SEO pricing · Updated July 28, 2026
See how TheProjectSEO prices integrated SEO and AI-search engagements, what the $3,500 monthly starting point includes, and which scope factors change a proposal.
Starting point
$3,500 USD / month
AI-search scope
Integrated where relevant
Guarantees
No ranking or citation promises
That is the starting investment for ongoing work, not a pre-packed list of articles and links. We scope technical SEO, content, authority, analytics, implementation, and AI-search work around the customer decisions and business outcomes that matter.
There is no single responsible market price for SEO. A retainer can mean monitoring one local site, rebuilding a large ecommerce architecture, publishing expert-reviewed decision pages, supporting a migration, or joining Search Console, analytics, CRM, revenue, and AI-answer data. Comparing only the monthly number hides the work.
Ahrefs’ 2024 survey of 439 providers reported an average monthly cost of $2,917 and an agency average of $3,209. It also found wide variation by provider type, region, experience, and market. Those figures are useful context, but they do not determine what your site requires or what TheProjectSEO will propose.
Our ongoing engagements start at $3,500 per month. We use an initial diagnosis to choose the workstreams, capacity, owners, evidence, and measurement model. A proposal should explain why the scope costs what it costs—and what will not be attempted inside it.
These models explain how we scope work. Initial and Growth rates are published; Enterprise requirements are custom because they can vary too widely for a credible fixed quote.
$3,500/month
For teams that need continuous research, implementation, content or page improvement, authority development, and measurement.
A custom mix of technical SEO, content and page architecture, AI-search optimization, analytics, authority, and delivery governance. The proposal states the monthly capacity, priority workstreams, owners, dependencies, and review cadence.
$5,500/month
For teams that need several SEO, content, authority, analytics, and AI-search workstreams in parallel.
A custom mix of technical SEO, content and page architecture, AI-search optimization, analytics, authority, and delivery governance. The proposal states the monthly capacity, priority workstreams, owners, dependencies, and review cadence.
Custom
For large sites, multiple business units, several markets, regulated review, high release volume, or significant analytics and governance requirements.
Capacity and decision rights are designed around the operating environment. The scope may include multiple specialists, workstream leads, developer collaboration, data engineering, executive reporting, and formal QA.
A smaller engagement concentrates on the most consequential constraint. A larger programme can run several streams in parallel. Capacity is never described as unlimited.
01
Live SERPs, customer questions, competitors, existing performance, business economics, and implementation constraints become a ranked opportunity backlog.
02
Crawling, rendering, indexing, architecture, templates, structured data, internal links, performance, migrations, and release acceptance tests.
03
Decision pages, supporting resources, expert inputs, citations, definitions, comparisons, refreshes, consolidation, and machine-readable context.
04
Editorially defensible research, digital PR, relevant links, citations, profiles, reviews, mentions, and entity consistency across independent sources.
05
Queries, landing pages, conversions, revenue where available, prompt cohorts, source selection, citations, accuracy, visibility, and competitive movement.
06
Briefs, tickets, owners, review gates, release QA, evidence capture, decision logs, stakeholder communication, and next-action reporting.
Price should change when the amount of research, implementation, production, risk, review, measurement, or coordination changes. These are the variables we inspect.
| Factor | Why it changes the work | What we inspect |
|---|---|---|
| Website and template scale | A 40-page lead-generation site and a marketplace with millions of parameter combinations require different crawl analysis, governance, QA, and implementation capacity. | Indexed URLs, crawlable templates, rendering paths, parameters, languages, properties, and release frequency. |
| Search market and competition | The work changes when a site must displace established publishers, aggregators, marketplaces, or category leaders across several countries. | Relevant competitors, result types, link and entity gaps, content depth, market count, and realistic opportunity bands. |
| Content and subject expertise | Regulated, technical, or multi-product companies need interviews, evidence, specialist review, compliance ownership, and a more controlled publishing process. | Page backlog, review steps, subject-matter access, research burden, update frequency, and approval turnaround. |
| Technical implementation | Advice alone costs less than an engagement in which we write tickets, change templates, test releases, coordinate developers, and verify production outcomes. | CMS, framework, developer access, backlog ownership, testing environments, deployment cadence, and migration risk. |
| Authority and digital PR | Authority work is based on relevance, editorial merit, evidence, and outreach—not a fixed number of links bought according to a third-party score. | Existing reputation, original data, expert access, publication fit, risk tolerance, and outreach or research scope. |
| Measurement and AI-search coverage | Basic Search Console reporting is simpler than joining analytics, CRM, revenue, AI-answer samples, citations, prompts, and competitive share of voice. | Data sources, event quality, CRM access, markets, prompts, platforms, reporting frequency, and attribution questions. |
01
We identify the products, services, markets, customer decisions, conversions, economics, and business constraint that organic discovery is expected to influence. “More traffic” is not a sufficient scope.
02
We review the site, search footprint, technical shape, existing pages, data quality, competitors, authority, internal capacity, and current AI-answer visibility. Access improves precision but is not required for an initial conversation.
03
The proposal distinguishes growth work from essential maintenance, measurement, governance, or risk control. This prevents a visible content calendar from hiding technical or operational work that the site actually needs.
04
We state what TheProjectSEO owns, what your team owns, which specialists or reviewers are required, how work enters production, and how monthly priorities may change when evidence changes.
05
The scope names baselines, reporting cohorts, business outcomes, review cadence, exclusions, dependencies, and known attribution limits. It does not promise a ranking, citation, traffic number, or result date.
A transparent price is incomplete without boundaries. We do not price links by DR, sell bulk pages without a usefulness and uniqueness case, disguise third-party media costs, promise rankings, or present AI-answer monitoring as guaranteed influence over a platform.
These slots are intentionally empty until the final, non-confidential screenshots are supplied.
Add an approved roadmap view showing priorities, owners, workstreams, and acceptance criteria without client-confidential data.
Human contextExample scoped roadmap
Illustrative photography
Not client evidence
Add an approved reporting screenshot connecting search and AI visibility to the relevant conversion or business cohort.
Human contextExample measurement view
Illustrative photography
Not client evidence
Ask whether the proposal explains the operating model behind the number. A long deliverable list can still omit the constraint that controls growth.
Does it name the customer decision, search opportunity, technical constraint, evidence, and assumptions?
Who makes decisions, researches, writes, reviews, implements, tests, reports, and speaks with your team?
Which workstreams fit simultaneously, how are priorities changed, and what is explicitly outside scope?
Does the provider stop at recommendations, or own tickets, changes, QA, and verification?
Are baselines, conversion cohorts, AI samples, sources, limits, and business outcomes defined?
What does the provider refuse to guarantee, automate, publish, buy, or represent inaccurately?
See our methodology, review the service architecture, or inspect the approved case-study evidence before requesting a proposal.
FAQ
Market figures are dated and attributed. TheProjectSEO’s starting price is first-party commercial information. This page was reviewed by TheProjectSEO and updated July 28, 2026.
A 2024 survey of 439 providers covering retainers, projects, hourly pricing, regions, and provider types. It supplies market context, not a rule for this proposal.
An overview of provider models and variables that change the cost of external SEO work.
Google’s technical requirements, spam policies, and core Search practices, including the reminder that eligibility does not guarantee appearance.
Google’s explanation of SEO and its explicit statement that no method automatically guarantees first place.
Google’s published requirements and measurement guidance for AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Share the site, markets, commercial goal, current team, and implementation constraints. We will identify the information needed for a responsible scope rather than sending a generic package.