SEO Pricing: What Our Packages Include and What They Cost

SEO pricing at Affordable SEO Expert starts at $999 per month for local and small business work and $1,699 per month for national, ecommerce, and SaaS work. Both tiers carry the same seven-item scope, including audit, penalty checks, keyword research, on-page SEO, and link building. No contract, no setup fee.

TL;DR

• Local and small business SEO starts at $999 per month. National, ecommerce, and SaaS SEO starts at $1,699 per month [1].
• Every tier carries the same seven deliverables. Lower tiers do not drop work [1].
• Price moves with market difficulty, meaning competitor count, competitor strength, geography, and site condition, rather than with feature count.
• No contract and no setup fee, so maximum exposure before a decision point is one month’s fee [1].
• Published industry ranges run from $500 to $50,000 per month, and several of the guides producing them disagree with themselves on their own pages [2][3].
• Six questions will separate any two quotes: scope, staffing, month-one versus month-six plan, first-year total, exit terms, and reporting.

One liner: A published scope beats a published range, because a range tells you what other businesses paid and a scope tells you what your money buys.

Key Numbers

What You Get for the Money: The Full Inclusion List

In short: Every package carries the same seven items. What changes between tiers is the difficulty of the market being worked, not the amount of work being done.

Before any price makes sense, you need the scope of work: the specific list of what a provider will do each month. A price without a scope is a number you cannot compare to anything. Most SEO pricing pages publish the number and leave the scope vague, which is what makes quotes so hard to line up side by side.

Here is the full scope, identical at every tier [1]:

• No contracts or sign-up fees. Month to month, with nothing owed to start.
• Comprehensive SEO audit. A read of what is holding the site back, prioritized rather than exhaustive.
• Algorithmic and manual penalty identification. An algorithmic penalty is a ranking loss triggered automatically by a Google update. A manual penalty is a human reviewer at Google acting against the site. Both suppress rankings, and neither shows up in a normal traffic report as anything other than a decline.
• Keyword research and analysis. Which searches can realistically be won, and which ones are worth winning.
• On-page SEO. Titles, headings, internal links, structure, and content depth on the pages that matter.
• Custom link building and brand strategy. Earned authority built for your site, not bought from a list.
• Ranking improvements guarantee.

That third item is the one most quotes omit, and it can invalidate everything else. A site under an unresolved manual penalty will not rank no matter how many links point at it. Finding that first is the difference between a campaign that works and six months of spending against a ceiling.

One honest note about the sixth item. When 500 US professionals were surveyed about which SEO services they valued, link building ranked among the least valued, alongside video SEO and performance reporting [2]. That result probably says more about how link building is usually sold than about whether links matter. Bought links from a vendor list produce nothing measurable, which is a fair thing to feel cynical about. Earned links from real sites still move rankings, and they take outreach time that a cheap package cannot fund. The work stays in the scope because the version that works is the version nobody can automate.

Section seven turns this list into a checklist you can hold a competing quote against.

Our SEO Pricing, Tier by Tier

In short: Monthly SEO plans start at $999 for local and small business work and $1,699 for national, ecommerce, and SaaS work. Both are floors, and both carry the same seven-item scope.

An SEO retainer is a fixed monthly fee for ongoing work, which is how most SEO gets bought. Two tiers cover most situations, and the table below shows which is which.

Both figures are a price floor, meaning the starting point rather than the final number. A site with deeper technical problems or a harder keyword set costs more. What does not happen is a tier dropping deliverables to hit a lower price.

Local and small business SEO

At $999 per month, this covers businesses whose customers search with a city attached. One location, or a service area around it. The work concentrates on Google Business Profile strength, city and service page structure, local citations, and the technical cleanup that lets any of it register.

For context, a survey of 500 US professionals reported the most common monthly SEO spend falling between $1,001 and $2,500 [2]. This tier starts below that band and carries the audit, penalty check, keyword research, on-page work, and link building described above.

You are in this tier if your customers are within driving distance and your competitors are other local businesses.

National, ecommerce, and SaaS SEO

At $1,699 per month, this covers businesses competing without a geographic limit. The keyword sets are larger, the competitors are better funded, and the content requirement is heavier. An ecommerce catalog or a SaaS feature set means more pages to structure and more search intent to map.

