“It depends” is true, and it is also how buyers get exploited
SEO genuinely cannot be priced from a menu — a five-page local site and a 40,000-URL store need different work. But the industry uses that as cover for quotes with no scope attached, which is how businesses end up paying a monthly fee with no way to tell whether they are getting anything for it.
Retainers with no defined scope
A monthly figure with no stated deliverables means you cannot judge value or hold anyone to anything. It is the single most common way SEO budgets get wasted.
Deliverables priced as activity
“Four blog posts and 10 links a month” prices output, not outcome. It is easy to hit and tells you nothing about whether it moved the business.
Guaranteed ranking packages
Nobody can guarantee position — whoever offers it is either buying links or targeting terms with no competition. Both cost more than they appear to.
Cheap retainers that cannot work
Below a certain level there is not enough time in the budget to do anything meaningful. The work becomes reporting on itself, and the honest move is to say so rather than take it.
Three variables, and nothing else.
Every honest SEO quote comes down to the same three things. If a proposal does not make these explicit, you have no basis to compare it with another.
We quote against them openly, and will tell you when a smaller scope would serve you better than the one you asked about.
- Competitiveness of your market — how much authority the sites currently ranking hold. This is the largest single factor, and it varies enormously between a local trade and a national finance term.
- Size and state of your site — a five-page site needs a fraction of the technical work a neglected 4,000-page catalogue does. Starting condition matters as much as size.
- How much content is needed — whether you already have substantial content that needs restructuring, or genuinely need it written. Content is usually the largest ongoing line.
- How many markets — one country and one language is a different engagement from five markets with hreflang and localised content.
- What you handle in-house — clients with their own developer or writer pay less, because we scope around what your team already covers.
The question to ask any agency: “what exactly will you do in month one, and how will I know it happened?” If the answer is a list of activities rather than deliverables you can verify, the price is unknowable regardless of the number attached to it.
From enquiry to a fixed number
Six steps, and you get a price only after we have seen enough to stand behind it.
Free audit first
We look at the site, the analytics and the competitive set before quoting. Quoting blind is how scope gets wrong and relationships sour in month three.
Define the target
What a customer is worth to you and what a result needs to look like commercially, so the budget can be judged against something real.
Size the gap
The distance between where you are and where you need to be, in content, authority and technical work. This is where the number comes from.
Scope in writing
Specific deliverables per month, not activity counts, so you can verify what you paid for without taking anyone’s word.
Fixed price
One figure for that scope. Scope changes are agreed and priced before anything happens, never applied retrospectively.
Quarterly review
We revisit whether the scope is still right. If part of it is not earning its place we will recommend cutting it, including our own.
We will tell you when not to spend
The fastest way to lose a client is to take a budget that was never going to work.
Scope in writing, always
Specific deliverables you can verify, not activity counts. If you cannot check whether you got what you paid for, the price is meaningless.
Quoted after looking
We audit before quoting. A number given before seeing the site is a guess, and guesses get corrected upward later.
No lock-in
Month to month after an initial ramp-up period. We would rather earn the next month than rely on a contract to keep the account.
Honest about small budgets
If your budget cannot move your market we will say so and tell you what the realistic entry point is, rather than taking it and reporting activity.
Scope reviewed quarterly
If a line is not producing return we recommend cutting it. That shrinks our invoice, which is exactly why it is worth saying.
Priced from your margin
What a customer is worth to you sets what acquisition can cost. The budget follows from that rather than from a package tier.
Why Businesses Choose SDM for SEO
Same budget, very different outcomes. Point by point, here’s how a specialist partner compares to a typical agency or going it alone.
| What actually matters | With SDM | Typical Agency | In-House / DIY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior specialist on your account | Always | Often a junior | Stretched thin |
| Custom strategy built for your goals | Tailored | Templated | Guesswork |
| Deep audit before any work begins | ✓ | Surface-level | Skipped |
| White-hat, penalty-safe methods | Guaranteed | Varies | High risk |
| Plain-English reporting tied to revenue | Monthly | Jargon PDFs | None |
| Direct access to your specialist | ✓ | Account-manager relay | N/A |
| Fixed scope agreed in writing | ✓ | Vague retainer | n/a |
| Quoted only after an audit | ✓ | Quoted blind | n/a |
| Month-to-month, no lock-in | ✓ | 12-month tie-in | n/a |
| Told when the budget is too small | ✓ | Rarely | n/a |
| Scope cut when it stops earning | ✓ | Never | n/a |
| Ongoing competitor gap analysis | ✓ | One-off | Manual |
| Conversion-focused, not just traffic | ✓ | Traffic-first | Unclear |
| Premium tools included (Ahrefs, SEMrush) | ✓ | Sometimes | Costly extra |
| No long lock-in contracts | Flexible | 6–12 mo lock-in | N/A |
| Established agency, operating since 2017 | ✓ | Varies | Learning curve |
| Fast onboarding & early quick wins | ~2 weeks | Slow | Trial & error |
| Human, SEO-led content (no AI spam) | ✓ | Outsourced / AI spam | Time-heavy |
| Focus on compounding, long-term ROI | Core promise | Short-term wins | Slow & ad-hoc |
| Recovery from Google penalties | ✓ | Sometimes | Very hard |
20 reasons growing brands make the switch. See the difference for yourself →
How to tell whether SEO spend is working
Judge the spend on these rather than on rankings, which can improve while the business sees nothing.
Cost per qualified enquiry
Total spend divided by enquiries your sales team would actually accept — the number that decides whether to continue.
Organic revenue
Attributed in your own systems, not platform-reported, and compared against the pre-engagement baseline.
Share of commercial queries
Coverage of the terms that produce buyers, rather than total keyword count.
Blended CAC
What acquisition costs across all channels, so SEO can be judged against the paid alternative rather than in isolation.
Deliverables shipped
Whether the scope you paid for actually happened, checkable without taking anyone’s word for it.
Four stages before you pay anything
You see the findings and the scope before any money is discussed seriously.
Free audit
We look at the site, analytics and competitive set. You get the findings whether or not anything follows.
Commercial target
What a customer is worth and what a result needs to look like, so the budget is judged against your economics rather than a package.
Scoped proposal
Specific monthly deliverables and one fixed price, with the reasoning behind the scope shown rather than asserted.
Start, then review
Month to month after ramp-up, reviewed quarterly against what is actually producing return.
How three budgets actually got set
Three engagements where an honest reading of the situation changed the budget. The scenarios below are composites drawn from situations we encounter repeatedly — they illustrate method, not the account of any single named client.
Questions about SEO pricing
Direct answers on cost, contracts and how to judge a quote.
Further reading
Go deeper on this
The thinking behind the work. These guides go deeper on the methods this page describes — written by the team that runs them.