Ask five agencies what SEO costs and you'll get five different answers. Some will quote $99 a month. Others will quote $5,000. It's no wonder business owners are wary.
Here's an honest look at what SEO costs in Australia, what you should be getting, and how to tell good value from money down the drain.
First, what are you actually paying for?
SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work that helps your website show up when people search Google for what you do. It usually covers:
- Technical upkeep: making sure your site loads quickly, works on mobile, and that Google can read every page properly
- On-page work: page titles, descriptions, headings, internal links and content that match what your customers search for
- Local SEO: your Google Business Profile, reviews and location signals (more in our local SEO guide)
- Content: new pages and articles that answer the questions your customers ask
- Reporting: showing you what's changed and what it's bringing in
The price mostly comes down to how much of that you need, and how competitive your industry and area are.
Typical SEO pricing in Australia
Most ongoing SEO in Australia is charged as a monthly retainer. As a rough guide:
- A few hundred dollars a month generally covers keeping a site healthy and visible. Good for businesses that are already in decent shape in a smaller market.
- Around $800 to $2,000 a month is common for small and medium businesses actively trying to grow, with new content, more keywords and more competitive towns.
- $2,000+ a month is usually for businesses in competitive city markets, or those running several locations or service lines.
Regional businesses often need less than they think, because they're competing with a handful of local businesses, not every company in Sydney.
What our SEO starts at
Our SEO plans start at $290 + GST a month for SEO maintenance. That covers monthly upkeep of your page titles, descriptions and internal links, image optimisation, Google Business Profile upkeep including a monthly post, monitoring for broken links and indexing problems, and keeping your structured data up to date so search engines and AI assistants read your site correctly.
For businesses that want to grow into new towns, services or regions, we offer larger plans with more keywords, new content each month, landing page work and competitor tracking. We'll always recommend the smallest plan that will get you where you want to go.
Red flags in cheap SEO offers
- Guaranteed first place on Google. Nobody can guarantee that. Not even Google.
- "Thousands of backlinks". Cheap bulk links from low-quality sites can get your website penalised.
- Long lock-in contracts with no clear deliverables. You should know what's being done each month.
- Reports full of rankings for terms nobody searches. Ranking first for something with zero searches is worth nothing.
- No local presence. If they can't name the towns you work in, they probably don't understand your market.
Questions to ask any SEO provider
- What exactly will you do each month?
- Which searches are you targeting, and how many people actually search them?
- How will you measure success? (The right answer involves enquiries, not just rankings.)
- What's the minimum term, and what happens after it?
- Who owns the work if we stop?
How long before you see results?
Quick fixes to a poorly set up site can make a difference within a few weeks. Most meaningful SEO results take three to six months to build, and keep building after that. That's why most SEO plans have a minimum term. Be wary of anyone promising overnight results.
Is SEO worth it?
For most local businesses, yes, as long as you measure it by enquiries and work won, not by rankings alone. We measure enquiries, not just positions, and we report in plain English.
If you'd like an honest view of what your business needs, get in touch or call us on 02 6766 9988. If you're weighing up SEO against paid ads, we'll compare the two in an upcoming post.
