SEO PRICING

Transparent, no fine print, no lock-in.

Transparent SEO pricing

What SEO actually costs in Australia. Published, not hidden.

Most SEO agencies hide their pricing behind a "Book a call" button. We don't. Three standard tiers, what's actually included, an honest range on what you'd pay. Final price depends on your starting point, your competitive set, and how aggressive you want to be. Always month-to-month. Always a fixed quote before we start.

Tier 1

Starter

For local Perth businesses

$1,200 - $2,000

per month, ex GST

Google Business Profile setup & management
Local citation cleanup & consistency
Up to 10 priority keywords tracked
On-page optimisation of 8 key pages
2 to 4 quality links per month
1 blog post per month
Review acquisition system
Monthly report + 30-min review call

Get a Starter quote

Tier 2

Growth

For businesses scaling SEO

$2,500 - $4,500

per month, ex GST

Everything in Starter, plus:
Up to 30 priority keywords (brand + non-brand)
Suburb landing page programme (5 to 10 pages)
Technical SEO audit + monthly monitoring
2 to 3 blog posts per month + clustering
5 to 10 quality links per month
CRO review + A/B testing recommendations
Monthly report + 60-min strategy call

Get a Growth quote

Tier 3

Enterprise

For serious operators

$5,000+

per month, project-scoped

Everything in Growth, plus:
Senior account director (no junior handoff)
Custom strategy across locations & verticals
Programmatic SEO (location, category, dynamic)
Advanced technical (international, multi-domain)
Digital PR + high-authority link building
Dedicated content team with sector specialists
Custom reporting (BigQuery, Looker, etc.)

Talk to a director

All prices ex GST. Month-to-month. Cancel any time with 30 days' notice.

Which tier fits your business?

Match your profile to the tier that gets you the fastest measurable lift.

A three-column decision diagram matching business profiles to the three pricing tiers. Starter fits single-location service businesses with revenue under fifty thousand a month. Growth fits multi-suburb service businesses and growing e-commerce with revenue between fifty thousand and three hundred thousand a month. Enterprise fits national brands, multi-location operations, and large e-commerce with revenue above three hundred thousand a month.

Not sure? Take the free audit and we'll recommend the tier that fits your starting point.

Full feature comparison

Side by side. No fine print.

Feature	Starter	Growth	Enterprise
Tracking & reporting
Keywords tracked	Up to 10	Up to 30	Unlimited
Monthly report	✓	✓	Custom (BigQuery / Looker)
Strategy call	30 min monthly	60 min monthly	Weekly or fortnightly
Senior account director	,	,	✓
On-page & technical
On-page optimisation	8 pages	20+ pages	Site-wide
Technical SEO audit	,	✓	Advanced (multi-domain, intl.)
Schema markup	Basic	Full	Custom + AI-ready
Core Web Vitals work	Audit only	Fix templates	Engineering-led
Content production
Blog posts per month	1	2 to 3	4 to 8
Cluster strategy	,	✓	Multi-pillar
Suburb landing pages	,	5 to 10 over 3 months	Programmatic
Sector specialist writer	,	,	✓
Off-page & authority
Quality links per month	2 to 4	5 to 10	10+ + digital PR
Digital PR programme	,	,	✓
Brand mention monitoring	,	✓	✓
Local & CRO
Google Business Profile	✓	✓	Multi-location
Review acquisition	✓	✓	✓
CRO review	,	✓	Full programme + testing
AI search
AI Overview tracking	,	✓	✓
llms.txt + AI schema	,	✓	✓
ChatGPT / Perplexity citation tracking	,	,	✓
Commercial terms
Lock-in contract	None	None	None
Notice period	30 days	30 days	30 days
Fixed quote before start	✓	✓	✓

What actually drives your monthly cost

Two clients in the same tier can pay very different amounts. Six factors explain the spread.

Where your retainer dollars actually go

Indicative allocation, not a fixed split. Final breakdown depends on what your audit surfaces.

Three horizontal stacked bar charts showing how a typical SEO retainer is allocated across work types at each tier. Starter retainers go mostly to local and on-page work, with smaller slices for content, links, reporting, and tools. Growth retainers spread more evenly across on-page, technical, content, links and PR, with smaller slices for reporting and tools. Enterprise retainers add a strategy line item and shift heavily into content and digital PR.

