How Much Does SEO Cost? Learn All About SEO Pricing in 2024

How much search engine optimization (SEO) costs depends on your business and service provider. From your strategy’s scale to your agency’s location, multiple factors determine how much you’ll pay for SEO. However, the average cost of SEO is between $1500 to $5000 per month. Learn more now!

How much does SEO cost?

SEO costs $1500 to $5000 for monthly SEO services, $100 to $3000 for hourly SEO services, and $5000 to $30,000 for one-time SEO projects on average. SEO prices vary and depend on factors like your SEO pricing model, SEO provider’s reputation, and more.

SEO cost breakdown by pricing model

Check out the table below for a summary of SEO costs broken down by pricing model!

What determines SEO costs?

Multiple factors determine SEO costs, including the following:

Goals

Your result expectations will impact how much you pay for SEO. For example, are you looking to:

• Grow traffic by 1%, 15%, or 50% in the next five years?
• Double organic leads in the next six months?
• Get all URLs ranking on page one in the next two years for a designated keyword list?

Depending on your goals, you might need a competitive SEO package that prioritizes SEO optimizations across your site. In some cases, SEO providers might even say they won’t work with you because of unrealistic goals.

Note: This isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good sign the provider knows their stuff.

If you’re considering paying for SEO, outline your goals before researching SEO companies.

Agency reputation

Agencies with a bigger reputation in the industry will often have higher SEO pricing.

The higher price tag comes with a few benefits, including the following:

• Trust: You can often trust these companies to manage your SEO.
• Performance: These SEO firms often have a reputation for delivering results, like traffic.
• Capabilities: Seasoned SEO agencies can also do more, like local and ecommerce SEO.
• Convenience: You can also find all-in-one service packages with these providers.

In comparison, SEO providers without a reputation will often charge less for SEO. If you opt to partner with one of these SEO companies or consultants, we recommend digging deep into their past performance so you can ensure you’re hiring a reputable firm.

Strategy scale

Your SEO strategy vs. the SEO strategy of Coca-Cola likely have the following differences:

• Needs
• Considerations
• Goals
• Scope

Strategy complexity scales with business size.

Typically, larger companies will have more complex SEO strategies, which results in higher SEO costs. They require leading experts in search engine optimization. In comparison, smaller companies have campaigns on a smaller scale that SEO professionals of varying experience levels can match.

Website size

Site size also affects search engine optimization pricing.

That’s because bigger sites naturally target more keywords than smaller sites, which causes them to need more SEO maintenance to maintain and grow these rankings. In comparison, smaller websites have fewer places for SEOs to work.

This SEO pricing factor coincides with strategy scale, too.

SEO focus

Where you’re looking to focus your SEO efforts can also affect the average cost of SEO.

Some examples include:

• Ecommerce SEO
• Local SEO
• Voice search SEO
• Technical SEO
• Off-page SEO
• On-page SEO
• SEO audits

Depending on your needs, you might need one-time SEO assistance vs. ongoing SEO work. Or, you might need a specialist in ecommerce SEO vs. traditional SEO, which could result in higher or lower costs depending on the market’s saturation.

Existing SEO

Your website’s existing SEO can also impact how much you pay for SEO services.

If you’re investing in SEO audit services, for example, and hundreds of issues are found, you could pay a significant amount to fix those issues. In comparison, if the audit only found a few errors, you could remedy the problems in-house or pay a lower fee to have them fixed by a professional.

While shopping for SEO services, many providers will offer to audit your SEO for free.

When this happens, request they walk your team through the audit results. Some disreputable providers will claim your website has thousands of issues to push you to purchase their services. When pressed, though, they’ll rarely follow through in showing you the evidence of these issues.

Add-ons

Add-on services can also affect your search engine optimization costs. Some examples include:

• SEO content writing
• Graphic design
• SEO audit
• SEO web design

These can even extend to other digital marketing services, like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, which you’ll most often find with full-service agencies. The advantage here is that you can create a bundled service and manage your outsourced marketing in one place.

Agency location

Where your SEO agency (or SEO consultant) operates can also affect your SEO costs.

If your agency resides in an area with a high cost of living, like California, you will see higher SEO prices. That’s because they have higher operating costs, from rental space to employee salaries. However, partnering with an SEO provider where the cost of living is lower can result in lower SEO rates.

Pricing model

There are a few different pricing models for SEO services, including the following:

• Monthly
• Hourly
• One-time

Your pricing model will affect your SEO costs.

For instance, if you partner with an SEO provider for a one-time project, you might pay less than if you hired someone at an hourly SEO rate to complete the project. In most cases, what’s more important here is how you invest in SEO — is it one-time, ongoing, or as needed?

As a tip, search engine optimization is best as an ongoing investment because it requires maintenance.

Tools

Your SEO company’s toolkit can also affect your SEO costs.

Over the years, it’s become more common for SEO agencies to use third-party or in-house toolkits for:

• Auditing website SEO
• Completing SEO optimizations
• Reporting SEO performance
• And more

In our experience, these providers often have higher SEO prices to offset their technology costs.

Higher costs due to technology aren’t bad, especially if you’re getting value from that tech. What is important to consider, though, is how sudden price shifts by third-party providers can impact your SEO costs overnight. In comparison, in-house toolkits tend to have more stable pricing.

Is it worth paying for SEO?

When it comes to whether SEO is worth the cost, we recommend asking yourself the following questions:

• Are you meeting your SEO goals?
• Are you beating competitors in search?
• Are you fulfilling your other role obligations?

What these questions aim to determine is if you’re struggling with the following:

• Time
• Goals
• Knowledge

If you find yourself struggling, whether it’s with meeting SEO goals, completing SEO work, or fulfilling other job obligations, it’s worth considering paying for SEO services from a reputable SEO provider, like an agency or consultant.

Get custom SEO pricing for your business

When outsourcing your SEO, you’ll find immense value in working with a provider that builds a custom solution for your company. If that’s what you’re looking for, we speak your language. Complete our contact form today to receive custom SEO pricing for your business!