You are in this tier if a customer in another state is worth the same to you as one down the road.

Smaller markets and why the price drops

Market size moves the number. On the electrician page, SEO for cities under 150,000 people starts at $799 per month, below the standard local tier, with a separate figure for cities above 300,000 [1]. Fewer competitors bidding for the same searches means less work to reach the same position.

Retainers, projects, and the other pricing models

The monthly retainer is the most common way SEO is bought, but it is not the only one. In the survey of 500 professionals, retainers accounted for 27.2 percent of spending and project-based fees for 26.2 percent, close to even. Hourly rates followed at 17.8 percent and performance-based fees at 16.2 percent [2].

Each model fits a different situation. Project pricing suits a defined piece of work with an end, such as a migration or a one-time audit. Hourly suits advice rather than execution, where you have staff who can implement and need direction. Performance-based pricing ties payment to results, which sounds appealing and tends to require agreeing in advance on which results count. Retainers suit ongoing work, which is what most ranking improvement actually is.

Consultant or agency

Firm size tracks budget in a predictable way. The same survey found businesses spending between $1,001 and $2,500 per month are more likely to work with consultants, while agencies lead among businesses spending more than $10,000 per month [2].

That split is worth understanding before you shop. At the budget levels on this page, a consultant is what the data says most comparable businesses choose, and the reason is structural. An agency carries account managers, strategists, and specialists, and that overhead has to be covered by the fee. A consultant carries less of it and can put more of the same budget into work.

Why Price Tracks Market Difficulty Instead of a Service Menu

In short: Same work, different price. What moves the number is how hard your market is to win, not how many features got added to your plan.

Two plumbers can buy an identical seven-item scope and pay different amounts. That looks strange until you look at what each one is actually up against.

Four things move the price:

• How many competitors bid for the same searches. A city with eight plumbers and a city with eighty are different problems.
• How strong those competitors already are. Established sites with years of earned links take longer to pass than new ones.
• How large the geography is. One neighborhood, one metro, or fifty states means a different number of pages, profiles, and search patterns to cover.
• What condition the site starts in. A clean site needs optimization. A site with indexing problems, a penalty, or a bad migration behind it needs repair first.

Keyword difficulty, the standard term for how hard a search is to rank for, is a function of the first two. It is a property of the market, not of the package.

A plumber in a 90,000-person city and a plumber in a 900,000-person metro get the same audit, the same penalty check, the same keyword research, the same on-page work, and the same link building. One has far more ground to cover. The price reflects the ground, not the checklist.

The alternative model, where each tier adds features and the cheap tier omits them, is common because it makes the upgrade path obvious. It also means the lowest tier is the one missing the work. Pricing by market keeps the work constant and lets the difficulty vary, which is closer to how ranking actually behaves.

Paying more in a harder market is not a surcharge. A first-page position in a market with eighty competitors is worth more than one in a market with eight, and it costs more to hold.

What No Contract and No Setup Fee Change About Your Risk

In short: Your maximum exposure before you can walk away is one month’s fee. No term commitment, and nothing owed before the work starts.

A setup fee, sometimes called an onboarding fee, is a one-time charge billed before monthly work begins. There is none here. Combined with month-to-month billing, that means the local tier puts $999 at risk before you have a decision point, and the national tier puts $1,699 at risk. Nothing is owed on signing, and nothing is owed on leaving.

The standard structure works differently. A six or twelve month term with an onboarding charge concentrates the commitment into the window before any result exists, which is also the window where you know the least about whether the provider was the right choice.

Worth saying plainly: month-to-month is not a reason to leave in week three. SEO compounds, and the work in months one and two mostly sets up what months four through eight collect. A campaign judged at thirty days will look like a failure whether or not it is one.

What the arrangement does change is who carries the burden of proof. With no term, the case for continuing gets made every month, by the work rather than by the paperwork.

The published scope also carries a ranking improvements guarantee [1].

Switching cost, the practical friction of moving to another provider, is the real thing that keeps clients in place. A contract protects revenue. Work worth losing protects the relationship.

