SEO package pricing: what each tier should include, and how to compare them

What is an SEO package?

An SEO package is a fixed bundle of search engine optimisation work sold at a set price, usually monthly, sometimes as a one-off project. Providers group the work into tiers, often three, so a buyer can choose by budget instead of scoping the work from scratch.

Packages exist because SEO is hard to buy. The work is slow, the results arrive months later and much of it is invisible. A package makes it look like a product: a name, a price and a list. That helps a buyer compare, but the list is written by the seller, and it usually counts the things that are easy to count.

This guide is about what is inside a package. How much a business should spend on SEO in total, and how to justify it, is the subject of the guide to setting an SEO budget.

How much do SEO packages cost?

SEO packages usually cost between $500 and $5,000 a month. In Ahrefs’ poll of 439 SEO providers, SEO costs ranged from $250 to $10,000 a month, with 63% of businesses spending between $500 and $5,000. Agencies charged $3,209 a month on average and freelancers $1,348, and local SEO averaged $1,557 a month.

Agency guides publish similar ranges. WebFX’s pricing guide puts startups and micro businesses at $500 to $1,500 a month and small businesses at $1,500 to $3,500, with monthly retainers generally between $1,000 and $5,000. These are ranges published by an agency that sells SEO, so read them as one provider’s view of the market.

Published packages, and the hours behind them

Some providers publish their packages. Dividing each price by the average SEO hourly rate in the Ahrefs poll, $111, gives a rough idea of how much work each buys in a month.

Package	Price a month	Hours at $111
Third Marble Marketing, Basic	$499	4.5
Third Marble Marketing, Enhanced SEO/AI	$1,299	11.7
Third Marble Marketing, Premier SEO/AI	$3,499	31.5
OuterBox, Essentials	$2,000	18.0
OuterBox, Pro	$3,000	27.0
OuterBox, Enterprise	From $7,000	63.1

Prices from Third Marble Marketing and OuterBox, read 10 November 2026. Hours: price divided by the average SEO hourly rate of $111 in Ahrefs’ poll of 439 providers.

The hours are an estimate. A provider with lower costs can deliver more hours for the same price, and part of any fee pays for tools, management and profit. But the comparison makes one thing plain: a $499 package buys about four and a half hours a month at the average rate. That is enough to keep a small site healthy and report on it, not enough to build anything new.

What each SEO package tier should include

Most providers sell three tiers. Names vary, but the tiers usually map to the size of the site and the strength of the competition: a starter tier for small and local sites, a growth tier for sites competing more widely, and a competitive tier for large sites and crowded markets.

Starter

For: a small or local business, or a site that has had little SEO work before.

Should include: a baseline from Search Console and analytics before anything changes; a technical check of crawling, indexing and speed; keyword research mapped to the pages that sell; titles, descriptions and headings on those pages; for a local business, the Google Business Profile; and a monthly report that compares against the baseline.

Should not need: a content factory or a link quota. A starter site usually gains more from fixing the pages it has.

How to tell it is working: more impressions and clicks for the queries the money pages target, in Search Console, within a few months.

Growth

For: a site with the basics in place, competing beyond its own area or against established sites.

Should include: everything in the starter tier, plus a topic map of what the site should cover, new pages or articles planned from it, internal links that carry authority to the pages that sell, structured data, and outreach for links the site has earned through useful pages.

Should not need: guaranteed link counts or a fixed word count. Both measure activity, not results.

How to tell it is working: new pages ranking for the queries they were planned for, and organic leads or sales rising, not only traffic.

Competitive

For: large sites, several locations or brands, and markets where the competition has a full-time SEO team.

Should include: everything in the growth tier, plus technical work on templates rather than single pages, content operations at scale, digital PR, reporting across sites, and a named senior person who joins your planning.

Should not need: more of the same activity at a higher price. The difference should be judgement and seniority, not volume.

How to tell it is working: organic revenue or pipeline by section of the site, and problems found before they show in traffic.

A guide to scope, not a price list. What a tier is called varies by provider; read what it includes.

What every tier should include

Some things should be in every package, whatever it costs:

• A baseline. Search Console and analytics figures recorded before any work starts, so every report can compare against them.
• A named person. Someone who knows your site and answers your questions.
• A plan for the month. What will be done, on which pages, and why.
• A report tied to outcomes. Leads, sales or enquiries from organic search, not only rankings and traffic.
• Your accounts. The provider works in your Search Console, analytics and site as a user, and the work stays with you if you leave.

SEO packages for small businesses

For a small or local business, the starter tier is usually the right place to begin, and the most useful work is often the least visible: making sure the site can be crawled and indexed, that each service has a page that answers the searcher’s question, and that the Google Business Profile is complete. Ahrefs found local SEO averaging $1,557 a month, with agencies charging $1,819 and freelancers around $1,150. A small business paying well below that range should expect a narrower scope, not the same work for less.

