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

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.

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.

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.

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, which can make SEO more affordable.

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.

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.

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-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.

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.

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.

Many SEO agencies provide custom vs. flat-rate pricing because every project is different.

Project factors that can influence your SEO rates include:

• Existing SEO
• Focus area, like assisting with a website migration or providing ongoing SEO
• Project goals
• Project duration

That’s why — before signing with a client — it’s important to consult and understand their goals and expectations.

How much time you (or your team) invests into each account will also influence your SEO rates.

That’s why it’s common for SEO companies to quote clients based on the number of hours given.

If you’re operating solo as a consultant, your time, experience, and availability often work together to shape your SEO prices.

Payment structure includes:

• Pricing model, like monthly, hourly, or project-based
• Payment structure, like upfront, milestone, or post-project

As an example, if your agency accepts project-based contracts, you might require clients to pay 50% of project costs at the start and then the remaining 50% at the end.

The duration of the project or service agreement can also impact how much you charge for SEO.

For example, if you’re an SEO contractor, your agreement could be:

• Provide 40 hours of SEO assistance for six months
• Provide 1 hour / week of SEO consulting following the six-month contract

The demand for SEO services and your solutions will also determine how much your SEO services cost.

If you’re in high-demand, that often indicates trust and value in your offerings.

When this scenario happens, freelancers and agencies can become overwhelmed, which is why many will increase their SEO prices to decrease demand and make it manageable.

The experience required for your SEO roles will impact your SEO costs significantly.

For example, hiring an SEO with four years experience vs. eight years experience will lead to drastically different compensation.

Got SEOs? The more you have, the more SEO costs you’ll have, since each will receive compensation regardless of employment status (full-time, part-time, etc.).

Your company’s location can also affect employee compensation. Businesses located in California, for example, will pay different rates than organizations in Minnesota.

Companies that support remote work will adjust compensation based on the employee’s location.

So, if the employee lived in Minnesota vs. California, their compensation would align more with the cost-of-living in Minnesota vs. California.

Your SEO tech stack will also shape your SEO costs. While free SEO tools exist, in-house SEO programs often benefit from some paid options like Ahrefs or Semrush.