Why SEO pricing is confusing
Search engine optimisation is a bundle of different kinds of work: engineering fixes to the website, research into what customers search for, content that answers those searches, and earning links and mentions from other sites. Agencies package these differently and price them differently, which is why one proposal is a one-time fee and another is a monthly retainer with no end date.
Understanding the components makes the pricing understandable and, more importantly, lets you see what a proposal leaves out.
The three ways SEO is priced
Project fee for a technical audit and fixes. A defined piece of work: crawl the site, find the technical problems that suppress rankings, and fix them. The size and complexity of the site set the fee. It should end with a report of what was found, what was fixed and what remains.
Monthly retainer for ongoing SEO. Content production, continuous technical improvements, link and mention building, and reporting. The number of content pieces per month and the competitiveness of the keywords drive the price: a local service business and a national B2B brand need very different programmes. Ask for the retainer to state exactly what each month includes.
Hourly or day rates. Used for consulting, training an in-house team, or specific tasks. Reasonable for advice; poorly suited to delivering results because the incentive is time rather than outcomes.
What a technical SEO audit should include
- Crawl of every page with status codes, redirects and canonical tags
- Indexing review in Google Search Console: what is indexed, excluded and why
- Core Web Vitals and page speed on mobile, with the causes identified
- Site architecture and internal linking analysis
- Structured data review and validation
- Title, description and heading audit against search intent
- Duplicate content, thin pages and cannibalisation between pages
- Mobile usability, security headers and HTTPS configuration
- A prioritised fix list with effort and impact for each item
- Ideally, the fixes implemented, not just recommended
The last point matters most. A document of recommendations that your developers never get to is worth very little. Ask whether the agency can implement changes directly in your codebase.
What a monthly retainer should include
- A keyword and topic map tied to the services you sell and the questions your buyers ask
- A content calendar with an agreed number of pieces per month, written by people who understand the subject
- Continuous technical improvements as the site grows
- Link and mention acquisition through content, partnerships and digital PR, never purchased links
- Conversion tracking so leads, not just traffic, are reported
- A monthly report and review call that explains what changed and what happens next
Warning signs
Guaranteed first-page rankings. Nobody controls Google. Guarantees are either for keywords nobody searches for or a sign the agency uses tactics that will get you penalised.
Reports full of vanity metrics. Impressions and rankings for hundreds of irrelevant keywords look impressive and change nothing. Ask for leads and enquiries by channel.
No access to your own accounts. Search Console, Analytics and ad accounts must be owned by you with the agency as a user. If the agency owns them, you lose the history when you leave.
Content produced in bulk with no expertise. Search engines are increasingly good at recognising generic content. Ten thin articles a month do less than two that genuinely answer a buyer’s question.
Links bought from networks. Cheap, fast and eventually harmful. Ask where links come from and how.
Fixed-term contracts with no exit. Reasonable SEO work shows early signals within three months. A twelve-month lock-in before any evidence is a bad sign.
How long until results
Technical fixes often show in Search Console within weeks as pages get re-crawled. Rankings for competitive service keywords typically take three to six months to build as content is published and authority grows. Local searches often move faster. A proposal that promises overnight results or that cannot explain the expected timeline is not being straight with you.
Where to start
If your site has never had a technical audit, start there. It is a defined project with a clear deliverable, and it tells you whether a retainer is worth it or whether the site itself needs fixing first. Our technical SEO team runs audits and implements the fixes in your code, then proposes a retainer only where the numbers justify it. You can request the free Technical SEO Audit Checklist from this site to run a first pass yourself, or ask for a quote and we will scope the audit for your site.