How much do SEO services cost and what are you actually paying for?
Ongoing SEO work typically costs between 300 and 2000 euros a month, and a one-off technical audit between 300 and 1500. The difference is driven by scope and competition in your niche, not by the quality of the provider. A fixed price quoted without looking at your site is the first sign scope was never discussed.
It is the most asked question, and the answer nearly always starts with "it depends". True, but useless. So here are the ranges, what drives them, and where the lying starts.
One caveat first: there is no public, verifiable price survey for this market. The figures below come from published rate cards and quotes, not from measurement. Your actual number still arrives with a proposal written for your site.
The ranges you will see
| What | Price | When it makes sense |
|---|---|---|
| One-off technical audit | 300–1500 EUR | Before starting anything else |
| Ongoing work, small business | 300–800 EUR / month | Local service, narrow niche |
| Ongoing work, online shop | 800–2000 EUR / month | Hundreds of products, real competition |
| Freelancer, hourly | 30–80 EUR / hour | A specific task with a clear end |
| Content writing | 50–200 EUR / article | Once the technical side is sound |
| Automated scan | 0 EUR | To find out what is missing at all |
The difference between 300 and 2000 euros is almost never "a better specialist". It is hours. Three hundred a month buys roughly four to six hours of work; two thousand buys a week.
What you are actually buying
A one-off audit is a diagnosis. A list of what is wrong, why it matters and in what order to fix it. It fixes nothing — that is separate work, and worth agreeing on up front.
Ongoing work is three different things on one invoice: technical fixes, content, and link building. A proposal should separate them. If it does not, there is a good chance two of the three are not happening.
The key question for a proposal is not "how much". It is: what will you do in the first month, and how will I see it. "We will do SEO" and a price are two unrelated pieces of information.
Where the lying starts
"We guarantee first place on Google." Nobody can guarantee that, because Google does not sell positions. Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO says so directly — a guarantee is a signal to walk away.
A fixed price with no look at the site. A quote produced without seeing what the work involves is a price for something else.
Link packages. "500 links for 200 euros" is a direct violation of Google's spam policies, and the bill arrives later — as a penalty that costs more to undo than the order ever cost.
Reports with no business numbers. Rankings and "traffic" say nothing if you cannot see how much of it turned into enquiries. A report with no business metric measures effort, not outcome.
What you can do yourself for nothing
A fair share of what month one pays for is visible to you within an hour:
- whether
robots.txtblocks the site and whether the sitemap is real (both files); - whether
titleanddescriptionare present and not duplicated (the limits); - whether pages are being indexed at all (Search Console);
- whether the site is fast on a phone.
This does not replace a specialist, but it changes the conversation: you arrive with a list instead of the question "do I need SEO".
The free scan builds that list in a couple of minutes and shows which area is worst. It is the same diagnosis without the invoice — and it tells you whether ongoing work is worth buying at all, or whether one round of fixes is enough.
Related articles
The same topic from another angle — each answers its own question:
How this feeds into the score is described under what we check.
Sources
What this text is based on — primary sources, not retellings:
Frequently asked
How long before SEO pays off?
Technical fixes show within 2–6 weeks. Content and links take 4–8 months. Anyone promising results in a month is talking about something else.
Why pay for an audit when free tools exist?
A free tool shows what is wrong. A paid audit tells you in what order to fix it for your specific business and what to skip entirely. The second part is often the more valuable one.
Agency or freelancer?
A freelancer is cheaper and faster for a specific task. An agency earns its keep when the work is continuous and spans several disciplines at once — that is where one person becomes the bottleneck.
Why do prices vary so much?
Because hours are being priced, not outcomes. The same site in a competitive niche needs several times the work it would in a narrow one, so the price differs by the same multiple.
Check yours
A free scan shows which of the things described here your site already does, and which it does not.