What a monthly report should show

The monthly report is where a package proves itself, and it is worth agreeing its contents before you sign. A useful report fits on a page or two and answers four questions:

1. What was done. The work completed this month, on which pages, matched against the plan.
2. What changed. Clicks and impressions from Search Console for the pages and queries the work targeted, compared with the baseline, not only with last month.
3. What it is worth. Enquiries, leads or sales from organic search, from your analytics or your CRM.
4. What comes next. Next month’s plan, and anything the provider needs from you.

A report that shows only rankings for a hand-picked list of keywords, or traffic without leads, is measuring the package’s activity rather than its effect. Rankings move for reasons outside anyone’s control, and traffic that does not convert pays no bills.

What changes the price of an SEO package

The price of an SEO package depends mostly on how much work the site needs to compete, and on who does it. Six factors account for most of the difference between a $500 package and a $5,000 one.

• Competition. The stronger the sites already ranking for your queries, the more content, links and time it takes to compete with them.
• The size and state of the site. A ten-page site with sound foundations needs less than a thousand-page site with years of technical problems.
• Local or national. Competing in one town is a narrower job than competing across a country, which shows in the Ahrefs figures: local SEO averaged $1,557 a month against $3,209 for agencies overall.
• Content production. Writing new pages is often the largest single cost. A package that includes it costs more than one that only optimises existing pages.
• Who does the work. In the Ahrefs poll, agencies averaged $3,209 a month and freelancers $1,348. The difference buys a team, cover for absence and process, or a single person’s direct attention.
• Seniority. A package run by a senior strategist costs more per hour than one run by a junior team. The extra pays for judgement about what to do, which matters most when the budget is small.

Price is not a quality signal in either direction. An expensive package can be padded with activity, and a cheap one can be well scoped. The hours calculator below is the quickest way to see which you are looking at.

SEO pricing models: monthly, project and hourly

SEO is sold in three ways: a monthly retainer, a fixed-price project and an hourly rate. Most packages are monthly retainers, but the other two are often a better fit for a site’s first piece of work.

• Monthly retainer. A fixed scope billed every month. WebFX puts most retainers at $1,000 to $5,000 a month. It suits ongoing work: content, links and steady technical upkeep.
• Fixed-price project. A defined piece of work, such as an audit, a migration or a set of pages, for one price. WebFX gives $500 to $5,000 per project. It suits a site that needs a diagnosis or a single change before anything ongoing.
• Hourly. Time billed as it is used. WebFX gives $75 to $200 an hour, and the most common band in the Ahrefs poll was $100 to $150. It suits advice, reviews and work too small or uncertain to scope.

Monthly packages and one-off projects

Not every site needs a monthly package. A site with technical problems or no clear plan usually gains more from a one-off audit and a roadmap, followed by a monthly package once there is a plan to work through. My own SEO systems service offers a fixed audit as its first option, before any retainer.

How to read an SEO package

Read an SEO package by what it does and the hours it buys. A package’s list of deliverables is written to sound generous; the price tells you how much time there is to deliver it. Turning one into the other shows whether the promises are realistic.

Enter a package’s monthly price, the hourly rate to compare at, and how many items it promises each month.

Package price a month$Hourly rate to compare at$Items promised each month (pages, links, posts)

Hours a month

18.0

Price / hourly rate

Hours a week

4.2

Hours a month / 4.33

Minutes per promised item

36.0

If every hour went on the promised items

The default rate is the $111 average in Ahrefs’ poll of 439 SEO providers. Providers with lower costs may charge less per hour; use their rate if they publish one.

With the default figures, a $2,000-a-month package buys about 18 hours a month at the average rate, or a little over four hours a week. If it promises 30 items a month, that is about 36 minutes for each, before reporting, communication or planning. Change the numbers to any package you are considering.

The counts to question

• Links a month. A fixed number of links is hard to deliver without paying for them, and Google’s spam policies list buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam.
• Domain Authority. A promise of links from high-DA sites uses a third-party score. Moz, which created it, says Domain Authority is not a direct ranking factor.
• Pages optimised a month. Optimising a page well means reading what ranks for its query and rewriting to match. A large monthly page count in a small number of hours usually means changing titles and descriptions only.
• Words of content. A word count says nothing about whether the content answers the searcher’s question better than what already ranks.

None of these counts is wrong in itself. A package can sensibly include a few pages a month, or outreach that sometimes earns links. The problem is when the count is the product: when the provider is paid for the number, whatever the effect.

SEO package red flags

The clearest red flags in an SEO package are guaranteed rankings, guaranteed link counts and a provider who keeps your accounts. Each has a simple test.

SEO package red flags, and what to do about each

IfThe package guarantees rankings or a first-page position

ThenWalk awayGoogle says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, and to find someone else if a provider guarantees first place.

