WHAT THINGS COST
How much does SEO cost per month?
A monthly number, what it buys, and why the cheap version is worse than nothing.
Short answer · updated
Ongoing search work costs $1,500 a month here, paid in advance and stoppable at the end of any paid month. A one-off technical audit, with no retainer attached, is $900.
Start with the audit, not the retainer
When a site is invisible, the reasons worth finding first are structural ones that can be ranked, not a hundred small ones. A $900 audit finds them in five days and gives you a list ranked by impact, written so your own developer can work through it. You can buy that and give the list to your own developer; it does not come with a retainer.
A retainer bought before anyone has looked is how agencies sell twelve months of activity reports. If a studio proposes a monthly fee before diagnosing anything, ask what the first month will contain.
What a retainer actually contains
Technical fixes as the site changes, content briefs and optimisation of pages that already exist, and measurement of what actually moved, reported monthly by the person who did the work.
There is no minimum term. A retainer that needs a twelve-month contract to survive is not working, and the contract is there to stop you leaving rather than to make you stay.
Why very cheap SEO is worse than none
Below a few hundred dollars a month, a report can only be filled with things that are cheap to produce: directory submissions, low-quality links, and content written at scale by a model and published under your name. All three now carry a real risk of a penalty, and a penalised domain costs far more to recover than the work cost to buy.
We do not sell backlinks or link exchanges at any price, and we will say so if you ask. That is not a moral position, it is that the practice stopped working and started costing.
What nobody can sell you
A guaranteed ranking. Position depends on what your competitors do, what the algorithm does, and what the searcher actually wanted, none of which a studio controls. Our terms say this in writing, and a promise of a position cannot be backed by anything a studio controls.
What can be promised is the work and the measurement: what was changed, what it was measured against, and what happened afterwards.
Why a month, rather than a project
A technical audit is a project: it ends, and you are left with a list. Search itself does not end. Pages change, competitors publish, the algorithm moves, and a site that was correct in March is not automatically correct in September.
If all you need is the list, buy the audit at $900 and hand it to your own developer. The retainer is for when search is a channel you depend on rather than something you tried once.
Worked example
| Scenario | How it adds up | Total |
|---|---|---|
| 1 month of Search Retainer | 1 × $1,500 | $1,500 |
| 3 months of Search Retainer | 3 × $1,500 | $4,500 |
| 6 months of Search Retainer | 6 × $1,500 | $9,000 |
| 12 months of Search Retainer | 12 × $1,500 | $18,000 |
Monthly work is paid monthly in advance and can be stopped at the end of any paid month, so a longer row is a choice made month by month, not a commitment.
Included and not included
What each package lists as included, and what its page lists as not included.
| Package | Included | Not included |
|---|---|---|
| Search Retainer$1,500/mo |
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| Technical SEO Audit$900 |
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What moves the number
- Pushes it up
- A large site, several languages, a competitive category, content production
- Pushes it down
- A small site with one or two structural problems. Buy the audit
- Should not affect it at all
- How badly you want to rank. A price that reacts to urgency is not a price
Frequently asked questions
Is there a minimum term?
No. Monthly work is paid monthly in advance and stops at the end of any paid month, with no notice period and no cancellation fee.
Who actually does the work?
The studio. Nothing is resold to a third party, and the person writing your report is the person who made the changes.
Can you guarantee a ranking or an amount of traffic?
No. Anyone who does is either guessing or selling you something that does not exist, and our terms say so in writing. What we commit to is the work each month and a report that states what moved and what did not, measured the same way every time so the figures can be compared.
Do you fix the problems or just find them?
Find, rank and explain. Fixing is quoted separately, and the list is written so you can hand it to your own developer.
When do I pay?
Fixed-price work is paid in full before it starts. Monthly work is paid monthly in advance and can be stopped at the end of any paid month. Prices are in US dollars.
Can I stop a monthly package, and is the month refunded?
Stop any time. The month already paid runs to its end and is not refunded; nothing further is charged. There is no notice period and no cancellation fee.
The packages behind these numbers
Each one lists its full scope, what it excludes and how the work runs.
- Search Retainer Ongoing search work, measured and reported every month. $1,500/mo
- Technical SEO Audit Every issue keeping your pages out of search, ranked by impact. $900
The studio behind them: Search visibility.