Not a retainer fit? Hourly & project pricing

For one-off audits, migrations, training, or in-house team coaching.

Hourly consulting

$195 / hour

For specific questions, in-house team coaching, or technical reviews. Minimum 1 hour, billed in 30-minute blocks.

Project

Technical SEO audit

$2,000 - $5,000

28-point audit, written report, prioritised fix list, 60-minute walkthrough. 7-10 business days.

Project

Site migration

$3,500 - $10,000

Pre-migration audit, redirect map, post-launch monitoring, rollback plan. Domain change, CMS replatform, or HTTPS.

Project

Content brief sprint

$2,500 - $6,000

Keyword research, intent mapping, briefs for 10-20 pages your team can write to. Cluster-organised.

Project

SEO training day

$3,000

Half-day or full-day workshop for your in-house team. On-site in Perth or video. Tailored to your stack.

Project

AI search readiness

$1,500 - $4,000

Entity audit, schema review, llms.txt setup, AI Overview gap analysis. Standalone or pre-retainer.

Pricing red flags

What cheap SEO actually buys, and what to refuse outright

$199/month "guaranteed page-one"

Google itself says no agency can guarantee rankings. Anyone who does is selling spam links or stuffing a deck. Walk away.

12-month lock-in contracts

If they need a year of locked revenue to keep you, the work probably won't earn its keep on its own. Month-to-month is the honest standard.

"X backlinks per month" packages

Volume targets force agencies to buy from networks. Quality matters. Five good editorial links beat fifty from a PBN.

No technical audit before quoting

Any quote written without a crawl is guessing. We do a free audit before quoting. So should they.

AI-spam content production

"40 blog posts a month" for $800. It's auto-generated, unedited, and Google's helpful-content updates have been eating it alive since 2023.

Hidden management or tooling fees

The quote is $1,500 but the first invoice is $2,400 once "platform fees" are added. Get the all-in number in writing before signing.

SEO pricing FAQs

The questions every Australian business asks before signing.

Why are some SEO agencies cheaper?+

Three honest reasons. (1) They're offshore-staffed with no Australian content review. (2) They're new and underpricing to win clients. (3) They're selling templated tactics that don't actually move rankings in 2026. The cheapest agency we've ever seen ($299/month) was buying $2 links from PBNs, which got the client's site partially deindexed within four months. Cheap SEO is almost always expensive SEO once you count the recovery cost.

How long until I see results?+

Local pack visibility in 60-90 days for Starter clients. Non-brand organic lifts in 90-120 days for Growth clients on new pages. Head terms typically take 6-12 months. Pages that already rank can lift in 4-6 weeks after on-page work. We publish a 90-day projection in every Growth+ proposal so you know what to expect by month.

Do I need to commit to a contract?+

No. Month-to-month with 30 days' notice. The reason: we've been doing this since 2007 and our retention rate is 87% past month 12. Lock-in contracts exist for agencies that can't earn the next month. We'd rather earn it.

Can I move between tiers?+

Yes, in either direction, with 30 days' notice. Most Growth clients started on Starter for the first 3-6 months while the foundation work was happening, then graduated. A handful of Enterprise clients started on Growth, hit their ceiling, and stepped up. The fixed quote is recalculated at the change.

What's not included in the retainer?+

Three things, listed up front: (1) ad spend on Google or Meta (that's a separate Paid service); (2) third-party tool licences if you want your own Ahrefs/SEMrush seat; (3) developer-time fixes on your CMS if your dev team isn't available. The retainer covers everything we do; out-of-scope work is quoted separately before it starts. We've never sent a "surprise invoice" in 18 years.

Is GST included in the prices above?+

No. All prices are quoted ex GST, in line with Australian B2B practice. Invoices show GST as a separate line item. We're GST-registered (ABN 79 640 240 240, Code Research Pty Ltd trading as The SEO Company).

Do you offer performance-based pricing?+

Not as a default. Pure performance pricing usually means the agency cherry-picks easy keywords, gets paid on them, and ignores the work that actually compounds. We've trialled hybrid models (retainer + bonus on agreed milestones) with three clients in 2025-2026. Happy to discuss if your business model fits, but it's the exception, not the rule.