IfIt sells a fixed number of links a month or a quarter

ThenAsk how each link is earnedBuying or selling links for ranking purposes is link spam under Google’s spam policies. A guaranteed count is hard to deliver without paying for links.

IfIt promises links from sites with a high Domain Authority

ThenAsk why those sites are relevantMoz says Domain Authority is not a direct ranking factor; it is a comparative metric. Relevance to your market matters more than the score.

IfIt promises more items than the hours can cover

ThenRun the price through the calculatorThirty pages a month in nine hours is eighteen minutes a page. Ask what is actually done to each.

IfYou will not own the accounts or the content

ThenInsist on your own accountsSearch Console, analytics and the site should be in your name, with the provider as a user. Google’s own permission levels make that easy.

IfThe offer arrived as an unsolicited email

ThenTreat it with careGoogle’s guidance is to be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue.

Source: Google, Do you need an SEO?; Google spam policies; Moz, Domain Authority

Google’s page on hiring an SEO adds a useful test for audits in particular: an audit should give realistic estimates of improvement and an estimate of the work involved. A package that cannot say what it expects to change, or how long the work will take, is asking you to buy activity on trust.

Contract terms to check before you sign

The terms around an SEO package matter as much as its contents, because SEO takes months to show results and the work keeps its value after the contract ends. Published packages differ widely here: OuterBox says its packages are billed month to month, while Third Marble Marketing lists a $499 setup month. Neither approach is wrong, but you should know which you are agreeing to.

• Minimum term and notice. How long you are committed for, and how much notice ends it. A long minimum before any results have been seen puts all the risk on you.
• Setup fees. What a first-month or setup fee pays for, and whether it is a real piece of work, such as an audit and a baseline, or simply the first month at a higher price.
• Ownership of the work. Whether content written for you, design changes and reports belong to you once paid for.
• Accounts. Search Console, analytics and the site stay in your name, with the provider added as a user. Google’s Search Console permissions separate owners from full and restricted users, which makes this simple to set up.
• What happens on exit. Whether the provider removes anything when you leave, such as pages it hosts or tools it installed, and how the handover works.
• Price changes. When and how the monthly price can rise during the contract.

A provider confident in its work rarely needs a long lock-in. A short initial period, followed by a monthly rolling term, gives both sides time to see whether the package is working without trapping either of them.

White-label SEO packages for agencies

White-label SEO packages are packages an agency sells under its own brand while a specialist does the work. The agency sets the tiers and prices for its clients; the provider charges the agency a wholesale price for each one. Published white-label tiers, such as Third Marble’s agency pricing at $399, $999 and $2,999 a month, follow the same three-tier pattern as retail packages, sold by the same kinds of counts.

An agency building its own packages has two jobs. The first is to write tiers its clients can understand, using the guidance above on what each should include. The second is to price them so the agency keeps a margin after its own time, which is the part that is easiest to get wrong.

Package you sell	Wholesale	Retail or market rate
One-off SEO audit, 4 weeks	$1,500	$3,000
Monthly SEO	$1,650/mo	$3,250/mo
Monthly local SEO, per location	$800/mo	$1,550/mo
Monthly link building	$1,050/mo	$2,100/mo

My own white-label price list, with the source for each retail or market rate

My wholesale prices are half the retail or market rate, so an agency charging the market rate keeps about half before its own time and payment fees. The full price list, with the source for every rate, is on the white-label price list, and the markup calculator works out the price that leaves the margin you want. How the arrangement works, and the contract clauses that protect the agency, are covered in what white-label SEO is and how it works.

Packages an agency can stand behind

• Sell scope, not counts. Describe each tier by the work and the outcome it aims at.
• Start with an audit. A fixed audit before the retainer lets you price the retainer from the work the site needs.
• Keep the client’s accounts in the client’s name. The provider should have user access, never ownership.
• Report against a baseline. It protects the agency as much as the client when results take months to show.

How to compare SEO packages

Compare SEO packages on four things: what each will do, the hours it buys, who owns the accounts and how results will be measured. Price comes last, once the packages are comparable.

Scope

Each package says what is done, not only how much You know which pages the work will focus on Content and links are described by how they are produced, not only by count

Value

You have turned each price into hours at the same rate The promised items fit in those hours You know what a one-off audit would cost instead

Ownership

Your site, Search Console and analytics stay in your name The provider works as a user, not an owner Content written for you belongs to you

Measurement

A baseline is recorded before work starts Reports compare with that baseline Leads or sales from organic search are part of the report

Ticks are saved in your browser.

If two packages are close after that, ask each provider the same three questions: which pages they would work on first, what they expect to change in three months, and what they would need from you. The answers say more about the quality of the work than the package list does. And if the gap between what you need and what a package offers is large, the problem may be the budget rather than the package; the SEO ROI calculator helps work out what organic growth would be worth to you. Before a large commitment, it is worth reading why most SEO audits do not compound, because the same trap applies to packages: buying a list of fixes instead of a system that stops the problems coming back.