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    What SEO costs in 2026

    The Ahrefs SEO pricing survey collected responses from more than 1,100 SEO professionals about what they charge. It is the most useful pricing data available because it comes from people doing the work rather than agencies advertising their own rates.

    Who you hire Average monthly retainer Average per project
    Agency $3,209 $9,507
    Consultancy $3,250 Varies by scope
    Freelancer $1,348 Lower, typically single deliverables
    All respondents $2,917 $2,501 to $5,000 most common

    Hourly rates follow the same pattern. The survey average is $111 an hour, with the most common band at $75 to $100. Ninety percent of respondents charge $150 or less, and only about 4 percent break $200.

    Local SEO runs cheaper than the overall average at $1,557 a month because the competitive set is smaller and the work is more contained. That figure is the honest floor for a real local campaign, not the price of a national one.

    One caveat on that data: the survey covers providers worldwide, so the very low end reflects offshore pricing that a US agency cannot match on cost. For a US team doing genuine technical work, content, and link building, campaigns realistically start around $2,000 a month.

    The Three Ways SEO Gets Billed

    Monthly Retainer

    The default for ongoing work, and the model we use for most of our SEO clients. You pay a set amount and get a defined scope every month. It exists because SEO compounds, and stopping and starting wastes the momentum you already paid for.

    Hourly

    Usually $100 to $150 for experienced US practitioners. This model suits a second opinion or advising an in-house team, which is what our SEO consulting covers. It is a poor fit for ongoing work because billing by the hour turns every phone call into a decision about whether the call is worth the money.

    Per Project

    A fixed fee for something with a finish line. Agencies average $9,507 per project across the survey, though smaller defined scopes land well under that. A technical SEO audit or an ecommerce SEO audit fits this model well, since both have a clear deliverable and an end date.

    What You Should Pay Based on Your Business

    Your market decides your budget far more than your size does. A twelve-person law firm in a competitive city needs more SEO budget than a forty-person manufacturer nobody is competing against online.

    Business type Realistic monthly range Where the money goes
    Local service business, one location $1,500 to $3,000 Google Business Profile, local citations, service pages, reviews
    Multi-location or franchise $3,500 to $10,000 and up A location page and profile per market, plus keeping them from cannibalizing each other
    Ecommerce store $3,000 to $10,000 and up Product and category pages at scale, crawl and duplicate content control
    Law firms, medical, financial $3,000 to $7,500 Expensive keywords, competitors with a decade of backlinks
    National brand $10,000 to $25,000 and up Broad keyword footprint, content teams, technical complexity

    These ranges sit above the global survey averages on purpose. They reflect US agency pricing, and they line up with the $3,209 agency average once you account for the fact that averages include both the smallest local campaigns and the largest enterprise ones.

    Local Businesses

    Local sits lowest because the work is contained. One market, one Google Business Profile, a manageable keyword set. If you serve a single city and someone quotes you $6,000 a month, ask what justifies quadruple the local average.

    Multi-Location and Franchise

    The opposite story. Every market you add is another set of pages, another profile, and another chance for your own locations to compete against each other in search. That last problem is the one owners never see coming, and it is why franchise and multi-location work scopes higher than expected.

    Ecommerce

    Prices high because the technical surface area is enormous. Filters spawning duplicate URLs, thin product pages, faceted navigation eating crawl budget. WooCommerce brings its own particular set of problems, which is what our WooCommerce SEO work exists to solve.

    The Six Things That Move the Price

    Your Competition

    Ranking a plumber in a town of 40,000 is not the same job as ranking a personal injury firm in Miami. Harder keywords need more content and more authority, and both cost money. This is the biggest variable on the list, and it has nothing to do with how big your company is.

    What Shape Your Site Is In

    Some engagements spend their first two months clearing wreckage: broken architecture, years of redirect chains, pages Google gave up crawling. A site built properly needs far less remedial work, which is why we build search into the site itself rather than treating it as something you attach afterward.

    How Many Pages and Locations You Have

    A ten-page service site and a 4,000-product catalog are not comparable. Every location, product line, and service area multiplies the work.

    Content Volume

    Usually the largest line item in any SEO budget. Four pieces a month costs more than one, and content that needs real subject expertise costs more than content that does not. Anyone quoting cheap content is either using AI badly or paying someone fifteen dollars an article, and both show.

