The square-lattice extended Hubbard model at half filling is studied by a perturbation scheme. By taking into account the ground state of the mean-field theory as a reference state, the scheme treats the collective fluctuations beyond the mean field as the predominant perturbation. The system at ground state can be a spin-density wave (SDW) or a charge-density wave (CDW) depending on the relative strengths of the on-site electron interaction and the nearest-neighbor interaction. The excitation modes above the ground state are analyzed through diagonalizing an effective Hamiltonian. The energy spectra and the wave functions are self-consistently given by the formalism. By comparing the ground-state energies, we investigate the SDW-CDW transition.