SEO Pricing (2024)

Key Takeaways

• 49% of businesses pay for SEO because it’s more cost-effective than doing in-house
• 48% of businesses pay $2500 – $7500 per month for SEO
• 64% of businesses pay $50 – $100 per hour for SEO
• 43% of businesses pay an agency for SEO services
• A monthly retainer is the most popular SEO pricing model
• A monthly retainer had the highest satisfaction rating
• Price is the second most important factor in choosing an SEO provider
• Company size influenced all aspects of SEO pricing, including price, pricing model, service provider, and reasons for outsourcing

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Several factors determine SEO pricing, including:

• Agency, contractor, or consultant’s experience
• Agency, contractor, or consultant’s location
• SEO pricing model, like monthly or hourly
• Business size, like startup or enterprise
• Scale of SEO strategy
• Status of existing SEO strategy, like your backlink profile’s strength
• SEO goals
• And more

You’ll often find that the more experienced SEO providers, from agencies to consultants, have higher search engine optimization prices. Similarly, an SEO strategy with a bigger scale, like an enterprise-level plan, will see higher SEO costs.

Whether you’re looking to provide or buy SEO services, there are a few SEO pricing models to know:

SEO servicesshould include the following:

• SEO audit
• SEO reporting
• On-page, off-page, or technical SEO optimizations

They should also include what your business requires.

That’s why many SEO service providers (WebFX included) will create custom SEO packages. At WebFX, for example, we structure these plans to meet your unique needs, from your preferred involvement level to yourkey performance indicators (KPIs).

There is no right answer when it comes to choosing an SEO pricing model. The best payment plan will depend on your business and its SEO needs. That’s why we’ve compiled each plan’s best use cases and some examples of how businesses use those plans:

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Related Pricing Guides

Reviewed By: Trevin Shirey

Trevin is the VP Director of Business Development at WebFX. He has worked on over 450 marketing campaigns and has been building websites for over 20 years. His work has been featured by Search Engine Land, USA Today, Fast Company, and Inc.

When it comes to SEO costs and business size, larger companies will often pay more for SEO:

Why do larger businesses have higher SEO optimization costs? A few reasons, including:

1. Reputation: A company’s brand is invaluable — especially when that brand is well-known. That’s why larger businesses will partner with established SEO providers (who have higher SEO rates) vs. younger SEO companies or consultants (who have lower SEO prices).
2. Complexity: Larger organizations often have more complexity, from approval processes to unique website builds. That’s why they’ll often partner with enterprise-level SEO providers. These providers have enough experience working with larger brands to deliver a custom and effective SEO program.
3. Scale: Compared to smaller businesses, larger companies operate on a bigger scale. From more products to more markets, they need a partner that can meet their SEO needs, and for that, they often need an SEO company that specializes in enterprise SEO — which costs more.

What this means is experience and capabilities matter in search engine optimization pricing. You will pay more for those benefits if you want to hire an SEO provider with more experience, resources, and capabilities.

Source data

Monthly SEO costs by business size

Hourly SEO costs by business size

Project-based SEO costs by business size

Learn how SEO costs change based on who you hire, an agency, consultant, contractor, or freelancer:

Compared to other service providers, SEO agencies cost more. Why? A few reasons, including:

1. Capabilities: With more team members and tools, search engine optimization companies can do more than other SEO service providers. Using WebFX as an example, your business can access SEOs, web developers, reporting software, and more — everything you need to do SEO.
2. Experience: SEO agencies will also have more knowledge that you can put to work. If your business needs an SEO expert, plus an ecommerce SEO specialist, for instance, an SEO company can often meet those needs. For a consultant, freelancer, or contractor, that’s more difficult.
3. Scalability: Most SEO companies can scale with a business’s SEO needs. That’s convenient because your organization doesn’t have to hire a new SEO agency. Instead, you can upgrade your SEO plan to start capturing more traffic. In comparison, other SEO providers can’t do that.

Multiple factors will determine whether your business partners with an agency, consultant, contractor, or freelancer — and pays their SEO prices. Besides cost, you’ll also need to consider what you want to accomplish with SEO, how involved you want to be in SEO, and what else you need from a provider.

Source data

Monthly SEO costs by service provider

Hourly SEO costs by service provider

Project-based SEO costs by service provider

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Related Resources

Monthly SEO services usually include the most deliverables, like:

• SEO audit
• Analytics setup and/or verification
• Reporting
• Keyword research
• Content creation
• On-page optimizations
• Off-page optimizations
• Technical optimizations

When you invest in monthly SEO, you can accomplish goals like:

• Growing search engine optimization’s ROI via continuous SEO
• Keeping pace with competitors, algorithm changes, and more

In some cases, monthly SEO services will specialize in specific on-page or off-page areas, like:

• Link building
• Content creation
• Page speed improvements

Typically, hourly SEO services will include deliverables like:

• SEO audit
• SEO recommendations and/or implementation
• Reporting

When you invest in hourly SEO, you can accomplish goals like:

• Completing SEO maintenance tasks
• Monitoring for SEO issues

Deliverables for project-based SEO services vary widely, but some common SEO projects include:

• SEO audit
• Project-specific optimizations, like link building
• Reporting

When you invest in project-based SEO, you can accomplish goals like:

• Completing a larger initiative, like migrating a website to a new domain
• Getting recommendations on how to achieve a goal, like improving sitewide page speed

Very few businesses should invest this much in SEO.

