How much does SEO cost?

Short answer: SEO is usually sold in one of three ways: a monthly retainer, a fixed-price project or an hourly rate. In Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers, the most common retainer was $501–$1,000 a month, the most common hourly rate $75–$100 and the most common project fee $2,501–$5,000. What you should pay depends on your competition, the condition of your site and how much content you need, so compare quotes by the work they include, not by the number at the bottom.

What are the three ways SEO is priced?

Almost every SEO quote falls into one of three models. They are not better or worse in themselves. Each one fits a different situation, and each one has its own way of going wrong.

Monthly retainer. This is the most common setup for ongoing SEO, because the work never really ends. Competitors publish new pages, Google changes how it ranks results, and your own site keeps changing. A good retainer lists what is done each month: technical fixes, new or improved pages, work on your Google Business Profile, and a report that ties the work to enquiries or sales.

Project. A project has a start, an end and a fixed price. Typical examples are an SEO audit, a site migration where you need to keep your rankings, or a batch of service pages. Projects suit businesses that want a clear plan and either have staff to carry it out or want to see the quality of the work before committing to more.

Hourly. Paying by the hour makes sense for advice, workshops or reviewing your own team's work. It is harder to budget for larger jobs, because the bill grows with the time spent rather than with the result.

What do SEO providers actually charge?

There is no official price list for SEO. The largest open survey we know of is one by the SEO tool company Ahrefs, which polled 439 SEO providers about their prices (Ahrefs). The figures are in US dollars and most respondents work in the US and Canada, so treat them as a reference point, not a local tariff:

Two more findings from the same survey are useful when you compare quotes. Agencies charge more than freelancers: 57.4% of agencies charge more than $1,000 a month, against 32.2% of freelancers. And the spread is wide. 68.8% charge $2,000 a month or less, while some providers in the US and Canada charge tens of thousands. Price on its own tells you little. What matters is the work behind it.

What drives the price of SEO?

Two businesses can get very different quotes from the same agency, and for good reasons. These are the factors that move the price most:

• Competition. A plumber who wants to be found in one town is up against a handful of local firms. An online shop selling insurance or mattresses nationwide competes with large companies that have spent years building their sites. More competition means more work and a longer road.
• The condition of your site. A site with indexing errors, slow pages, duplicate content or a messy structure needs fixing before anything else can work. A clean, fast site with good pages can move straight on to growth.
• How much content is needed. New service pages, location pages and articles are often the largest part of the job. If your site has three pages and your competitors have thirty useful ones, writing is where the budget goes.
• Local or national. Local SEO focuses on a smaller area, your Google Business Profile and reviews, so it usually needs less work than ranking across the whole country.
• Who does the work. If your own team can write texts or publish pages, the agency's share of the work, and the bill, gets smaller.

This is also why a fixed price quoted before anyone has looked at your site should make you curious. The provider has no way of knowing how much work you need.

What should an SEO contract include?

Whatever the model, a quote or contract should let you answer one question: what exactly am I paying for? Look for these points:

• A defined scope. Which tasks are done each month or in the project, and roughly how much of each.
• Who does what. What the agency does itself, and what it expects from you, such as access, approvals or texts.
• Reporting that reaches the business. Impressions, clicks and rankings are early signals. The report should also show enquiries, bookings or sales from organic search.
• Ownership. Content, data and accounts such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics and your Google Business Profile should belong to you, not the agency.
• Notice period and minimum term. SEO takes time, so a minimum term can be fair, but you should know exactly how to leave.
• What happens to price changes. When the scope grows, the price can grow too, but only after you have agreed to it.

Google itself suggests asking a potential SEO for examples of earlier work, whether they follow Google's guidelines, what results to expect and in what timeframe, and how they will explain the changes they make (Google Search Central).

What are the warning signs in cheap SEO offers?

A low price is not a problem in itself. A small local business may need very little work. The trouble starts when a low price is matched by vague promises. Be careful if you see any of these:

• A guaranteed first place on Google. Google is blunt about this: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" (Google Search Central).
• A "special relationship" with Google or a promise of priority submission. Google warns against both claims on the same page.
• Hundreds of links for a small fee. Buying links to manipulate rankings breaks Google's spam policies and can harm your visibility (Google Search Central).
• Secret methods. If the provider will not explain what they do, you cannot judge whether it helps or hurts.
• Reports full of rankings for words nobody searches for, and nothing about enquiries or sales.
• Cold emails promising page one. Google advises caution towards SEO firms that contact you out of the blue.
• Write access to everything during an audit. Read access to Search Console is enough at that stage.

How long before SEO pays off?

SEO is slow at first. Google writes that every change takes time to show up, and that some changes take effect within hours while others take several months (Google Search Central). Technical fixes and new pages for less competitive searches often show results first. Ranking for the most contested keywords usually takes much longer. We go through the timeline in detail in How long does SEO take?

To judge whether a price makes sense for you, do a simple sum rather than looking for an industry average:

1. Work out what a new customer is worth to you in profit, not revenue.
2. Divide the monthly fee by that number. The result is how many extra customers a month SEO needs to bring in to pay for itself.
3. Ask yourself whether that is realistic, given how many people search for what you sell and how many enquiries you already get from Google.

Remember that good rankings keep working after the work slows down, unlike ads, where the traffic stops when the budget does. If you want to understand why it works that way, read How does SEO work?

How does CaptivateClick price SEO?

We do not publish a fixed price list, because the work depends on the factors above. This is how it works instead:

• You start with a free review of your site, your competitors and your keywords.
• You then get a written proposal with a fixed monthly fee and a clear list of what is included, so you know what you are paying for before you decide.
• If you need a deeper SEO audit first, the scope and the price are fixed before we begin.

Read more about how we work on our SEO services page.