Pricing
How much SEO costs for a local business, and what the price should buy.
The honest answer is a range, and the range is wide. The useful answer is what sits behind the number: what work is being done each month, who is doing it, and how you will know whether it paid. Here are real figures, and how to read a quote.
What SEO providers actually charge
The best public figures come from Ahrefs, which surveyed 439 SEO providers and published the results, last updated on 15 August 2024. The most common monthly retainer was $500 to $1,000, charged by 23% of respondents. The average across everyone was $2,917 a month. Agencies averaged $3,209 a month, consultants $3,250, and freelancers $1,348.63.
Hourly work averaged $111 an hour, with $75 to $100 the most common band at 24% of respondents, and one in ten charging more than $150. For one-off projects, $2,501 to $5,000 was the most common fee, charged by 21.2%.
Location and experience move the price. In the same survey, 79.1% of providers in the United States and Canada charged at least $1,001 a month, while 76% of providers based in India charged $1,000 or less. Providers with more than two years of experience charged 33% more on retainers. The survey's figures are in US dollars; in the UK and Canada the same bands convert at whatever the exchange rate is on the day, so treat the bands as a guide to proportion rather than a price list.
Why the range is so wide
Two quotes of $600 and $4,000 a month can both be fair, because they are rarely for the same thing. One might be a listing kept tidy and two short blog posts. The other might be a full structure, fifteen or twenty researched pages a month, technical fixes, link work and reporting you can check. The label on both is SEO.
So the first question about any price is not whether it is high or low. It is what will actually be done, each month, by whom, and what number it is meant to move.
What drives the cost of SEO
How competitive your searches are
A carpet cleaner in a small town and an injury lawyer in Las Vegas are not the same job. The more your rivals invest, the more work it takes to move past them.
How much is broken already
A site with thousands of pages Google refuses, spam links pointed at it or a botched redesign needs repair before growth. That work is front-loaded and can be significant.
How many services and places
Each service and each town you want to win needs its own pages. A business with three services in one town needs far less than one with ten services across twenty towns.
How much writing is involved
Content is usually the largest ongoing cost. Researched, checked pages take hours each; thin pages are cheap and mostly do not work.
Who does the work
A senior person doing the work themselves costs more per hour than a junior team, and usually needs fewer hours to get it right.
The three ways SEO is priced
A monthly retainer
A fixed monthly fee for ongoing work. Suits businesses that need a steady flow of pages, listing activity and monitoring. The risk is paying for months where little is done; the fix is a work log you can see.
A project
A fixed fee for a defined piece of work with an end: an audit, a site structure, a migration, a foundation build. Suits businesses that want the base done properly and then run it themselves.
Hourly
Paying for time. Suits specific problems and advice. Harder to budget for larger work.
How I shape engagements
I work in three shapes. A foundation build is a scoped project with an end: the architecture, the core pages, the technical base and the listing aligned, and you own all of it when it is done. The monthly engine comes after a foundation: new pages every month, listing activity, a technical watch, and the report. An audit is a site that is not performing, diagnosed in full, with a prioritised plan and a call where I explain it in plain language.
Because the shapes are defined, a quote says exactly what is included, and the work log shows whether it happened.
What different budgets can realistically buy
Under about $1,000 a month
Focused work in a quiet market: the listing kept accurate and active, a handful of well-made pages each month, basic fixes and a clear report. Enough to hold ground and grow slowly, rarely enough to take on a well-funded rival.
Roughly $1,000 to $3,000 a month
The band the survey's averages fall into. A steady cadence of researched pages, local and technical work alongside, and reporting that ties the work to enquiries.
Above about $3,000 a month
Competitive markets, several services across many towns, or sites that need heavy repair while they grow. More pages, more depth, link work, and closer attention every week.
Costs besides the SEO fee
Some costs sit outside the quote and are worth knowing about before you start. A developer's time if the site needs changes the SEO provider cannot make. Photography, because real photos of your team and work beat stock ones. Call tracking, if you want to count phone enquiries properly. And your own time: approving pages, answering questions about the business, and asking customers for reviews. None of these are large for most local businesses, but a quote that pretends they do not exist is not the whole picture.
What a low price usually means
At the bottom of the market, a low monthly fee is usually made possible by doing very little, or by doing things quickly that are better done slowly: templated town pages, bought links, automated posts, reports that show impressions instead of enquiries. Some of that is merely useless. Some of it, such as buying links or keyword-stuffing a Google listing name, breaks Google's rules and can cost you rankings or the listing itself.
That does not mean every expensive provider is good. It means a price with nothing specific behind it is a warning at any level.
How to tell whether a quote is fair
It lists the work
Pages per month, what kind, fixes planned, listing work, reporting. If the quote only describes outcomes, ask what will actually be done.
It names the searches
The searches the work is aimed at, by name. You should recognise them as the ones your customers type.
It says who does the work
The person you speak to, a junior team, or a subcontractor you will never meet. All can be fine; you should know which.
It promises nothing Google says cannot be promised
Google says no one can guarantee a number one ranking. A quote that guarantees positions is guaranteeing something outside anyone's control.
You own what you pay for
The pages, the listing, the accounts and the data should be yours, and should stay yours if you stop paying.
What SEO should pay back
The right way to judge the cost is against what one new customer is worth to you over time. For a law firm, one case can pay for a year of work. For a cleaning firm, a regular domestic client or a commercial contract can be worth thousands a year. The question is not whether SEO is cheap, but whether the enquiries it brings, which you should be able to count, are worth more than it costs. If nobody can count them, nobody can answer that, including the person doing the work.
Questions people ask about SEO cost
Is $500 a month enough for SEO
It can be for a small business in a quiet market, if the work is focused: a tidy listing, a few good pages and honest reporting. In a competitive market it usually buys too little to move the searches that matter.
Why do agencies charge more than freelancers
Partly overheads and account management, partly scope. In the Ahrefs survey agencies averaged $3,209 a month against $1,348.63 for freelancers. Compare what is included, not the label.
Should I pay for SEO upfront
For a defined project, part upfront is normal. For monthly work, paying month by month with a visible work log keeps everyone honest.
How long should I commit for
Long enough to see results, which is usually months rather than weeks. Long lock-in contracts with nothing to show in the meantime are a warning sign.
Can I do SEO myself instead
Much of it, yes, if you have the time. The guides on this site explain the whole job. Paying someone makes sense when your time is worth more running the business.
Want to know what your site would actually need?
Send me the site and the searches you want to win. I will tell you which of the three shapes fits, and what it would involve, before you commit to anything.