How These Numbers Compare to Published Industry Ranges

In short: Published ranges run from $500 to $50,000 per month. That spread is wide enough to be true of everything and useful for nothing, and several of the guides producing it disagree with themselves.

Four things about that table are worth knowing before you use any number in it.

The guides disagree with themselves. WebFX’s pricing page carries three different hourly figures at the same time. Its summary box says $51 per hour, its meta description says $75 to $100, and its body text says $75 to $200 [3]. Same page, same day.

Guidance and rate cards diverge. The same page tells small businesses to expect $1,500 to $3,500 per month, then publishes its own entry package at $5,900 for the first two months and $2,900 per month after, alongside a separate block stating services start at $3,000 [3]. The advice and the price list point in different directions.

The consensus is narrower than it looks. WebFX’s own footer lists SEO.com and Nutshell as WebFX properties [3]. Three of the pages ranking for SEO pricing questions come from one company, so the apparent agreement across independent sources is partly one source repeated.

The best data on that list is not new. The Neil Patel survey is the only entry built on primary research with a stated methodology, and it was published in April 2025 and last updated in November 2025 [2]. It remains the most useful number in the table. It is also roughly a year old, which is worth knowing when a page presents it as current.

None of this makes the ranges dishonest. Averages drawn from thousands of engagements with different scopes will spread out, and a page summarizing them inherits that spread. The limitation is structural. A range tells you what other businesses paid. It cannot tell you what your money buys, because it is not attached to a scope.

That is the difference this page is built on. Two numbers, one inclusion list, both published before you call.

What Gets Cut When SEO Is Priced Too Low

In short: At a low enough monthly fee, the budget stops covering the work. Original research, manual link building, and senior attention are the first three things to go.

Start with the arithmetic. A $300 monthly fee has to cover a provider’s time, their tools, and their margin. Whatever is left buys a few hours. A single competent audit takes longer than that, and it happens once. Ongoing work at that price is a schedule problem before it is a strategy problem.

Three things disappear, in this order:

• Original research. Keyword selection stops being analysis and becomes whatever a tool exports on the default settings.
• Manual link building. Earned links take outreach. Cheap links come from networks that sell them, and search engines are good at recognizing the pattern.
• Senior attention. Nobody experienced looks at the account. The work happens, and no one asks whether it is the right work.

There is a tell in how a low quote is written. Cheap packages promise volume, a number of keywords, blogs, or links per month. A real scope promises work, meaning specific things that will be done to specific pages. When a quote leads with a count, it is describing output, not outcome.

The downside is not only wasted spend. Low-cost link building can attract a manual penalty, and a penalized site ranks worse than it did before the engagement started. That is the scenario where cheap SEO costs more than it saved.

The number that should give any buyer pause

Here is a finding that cuts against the tier on this page, and it deserves a direct answer rather than a quiet omission. In the survey of 500 professionals, more than 25 percent of businesses spending between $500 and $2,500 per month said SEO was not worth the price they paid [2]. The $999 tier sits inside that band.

Two things explain most of that dissatisfaction, and neither is the price. The first is expectation setting. A business told to expect results in sixty days will judge the engagement at sixty days and conclude it failed. The second is scope drift, where the work delivered turns out to be thinner than the work described, and the client has no document to check it against.

Both are answerable. The scope on this page is published rather than described in a sales call, so you can hold the work against it. The timeline in the FAQ below is stated before you buy rather than after you complain. Neither guarantees a result. Both remove the two most common reasons buyers in this band end up feeling misled.

Some of this may land badly if $999 per month is genuinely out of reach right now. That is a real position and worth saying out loud. If it describes you, the highest-value work is free: claim and complete your Google Business Profile, ask satisfied customers for reviews, and make sure every service you offer has its own page with a clear description. None of that requires a retainer, and all of it holds value later.

How to Compare Two SEO Quotes Without Guessing

In short: Send both providers the same six questions. The differences that matter show up in the answers, not in the monthly number.

Two quotes at $1,200 and $1,800 per month tell you almost nothing on their own. The gap could be scope, market difficulty, seniority, or margin. These six questions surface which one it is.

