SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost? [+Free Calculator]

Monthly SEO costs

Hourly SEO costs

SEO costs per project

When it comes to paying for SEO services, there are three main ways to do so: by project, by hour, and by month. How you pay for SEO can depend on a number of factors like your budget and the services you need.

• Per month: Because SEO is an ongoing strategy, the majority of businesses (36%) opt to pay monthly for their SEO. Ongoing monthly SEO will include multiple projects, audits, and ongoing optimizations. Monthly costs are around $2,500 per month according to our research.
• Per hour: If your business needs consulting expertise or opts to hire a freelancer, you’ll likely pay per hour. For example, an SEO consultant can charge an hourly rate for providing advice and expertise in a specific area of your strategy. Hourly rates are around $51 per hour on average.
• Per project: If you need support with implementing a specific SEO task or project, then you can opt to pay your provider per project. This option is useful if you have the expertise and resources in-house to manage your SEO strategy. It usually costs around $1,000 per project on average.
• Performance-based fee: A performance-based fee requires you to pay once your SEO strategy achieves an agreed-upon result or metric, like traffic or impressions driven. The chosen result or metric will decide your cost.

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:

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

For many businesses, the cost of SEO can seem too expensive — which isn’t the case. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies, especially compared to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

The reason why SEO seems expensive is that:

1. SEO takes time to work: Your pay-per-click ads can start driving revenue as soon as you launch them. That’s not the case with SEO. With SEO, you need to optimize your site for four to six months before seeing a return on investment (ROI).
2. SEO takes multiple skills: From producing SEO content to optimizing page speed, SEO requires multiple skill sets to work — that’s why many businesses outsource SEO. Full-service agencies (like WebFX) fill these skill gaps so you don’t have to, which is why they have higher SEO rates.
3. SEO takes experience: Search isn’t new. Companies of all sizes now invest in SEO. If your business wants to compete, you need a reputable SEO partner. Compare these providers (and their higher SEO costs) to other, less reputable SEOs, and SEO will seem expensive.

Look at the cost of SEO as an investment, and you’ll start seeing why SEO is cost-effective, like:

1. SEO works 24/7: Pay-per-click ads stop working for you as soon as you stop paying. In comparison, search engine optimization drives continuous results, helping your business drive traffic, leads, and sales 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
2. SEO drives conversions: Search engines like Google use more than 200 ranking factors, including ones related to user experience, like page speed. Optimizing for these user-focused elements often leads to higher conversion rates because you reduce pain points in your conversion process.
3. SEO targets the whole funnel: You can target top-, middle-, and bottom-of-the-funnel users with SEO. The advantage here is your business widens its reach, connecting with users throughout their journey and then nurturing them to conversion with SEO and other digital marketing strategies.

With organic search generating more than 40% of online revenue, SEO is a worthwhile investment.

Yes! SEO is definitely worth the cost! An SEO strategy helps you keep your business visible when users search for information or products and services related to your business. That means you keep your brand top of mind, improve your online visibility, and keep potential customers visiting your website and learning about your business. 

With an effective strategy, you’ll be able to generate high-quality leads, conversions, and sales for your company, driving a steady flow of revenue for the long run and contributing to bottom-line growth. Overall, SEO is crucial to growing your company and expanding into new areas and territories.

When it comes to the cost of SEO, there is no one-size-fits-all investment. Factors like your industry, business, size, and more will all affect the investment needed to compete with your competitors and ensure an effective strategy for driving revenue.

We analyzed 500 keywords and looked at metrics of the top-performing pages in organic search across multiple industries! See what we uncovered below!

Backlink requirements

The number of referring domains needed to rank competitively varies depending on your industry, requiring more of an invest in building links for some companies over others. 

Content velocity

The amount of content you need to publish to remain competitive in the search results can vary by industry.

Overall, SEO costs can vary widely, and the amount you spend will depend on your unique company, including your industry, needs, goals, and more.

While returns from SEO can vary, high-quality campaigns can yield a 748% ROI, meaning you can earn $7.48 for every dollar you invest. 

The return you receive will depend on your SEO expertise, or the SEO expertise of your chosen agency, and the effectiveness of your strategy. 

It’s important to remember that SEO is a long-term strategy and results usually aren’t seen overnight. It can take a few months to start seeing a return on your investment.

SEO can take around three to six months to start seeing results, and momentum builds over time. For some businesses, it can take a few months longer. SEO is a long-term, ongoing strategy, so it requires time and expertise to see a continuous return on investment from your efforts.

If you’re wondering what SEO services include that makes them take longer to show results than other marketing strategies, there are a few key reasons:

• It takes time for Google to find, crawl, and index pages
• It takes time to implement SEO best practices across your site
• It can take extra time to optimize larger websites
• SEO content requires writing, editing, publishing, and optimizing time

While SEO can take a little bit of time to start seeing the increased rankings and traffic, it’s one of the best digital marketing strategies out there for increasing revenue and your bottom line.

Once you have your strategy established, you’ll be able to consistently drive traffic, leads, and conversions for your business for the long haul.

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 marketing 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 plans.
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.

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 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.