The short version
SEO costs between roughly $500 and $5,000 a month for most small and mid-sized businesses, with $3,209 the average monthly retainer across 439 providers surveyed by Ahrefs. Hourly work commonly runs $100 to $150. The number matters less than what it buys, which is why two quotes at the same price are rarely comparable.
How much SEO costs depends less on your business than on how the provider prices. The same work is sold by the month, by the hour and by the project, and the same monthly figure can buy four optimised pages or forty.
This page gives the surveyed ranges, explains the three pricing models, and sets out what actually changes a quote. It also explains why comparing two SEO quotes is genuinely hard, and what to ask to make it easier.
What is the average cost of SEO per month?
Short answer
The average monthly SEO retainer is $3,209 across 439 providers surveyed by Ahrefs, and the most common hourly rate band is $100 to $150. Small business retainers commonly sit well below that average, in the $500 to $2,500 range.
Averages hide an enormous spread. The same survey shows providers charging under $500 a month and others charging five figures, because the label covers everything from a monthly audit to a full content and link programme.
A useful way to read any average here is as a market midpoint rather than a target. What you should be comparing is deliverables per dollar, not the dollar figure.
The three ways SEO is priced
- Monthly retainer: a recurring fee for ongoing work. The most common model, and the hardest to compare between providers.
- Hourly: a rate for time spent, commonly $100 to $150. Honest for advisory work, poor for ongoing programmes because your incentive and theirs diverge.
- Project: a fixed price for a defined piece of work, such as a technical audit or a migration. Easiest to compare, and the least common for ongoing SEO.
Productized packages are a fourth shape: a retainer with the deliverables counted and the price published, which is what this site sells.
Our published SEO prices, and what each one buys
These are the prices published on the SEO service page, billed monthly with the scope fixed by a brief you approve first. They are spec, not a market average.
Tracked keywords set how many pages are in play, which is the only thing that really separates the tiers. The audit, the fix list and the report format are identical at every level.
Scale has no page cap, so its bar is drawn at thirty purely to keep the chart readable. Uncapped means uncapped.
Switch metric to compare cost against volume. Prices come from our own service page, not from a market survey.
Why do SEO quotes vary so much?
Short answer
SEO quotes vary because the work is undefined at the point of quoting. Two providers can price the same brief at $800 and $4,000 and both be reasonable, because one is optimising four pages and the other is running content, technical work and outreach together.
Site size, competition and current technical health all move the number, but they explain less of the spread than scope does.
The second driver is who is doing the work. A freelancer, an agency and a white-label vendor have very different cost bases, and the same output can carry very different margins.
What actually changes the price
- How many pages need work, which sets the volume of everything else
- Whether content is included, or only briefs and recommendations
- Whether link building is included, which is usually the largest single cost line
- Site health at the start: a migration or an indexing problem is front-loaded work
- Competition, which decides how much of anything is enough
Ask a provider which of those five their number assumes. A quote that does not state its assumptions cannot be held to them later.
What a year of SEO costs at each tier, cumulatively
M1 $450 Starter $950 Growth
Month one is the audit, the keyword lock and the first batch of page work. Nothing is invoiced before you approve the brief.
M2 $900 Starter $1,900 Growth
By month two the fix list is either implemented or waiting on your developer, and the report says plainly which.
M3 $1,350 Starter $2,850 Growth
Month three is the earliest point at which two reports can be laid side by side and read as a trend rather than a snapshot.
M4 $1,800 Starter $3,800 Growth
A quarter of spend is the honest unit for judging whether the deliverables are arriving as specified.
M5 $2,250 Starter $4,750 Growth
Nothing changes in the cadence here. The line is straight because the price is fixed, which is the whole argument for buying this way.
M6 $2,700 Starter $5,700 Growth
Half a year in, on Growth, the content briefs commissioned start to outnumber the pages that existed at the start.
M7 $3,150 Starter $6,650 Growth
Cancelling stops the line. There is no minimum term to buy out and no exit fee to discover here.
M8 $3,600 Starter $7,600 Growth
Two thirds of a year of Starter is still less than four months of Growth, worth checking against what you actually need.
M9 $4,050 Starter $8,550 Growth
By this point the keyword set itself deserves re-arguing, which is what the Scale tier schedules quarterly.
M10 $4,500 Starter $9,500 Growth
Ten months of Growth passes the $9,500 mark, roughly what a single mid-level in-house hire costs in salary alone for a quarter.
M11 $4,950 Starter $10,450 Growth
Yearly billing takes two months off either line. The scope is unchanged; only the invoice count differs.
M12 $5,400 Starter $11,400 Growth
A full year on Starter costs $5,400 and on Growth $11,400. Those are the numbers to hold against any quote you receive.
Cumulative spend at our published prices. Arrow keys step through the months. This is a cost chart, not a results forecast.
Is cheap SEO worth it?
Short answer
Cheap SEO is worth it when the deliverables are small and stated, and worthless when the price is low because the work is a report nobody acts on. The failure mode of budget SEO is not bad work, it is invisible work: activity with no output you can point at.
A $300 a month retainer can be perfectly reasonable for a five-page site with one location. The same fee on a 500-page ecommerce site buys a rounding error.
The test is not the price. It is whether the provider will tell you, in counts, what will exist at the end of the month.
What does SEO cost at the enterprise end?
Short answer
Enterprise SEO runs into five figures a month. Chris Palmer of chrispalmer.org, an SEO agency owner, has published a worked example of a 1,484-page law firm build priced at $8,983 a month, which shows how the cost scales with page count rather than with ambition.
That example is useful for one reason only: it makes the per-page cost structure visible. It is not a benchmark for a small business, and stretching an enterprise figure to justify a small retainer is a common sales trick worth recognising.
Chris Palmer is cited here as a public source, not as an affiliate of this business. His published example is enterprise scope and does not describe small-business pricing.
How do I compare two SEO quotes?
Short answer
Ask both providers for deliverables as counts and for a list of exclusions. If one says "ongoing optimisation" and the other says "10 pages optimised, 30 keywords tracked, no link building", you can compare the second to anything and the first to nothing.
The three questions that make quotes comparable: what will exist at the end of month one, what is explicitly not included, and what happens if I want to stop.
A provider unwilling to answer those in writing is not necessarily bad. They are selling judgement rather than output, and that is a different purchase with a different risk.
What should a small business budget for SEO?
Short answer
A small business with a modest site can start meaningfully at $300 to $500 a month, provided the deliverables are counted and the site is small enough for that volume to matter. Below that, the fee usually buys a report rather than changes.
The more useful budgeting question is duration rather than amount. SEO compounds and stops compounding when it stops, so six months of a smaller retainer beats two months of a larger one in almost every case.
Keep reading
What to take away
- The surveyed average is $3,209 a month, but the spread is so wide that the average tells you little on its own.
- Scope explains more of the price difference between quotes than site size or competition does.
- Deliverables as counts, plus a list of exclusions, is the only reliable way to compare two providers.
- Duration matters more than monthly amount: SEO stops compounding the month you stop paying.
Sources
Last updated 2026-08-18.