contract and no minimum term. Most of this vertical sells twelve-month commitments because the first four months of an SEO engagement are the months a dealer is most likely to leave. The work should be worth renewing every month, and if it stops being worth it, the exit should not require a lawyer. Onboarding is a one-time fee rather than a disguised lock-in.

Five groups, one per market

VulcanAX takes a maximum of five dealer groups at a time, with no rooftop limit inside a group. It also holds one client per market: no optimizing two competing rooftops against each other and billing both. Iowa is closed statewide, and one additional market is closed. Everywhere else is open.

That cap is the reason the same person who scopes the work also does it. It is also the reason a market can close without notice, and why the honest answer to "can you take us on" is sometimes no.

Why the reporting cadence isn't daily

AI-visibility signals don't move day to day. VulcanAX reports at a cadence that matches how the underlying data actually changes: monthly at Core, biweekly at Compete and Command. A vendor selling a daily or weekly AI-rank dashboard is selling motion, not information. Charging extra for that cadence is a gimmick dressed as a feature.

Common dealership SEO pricing questions

How much does dealership SEO cost?
At VulcanAX, dealership SEO costs $1,165 per rooftop per month on Core, $1,615 on Compete, and $2,425 on Command, plus a one-time onboarding fee of $1,000, $1,500, or $2,000 charged once per group rather than once per store. Multi-rooftop groups pay less per store: the banded volume discount runs from 10% off at 2 rooftops to 32% at 15 or more, which takes Core down to $792 per rooftop. Every tier is month-to-month with no minimum term.
What do car dealership SEO packages include?
All three VulcanAX packages include technical SEO, AEO schema and entity setup, AI-visibility reporting, a custom dashboard, and a recurring strategy call. What separates the tiers is throughput and depth. Core runs 6 content actions a month with monthly reporting. Compete runs 12 with biweekly reporting, answer-first content, and aggregator review-site monitoring. Command runs 18 or more with a full AEO answer hub, digital-PR citation work, review-site management, and executive reporting.
Why is VulcanAX pricing public?
Because the rest of the vertical hides its rate card behind a sales call. VulcanAX publishes the number so a dealer group can compare before ever getting on the phone. No objection-handling gate, no quote theater.
What does the onboarding fee cover?
A flat one-time fee, separate from the monthly rate: technical audit, schema baseline, content-cannibalization mapping, and the AI-visibility tracking setup that has to happen before the first monthly action runs. It is not one month of retainer billed twice.
Why doesn't AI-visibility reporting run daily?
Because citation and answer-engine signals don't move day to day. Reporting cadence is set to match how the underlying data actually changes: monthly at Core, biweekly at Compete and Command. A vendor selling a daily dashboard is selling motion, not information.
Is dealership SEO pricing per rooftop or per group?
Per rooftop, per month, with a banded volume discount that applies to every store in the group: 10% off at 2–3 rooftops, 20% at 4–7, 28% at 8–14, and 32% at 15 or more. At Core that is $1,048, $932, $839, and $792 per rooftop respectively. A group never pays the single-store number multiplied by store count, because the audit, schema baseline, entity work, and reporting infrastructure are built once and then serve every rooftop. Onboarding is charged once per group at the tier's flat rate, regardless of store count.
What is the cheapest dealership SEO package?
Core, at $1,165 per rooftop per month, is the entry package, and it comes down to $792 per rooftop for a group of 15 or more. Nothing sits below Core, because a cheaper package would mean cutting content throughput or dropping the AI-visibility tracking, and those are the two things the retainer exists to run. Onboarding at Core is $1,000, charged once per group.
Is there a contract or minimum term?
No. Every engagement is month-to-month, with no annual commitment and no minimum term. The onboarding fee is one-time and is not a disguised lock-in. If the work stops being worth renewing, leaving takes an email.
How many rooftops can VulcanAX handle?
There is no rooftop limit inside a group. The cap is on groups, not stores: VulcanAX takes a maximum of five dealer groups at a time. A fifteen-rooftop group is priced and run the same way a three-rooftop group is.
Is my market available?
VulcanAX holds one client per market and will not optimize two competing rooftops against each other. Iowa is closed statewide, and one additional market is closed. Every other US market is open, though a market can close once a group in it signs.
What happens for scope outside the three tiers?
Rooftop count is never the blocker. Scope outside the posted tiers, such as bundled paid media, gets a direct quote instead of a fixed number, since it changes the shape of the engagement. Contact VulcanAX to scope it.

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