In our experience, most Australian businesses pay $2,000 to $5,000 a month for SEO with a capable agency. Competitive national markets usually need $5,000 to $10,000 or more. Anything under $1,500 a month is usually too little to fund real strategy and content.
In 2026 SEO also has to cover AI search. Your customers ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews as well as typing into Google. This guide covers what SEO costs, what each budget buys, and how to tell a fair price from a bad deal.
SEO pricing at a glance
These are indicative ranges based on what we see and quote in the Australian market. Prices exclude GST.
| Model | Typical price (AUD) | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | $2,000 to $10,000+ a month | Ongoing growth in organic and AI search |
| Project | $3,000 to $25,000+ | Audits, migrations, content builds |
| Hourly consulting | $150 to $400+ an hour | In-house teams that need senior guidance |
What each budget buys
Under $1,500 a month
This is usually a fixed package: a monthly report, some on-page tweaks and a handful of cheap links. The links often come from the same small network of sites. Google says its systems ignore many low-quality links like these. The bigger problem is the lack of strategy. The same deliverables repeat every month, whatever your competitors are doing. A year of this can cost $15,000 and achieve little.
$2,000 to $5,000 a month
This is the right range for most small and mid-size businesses. At this level you should get:
- A strategy built on your market and competitors, not a template.
- Technical fixes that actually get implemented.
- New and improved content each month, written for your customers.
- Authority building from relevant, real sites.
- Reporting on leads and revenue, not just rankings.
$5,000 a month and up
This is for national brands and competitive categories like finance, legal, SaaS and large ecommerce. Local businesses in crowded markets often land here too. Expect more content, more authority building, deeper technical work and closer coordination with paid search. For Roubler, a national HR tech platform, our SEO work delivered 667% organic traffic growth and 118% more organic leads. Results vary by business.
What about AI search?
You will see agencies selling "generative SEO", "GEO" or "AEO". It builds on the same foundations as SEO, with some extra work on top.
AI tools cite sources that answer questions clearly, are trusted by other sites, and are technically easy to read. That is good SEO. What does change is the content format and where you need to be mentioned. Pages need direct answers near the top, and your brand needs to appear on the sites AI tools rely on.
Do not confuse this with using AI to write content. AI writing tools can speed up drafting, but they do not get you cited by AI search. Being cited depends on what you publish and who mentions you, not on how it was written.
A good SEO retainer in 2026 should at least make your site easy for AI tools to read and cite. If an agency sells AI search as an add-on, ask exactly what they will do that your SEO does not already cover. For more, see generative SEO vs traditional SEO.
What drives the price
- Competition. Ranking for "plumber Parramatta" takes far less work than ranking for "home loan" nationally.
- Scope. One location and twenty services is a different job from a national store with thousands of products.
- Content volume. Content and links are the biggest costs inside most retainers.
- Your site's starting point. A slow site with technical debt needs fixing before anything else works.
- Who does the work. Senior specialists cost more per hour but waste less of your budget.
Red flags
- Guaranteed rankings or "page one in 30 days".
- Lock-in contracts of 12 months or more with no exit.
- Reports full of rankings and traffic, with nothing about leads or revenue.
- Vague answers about where links come from.
- Nobody senior working on your account after the sale.
Getting a quote
Every business needs a different mix of technical work, content and authority building, so we build each proposal around your goals rather than selling a fixed package. Senior specialists work on every account, and we do not lock clients into long contracts.
See our SEO services, or request a strategy call for a proposal built around your goals.