• What exactly gets done each month? Ask for the list. A scope names work on specific pages. A weaker answer names counts of keywords, blogs, or links.
• Who does the work? The person on the sales call is often not the person on the account. Ask which is which.
• What happens in month one compared to month six? Early work is diagnosis and repair. If the answer is identical for both months, nobody has planned the campaign.
• What is the total first-year cost, including any setup fee? Multiply the monthly rate by twelve, then add every one-time charge. A $2,900 monthly plan with a $5,900 two-month start is not a $34,800 year, it is higher, and the monthly figure alone hides that.
• What are the exit terms? Notice period, minimum term, and what happens to your content, accounts, and links if you leave.
• What gets reported, and how often? Rankings alone are not enough. Ask whether calls, forms, and organic traffic quality appear in the report.

Send all six to both providers in the same email. Answers that arrive quickly and specifically are their own signal.

This page exists because a price without a scope cannot be compared to anything. The two figures here are published with the full inclusion list attached, which means you can run these six questions against them before anyone calls you. If the answers line up with what you need, get a free quote and we will talk about your market.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does SEO cost per month?

SEO costs between $999 and $1,699 per month at Affordable SEO Expert, depending on whether you compete locally or nationally. Across the wider industry, published figures range from $500 to more than $50,000 per month, with the most commonly reported band falling between $1,001 and $2,500.

What is included in an SEO package?

Seven items are included at every tier: no contract or sign-up fee, a comprehensive SEO audit, algorithmic and manual penalty identification, keyword research and analysis, on-page SEO, custom link building and brand strategy, and a ranking improvements guarantee. The list does not shrink at the lower price.

How long does SEO take to show results?

Early movement often appears within a few months, while meaningful traffic and first-page rankings usually build over six to twelve months. The timeline depends on your competition, your site’s current authority, and what condition the site starts in. A campaign judged at thirty days will look like a failure whether or not it is one.

Can you negotiate SEO pricing?

Published prices here are floors rather than opening offers, so there is no padding to negotiate away. What is adjustable is scope and pace. A business with a smaller budget can narrow the target keyword set or slow the content schedule, which changes the timeline rather than the quality of the work.

Why do businesses hire an outside SEO provider?

The most common reason is a lack of internal expertise, cited by 36.4 percent of surveyed businesses. Needing to launch a campaign quickly followed at 23.8 percent, and a lack of internal resources at 17.2 percent. Dissatisfaction with in-house results accounted for 7.8 percent.

Is $999 per month enough for SEO?

It is enough for most local and small business markets, where the competitor set is other local businesses. It is usually not enough for a national campaign, a large ecommerce catalog, or a market with well-funded incumbents. Market difficulty decides this, not the number itself.

Do I need a contract for SEO services?

No contract is required here, and no setup fee is charged. Billing is month to month, so your maximum exposure before a decision point is a single month’s fee. Many providers do require six or twelve month terms, so confirm this in writing before signing anything.

What is the difference between an SEO consultant and an SEO agency?

An agency carries account managers, strategists, and specialists, and that overhead is covered by your fee. A consultant carries less of it. Survey data shows businesses spending $1,001 to $2,500 per month lean toward consultants, while agencies lead among businesses spending more than $10,000 per month.

Why do SEO pricing guides give such different numbers?

They summarize thousands of engagements with different scopes, so the spread is inherited from the underlying data. Some guides also disagree with themselves. One widely cited pricing page publishes three different hourly figures on the same URL and recommends a monthly budget lower than its own entry package costs.

Does a higher SEO price mean better results?

Not on its own. A higher price is justified when the market is harder, the site needs more repair, or the scope is genuinely larger. A higher price attached to the same scope in the same market is margin. Comparing the scope rather than the number is the only way to tell which you are looking at.

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Affordable SEO Expert

Anatoly Zadorozhnyy

Sources

1. Affordable SEO Expert, pricing and service pages, https://www.affordableseoexpert.com/, accessed August 2026.
2. Neil Patel, SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost?, survey of 500 US professionals, published April 18, 2025, updated November 7, 2025.
3. WebFX, SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost?, updated August 2026.
4. Shopify, How Much Does SEO Cost in 2026? Pricing Guide, 2026.
5. SEOProfy, SEO Pricing Guide: How Much Does SEO Cost in 2026?, updated March 2026.