How much does SEO cost? What changes the price, and what a quote should list
Web and search visibility
9 min read
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Ask three agencies for an SEO quote and you may get three different products under one name. For one, SEO is a monthly report. For another it is a new article every week. How much SEO costs depends on four things: the size of the site, how crowded the field is for the searches you care about, how much new content has to be produced, and the technical state of the site. SEO is the work that makes a site easier to find in search results, so a price is really a list of which of that work made it into the quote.
You won’t find a pound, dollar or lira figure in this post. Pages that publish monthly fees quote numbers that contradict one another. We found no average we could trace to a source, and our own prices have not been set. So the post is about reading an offer once you are holding one.
What does SEO pricing depend on?
Site size is the obvious one. A brochure site of a few pages has little to review. A shop with thousands of product pages turns even a basic check into a project of its own.
Competition is harder to see. If large, long-established sites answer the same questions you do, the distance to cover is longer; if the searches are local and narrow, it is shorter. You can judge it yourself: run the searches you hope to appear for and look at who is on the first page.
Content is often the biggest share of a quote. A new guide, service page or comparison article has to come from somebody, a set number of times a month, with images from somebody else. Each of those is a working day.
Technical state is the one that surprises people. Pages that can’t be crawled, chains of redirects and a template that loads slowly on mobile don’t show up in a first conversation. They show up in an audit, and we find an offer that starts with one easier to trust than a price for a site nobody has looked at. If you are about to rebuild, much of this work is done again; the address inventory in how to avoid SEO loss when redesigning your website is one of the lines that belongs in that price.
Monthly, project or hourly: how is the fee written?
Offers rest on one of three shapes. A monthly retainer fixes a fee for an agreed amount of work each month, which suits steady content and monitoring. A project fee sells one piece of work with a start and an end, such as a site audit or the address plan for a move to a new site. Hourly work is for borrowing one person’s knowledge: solving a question, briefing your team, reviewing a decision.
Mobile tariffs work the same way. A monthly contract is a fixed bill whatever you use, pay-as-you-go charges for what you actually use, and a repair shop charges for the job. Which is cheapest depends on how much you will use it. Selling a monthly retainer to a site that needs a one-time fix, or a one-off project to a site that needs new pages every month, is a mismatch at any price.
Which scope fits which site?
Put the four things together and three tiers appear. We named them ourselves; there is no standard classification, and we put no figures next to them.
| Site situation | Tier | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Small site, pages load, measurement missing or unclear | Monitor and fix | Most of the work happens once: measurement, titles, internal links. After that, a monthly look is enough |
| Healthy site, target searches known, lots of pages to write | Steady content | The price is set by how many pages a month, and who writes them |
| Large site or tough competition, with technical problems on top | Broad programme | Audit, fixes, content and measurement run together, so it is planned in phases rather than month by month |
Say a heating and plumbing contractor has a seven-page site (fictional). The pages open, but every title is identical and nothing is measured. Not a heavy job: fix it once, then look monthly. If the quote also has a line for new articles every month, ask what it is paying for.
At the other end sits a garden furniture shop with thousands of products (also fictional). Most product pages carry the text the manufacturer sent, and some category pages never appear in search. The work is part technical, part content, and no single line covers it. This pairing is our judgement; an audit of your own site may say otherwise.
What should an SEO quote contain?
Google Search Central’s page on hiring an SEO lists what people in this field do: reviewing site content or structure, technical advice on hosting, redirects, error pages and JavaScript, content development, keyword research and training. Matching each line of a quote to one of these is the quickest way to see what you are buying. A job with no line is either not being done or will arrive later as a separate invoice.
We split the lines like this:
- Site and technical review: which pages are crawled, which are in the index, where the errors are
- Search research: the words people use when they look for what you offer
- Page changes: titles, descriptions, internal links
- Content: how many pages or articles, who writes them, who approves them
- Measurement setup and reporting: what is measured, how often, who sees it
- Meeting rhythm: who talks to whom, and when
- Access and accounts: whose name Search Console, the analytics account and site admin sit under
Ten questions for comparing SEO offers
These follow the topics Google suggests raising when you interview an SEO, in the order you would meet them while reading an offer. Answers in writing make the comparison easier.
- Can they show examples of earlier work?
- Can they give references from past clients, and can you speak to those clients?
- Do they say they follow Google Search Essentials?
- Do they write down the results they expect, the time frame, and how success will be measured?
- Do they have experience in your industry, and in your city or country?
- Will they tell you about every change they make to your site, and why?
- Do they base their advice on Google’s official documentation?
- For an audit, are they asking only for read access to Search Console?
- Do they promise a particular ranking?
- Are they curious about your business: what makes it different, who your competitors are, how customers find you?
The eighth is easy to miss. Google says that when an SEO offers an audit, only read access to Search Console should be granted at that stage. You may not get a yes to all ten. It tells you more to see which offer collects the “no” and “I don’t know” answers.
How should you read an offer that promises a ranking?
Google’s page has a plain sentence on this: nobody can promise a particular position in its results. It advises caution with anyone who claims a special relationship with Google or sells a “priority submit”. The same page says Google takes no money to include or rank sites in its results, and that appearing in organic results is free. Advertising has no effect on where a site appears in them; we compared the two routes in SEO vs. advertising.
A line such as “first page in three months” prices something nobody can measure in advance. An offer that lists what it will do and leaves the outcome open with “we’ll track it together” is less exciting, and more honest.
Where do measurement and reporting sit in the price?
Measurement fades into the background in a price conversation, yet it is the only way to know whether a change did anything. Three questions: is measurement set up and who does it, whose account holds the Search Console property, and who interprets the report. The first is a GA4 setup job, the second is the account-ownership point in how to set up Google Search Console. A report is only useful if it ends with a short list of decisions. We handle the measurement side under measurement, reporting and GA4, and the site work under website design and SEO.
Marking offers by what is written down
What is said in a meeting and what is written in the offer can differ. Mark an item as present only if it is in writing, and ask for the spoken ones to be put in the next message.
| Item | Offer A | Offer B | Offer C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Site and technical review | |||
| New content per month, and who writes it | |||
| Page changes | |||
| Measurement setup | |||
| Report frequency and decision list | |||
| Whose name Search Console and analytics sit under | |||
| Contract length, and what you keep at the end |
Frequently asked questions
What should be in an SEO package?
Look for written lines covering a site and technical review, the searches to target, page changes, content production, measurement setup and a regular report, each with who does it and when. If a job has no line, assume it is not included and ask what it would cost separately.
Should I hire a freelancer or an agency for SEO?
Compare scope before price. One person can often run a narrow, clearly defined job comfortably. When technical fixes, content and measurement all have to move together, division of work and continuity become the question. Whichever you pick, make sure accounts are opened in your name and the work is written down.
Why can cheap SEO be risky?
A low offer may come with a narrow scope: missing lines for measurement, content or technical review can be what the lower price reflects. Google’s page adds a warning of its own: you are responsible for what a company you hire does on your behalf. So know each task being done, and ask for the scope in writing.
How long does SEO take to work?
Nobody can name a fixed time; it varies with the site, the competition and the work done. If an offer states a timeline, the reasoning behind it should be written down, or you should ask for it. Search Console’s Performance report is where progress shows up, and a trend over several months says more than one good week.
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