How much do SEO services cost?

SEO pricing can be structured in different ways (monthly retainer vs. one-time project), but to give some ballpark figures: for SVZ’s SEO agency services, you’re typically looking at $10,000+ per month for an ongoing engagement. This is meant for businesses aiming to grow their organic traffic seriously. We love to help national/international campaigns or highly competitive industries (think insurance, legal, technology).

SVZ also offers one-time SEO audits and fix packages, which could be a 10k+ USD for a thorough audit and implementation of critical changes. However, SEO is generally a long-term game, so most businesses we work with invest monthly.

The factors affecting cost include:

• Scope of Work: Are you targeting 10 keywords or 100? Creating one 2000 word blog post a month or 4? Building 5 backlinks or 50? More work, Higher Quality Work, Faster Work = more cost.
• Agency Expertise: Top-tier agencies with a track record (especially those that handle enterprise SEO like SVZ) charge a premium. We might start at $10k-$20k/month for accounts, but we also often have bigger teams and deeper expertise. Our growth director for example comes from a background of years of experience working with IDEO.
• Your Starting Point: If your site is brand new or has many issues, the initial work is heavy (technical fixes, building content from scratch). Some agencies charge an onboarding or setup fee for the first couple months because of this, usually the bulk of the work is upfront and then maintenance can handle the rest.
• Competition Level: If your competitors are also investing in SEO, you might need a larger budget to outperform them (more content, higher quality links, etc.).

One thing to watch: guarantees. No reputable SEO provider guarantees specific rankings for a specific fee – if someone does, that’s a red flag (more on that in a moment) .

So, in summary, expect to invest 10k+ dollars per month at minimum for a super solid SEO campaign. If that sounds high, remember this includes a suite of services with SVZ (content creation, site optimizations, design, outreach for links, continuous analysis) and can replace or reduce the need for equivalent spending on paid ads once your organic traffic grows. Many of our clients at SVZ find that after 6-12 months of SEO work, their cost per lead or acquisition via organic is far lower than through paid advertising. We tailor SEO plans to a client’s stage – for a startup, maybe it’s a tighter focus and budget; for an enterprise software company, it might be a full-court press SEO strategy with a larger budget. The key is that SEO is flexible and scalable – you can dial investment up or down and often see commensurate results.