When investing in SEO from an agency, this budget only bakes in enough time for reporting and only a few deliverables. If this is your budget, and you have the time, you may see better results by investing in SEO software to help with your search engine performance.

Only a few businesses should invest this much in SEO each month.

This SEO budget is common amongst very small businesses, such as one person companies and side businesses. Typically, this budget will get you a local SEO strategy for a location or two.

With this budget, it’s important to note that you won’t get a ton of in-depth expertise or resources from multiple experts.

Some small businesses typically invest $1000 – $2500 in SEO.

If you’re a smaller business, this budget is where you might start with your SEO investment.

You won’t get a ton of deliverables or top-level consultation at this rate, but you can find SEO partners who specialize in working with small businesses that can provide ongoing deliverables in this price range.

A majority of businesses tend to invest $2500 – $5000 per month in SEO.

This budget range tends to be a popular starting point for many stable, growing businesseswho are looking to invest in SEO. You should be able to get access to experienced practitioners who are able to provide custom strategies and deliverables at this level.

Many businesses also tend to invest $5000 – $10,000 per month in SEO.

At this price range, you’re able to scale into key strategic SEO initiatives happening across your website instead of focusing specifically on deliverables. You should have access to both expertise and time to put a robust game plan together to further your SEO efforts.

A majority of SEO-dependent businesses invest $10,000 – $25,000 per month in SEO on average.

Businesses who are dependent on SEO for the majority of their leads tend to have this SEO budget. SEO dependent businesses rely on organic search as a key channel for leads and revenue growth. A high percentage of their revenue is coming from organic search, and as a result, tend to scale their spend past the previous levels.

Larger, enterprise-level businesses who are SEO-dependent will sometimes spend $25,000 – $50,000 per month on SEO.

Like we mentioned before, SEO-dependent businesses rely on search for their leads and the majority of their revenue, so they tend to scale their budget past the previous amounts we mentioned.

Occasionally, few enterprise-level, SEO-dependent businesses will spend over $50,000 per month on SEO.

This amount of investment can occur during key growth stages where the scale and expertise agencies provide is needed but companies operating at this level typically have multiple team members who are dedicated to SEO efforts and will bring an agency to support what they are doing instead of leading the charge.

Create a realistic SEO budget for your business with these steps:

1. Review your budget allocations: First, learn how your business allocates its marketing budget. How much is available for search engine optimization? Depending on what you find, you may need to get buy-in for a bigger piece of your company’s marketing spend.
2. Outline your requirements: Think about your goals, preferring outsourcing level, and provider type to get started. You should also consider location since that affects SEO pricing — do you want to outsource your SEO to a different country?
3. Evaluate your SEO: Next, determine how much work your provider will need to do to start pushing toward your SEO goals. Does your site have a strong backlink profile or weak on-page SEO, for example? Use a free SEO tool like Screaming Frog to get started on this step.
4. Determine your preferred budget: Use your research to build your desired budget. For example, if you want to partner with a U.S-based agency for hourly SEO, your business will likely need a monthly spend of $6000 (if requesting 40 hours of work per month).
5. Make your pitch: If needed, prepare a pitch for your budget proposal. Your pitch should demonstrate SEO’s potential bottom-line benefits, like attracting more qualified leads or driving more online sales, plus the advantages of outsourcing your SEO.

Choose the best SEO payment plan for your business with these steps:

1. Determine your SEO needs: What does your company want to accomplish with SEO? For example, do you want to fix a specific issue, like improving your page speed? Or do you want to build and maintain an ongoing SEO strategy?
2. Outline your timeline: Next, build your preferred timeline. Are you migrating your site to a new domain in the next 30 days and need an SEO’s feedback? Or are you looking to optimize your website over time?
3. Check your SEO budget: Research how much your organization has budgeted for SEO and when those funds are available. For example, does your business release department funds annually, quarterly, or monthly? Your answer will influence your payment plan options for SEO services.
4. Choose your plan: Based on your research, determine the best option for your business. For ongoing or long-term SEO projects, consider monthly SEO. In comparison, check out hourly or project-based SEO for short- or one-time SEO projects.