    Link Building

    Slow, manual, expensive work, and the first thing cut when a provider needs to hit a low price. If a proposal never mentions links, that is not an oversight.

    How Fast You Want to Move

    SEO has a speed limit, but more budget means more fronts advancing at once. Doubling spend will not halve the timeline. It does mean technical, content, and links progress together instead of in sequence.

    What Your Money Should Be Buying

    Price with no scope attached is a meaningless number. Here is what each budget level should actually include.

    Monthly budget What should be in it
    $1,500 to $2,500 Technical fixes, on-page work, Google Business Profile management, a small content cadence, and monthly reporting. Suitable for a contained local campaign.
    $2,500 to $5,000 All of the above, plus consistent monthly content, active link building, competitor tracking, and reporting tied to leads rather than rankings alone.
    $5,000 to $10,000 All of the above, plus a larger content program, digital PR, development support, and strategic input on the wider marketing picture.
    $10,000 and up Dedicated resources, enterprise technical work, and multi-market or multi-language scope.

    If a proposal cannot tell you which row you are buying, you have your answer about whether it is worth the money.

    Why Cheap SEO Costs More

    The ninety-nine-dollar-a-month offers are real. So is what they deliver: nothing a human touched. Automated reports, directory submissions worth zero, and sometimes links from networks that earn you a manual penalty.

    We have cleaned up enough of these to know the pattern. The fee was never the expensive part. The expensive part is the year of standing still while competitors moved, plus the cleanup afterward. Disavowing a poisoned backlink profile or unwinding a botched migration regularly costs more than doing the work properly would have in the first place.

    There is a floor to what real SEO costs because it is skilled labor, and skilled labor has a price. Run the arithmetic yourself. At an average US rate of $111 an hour, a $600 monthly retainer buys about five hours. Five hours a month does not cover a technical fix, a piece of content, and a link-building push. Something is missing, and it is usually all three.

    How We Price It

    We quote on scope, not on package tiers that pretend every business needs the same thing.

    Before we put a number on anything, we look at your site, your competitors, and which keywords actually drive revenue in your market. That tells us what the work involves. Then we scope it, price it, and write down what lands in your account each month so nobody is guessing later.

    No Lock-In

    If the work is not producing, you should be able to walk. Long contracts protect agencies that expect to underdeliver.

    Reporting a Human Can Read

    Traffic, rankings, leads, revenue. Not forty pages of vanity metrics designed to look like effort.

    The Same People Throughout

    You talk to whoever is doing the work, not an account manager relaying messages between you and someone you never meet.

    We Are Also Your Developer

    Being a web design shop as well as an SEO one changes what we can do. When rankings need a technical fix or a page needs rebuilding to convert, we do not have to negotiate with your developer.

    Most of our SEO engagements land between $[X] and $[Y] a month depending on scope. For an actual number, get a free consultation. We will look at your site first and tell you straight whether the work is worth what it would cost.

    Questions We Get Asked Constantly


    Working with a US agency, most businesses spend between $2,000 and $7,500 a month. The survey average for agencies is $3,209, and contained local campaigns average $1,557.


    It depends on whether your customers search before they buy. If they do, organic traffic converts better than paid and keeps working after you stop paying for it. If nobody searches for what you sell, spend the money somewhere else. We will tell you that on the call rather than take the work.


    Early movement usually shows in 60 to 90 days, with meaningful ranking change around month six. Payback depends on your margins. A business closing $20,000 contracts gets there faster than one selling $30 products.


    Freelancers average $1,348 a month and suit contained scopes. Agencies average $3,209 and run technical, content, and links at once. Consultants average $3,250 and generally advise rather than execute. Pick based on whether you need someone to do the work or tell your team how.


    Because it is almost never the same work. One includes four content pieces and active link building, the other includes neither. Compare deliverables line by line rather than headline prices, and ask both providers exactly what lands each month and who performs it.


    Not with us. Some agencies require six or twelve months, which is defensible given how long SEO takes, but a contract you cannot exit when the work is bad exists to protect them, not you.


    Some of it, yes. Google Business Profile, basic on-page work, and writing your own content are all learnable. Technical SEO and link building are where most owners stall, and where a consulting engagement often makes more sense than a full retainer.


    Ready for a Real Number?

    Ranges are useful for planning and useless for deciding. We will look at your site, your competitors, and your market, then tell you what the work involves and what it costs.

    Get a Free Consultation Or see what we have built for businesses like yours.

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