Evaluate a service provider’s SEO prices with these steps:

1. Review the plan deliverables: First, learn what you’re paying for by reviewing the deliverables. If what you’re getting for the price you’re paying seems too good to be true, it probably is — and you’ll often see this with cheaper SEO prices.
2. Ask questions: Meet with the agency, consultant, or freelancer to discuss their pricing. Does the provider charge overtime, for example, after a certain number of hours worked on the account? What other additional fees should your team know about?
3. Read the contract: Next, read the contract. Most providers will share a contract once you enter discussions with them. You’ll want to check for a few things, like whether you’re receiving a short-term promotional price and whether the agency can change rates without notice.

Spot cheap SEO pricing with these steps:

1. Look at the price: First, look at the price. When SEO costs less than $500 per month or less than $50 per hour, it’s often cheap SEO. Most providers offering cheap SEO will advertise their prices, like “SEO for $100 / mo.”
2. Check the deliverables: You can also spot cheap search engine optimization pricing by looking at the deliverables. Compare the deliverables to the price, and if it seems too good to be true, restart your search for SEO services. Alternatively, some low-cost SEO plans won’t share their deliverables at all.
3. Read the reviews: What do people say about this SEO company, consultant, or freelancer online? Is the trend mostly negative, positive, or somewhere in between? Look at the most common complaints and see if they relate to results, quality of work, or client satisfaction.

Request custom SEO pricing for your business with these steps:

1. Outline your requirements: Get the most accurate quote by listing your requirements, like whether you’re looking for full-service SEO or something more specific, like off-page SEO. You can even include anything you don’t want in your SEO plan.
2. Research your options: Optimize your time by limiting your SEO pricing requests to your top picks. Read reviews and case studies to see if an agency, consultant, or freelancer is a good fit for your team. Then, contact them with your request and requirements.
3. Meet your potential provider: Schedule some time with your potential SEO provider. They’ll use this time to ask you some follow-up questions to understand your business better so they can build an accurate quote for your team.

On average, SEO costs $2500 to $7500 per month. How much your business pays for monthly SEO will depend on several factors, including your company’s size, your service provider’s location, and your SEO package’s deliverables.

For the most accurate monthly SEO pricing, request a custom quote.

SEO, also called search engine optimization, refers to strategies that help improve your website’s visibility in organic search results. These strategies include keyword research, content creation, and more.

Here’s a break down of some of the most important SEO factors to pay attention to if you want toincrease your site’s rankings in search results.

• Add keywords to your URLs, page titles,meta descriptions, headings, and site content: When search bots crawl your site, they look for keywords to identify the topic of your content. This helps them display your site in relevant search results. Ultimately, when your site ranks higher in search results, more people can find and contact your business.
• Optimize alt attributes: You will also want to add alt tags to your multimedia. Since search engines can’t “read” multimedia elements, you need to include alt tags — text descriptions of your multimedia. This gives helps search engines betterunderstand and indexyour multimedia content.
• Update your content regularly: Site visitors and search engines alike love freshly updated, quality content. Keeping your site updated on a regular basis will keep visitors and search bots coming back for more. Regular site updates can also help you establish yourself as a leader in your industry.
• Optimize technical site elements: You can also take some time to optimize technical elements of your site like your coding andpage speed. Cleaning up your code and ensuring that your page loads at top speeds can boost your rankings in search results and encourage people to spend more time on your site This year, page speed will also become a major mobile search factor, so you need to ensure your site loads quickly across a number of devices.
• Implement responsive design: In order to improve user-friendliness, you’ll want to implement responsive design. With responsive design, you can ensure that your site looks great and performs well, no matter the device a visitor uses to access it. In other words, responsive design allows smartphone, desktop, and tablet users to have the same great experience on your site.
• Streamline navigation: Search engines want to reward sites that provide great experiences for visitors. To make sure people can find the information they need on your site, you’ll want to streamline your navigation. Instead of cluttering your navigation with links, only link to the most important pages. From there, you can link out to other pages deeper in your site.
• Answer users’ questions:You’ll also want to make sure your site provides valuable answers to visitors’ questions. You can do this by creating custom content. Be sure to conduct keyword research to discover trending topics in your industry, and publish fresh content to answer questions and improve users’ experience on your site.

If you want to improve your rankings in search results for keywords related to your business, paying attention to and optimizing these SEO factors is a great place to start. However, keep in mind that SEO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it strategy. In other words,it takes some time to see results, but they’re well worth the wait!

Why do you want to rank at the top of search results? The answer is simple.

Since75% of peopledon’t look past the first page of first results. This means that if you want more customers to find and contact your business, you need to rank in top search results for keywords and phrases related to your business.

Research shows that the first page oforganic search resultshas a71% click through rate (CTR), while pages two and three have a combined CTR of only 6% — a drastic decline.

Moral of the story? The higher you rank in search results, the more people will find and visit your site. This means that you can reach more customers and earn more revenue for your business.