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A plain-English guide to SEO services price. Real market ranges, what each tier buys you, red flags in cheap quotes, and how to judge a proposal before you sign.
None of this is secret. Google's own SEO starter guide covers the same fundamentals, from the source.
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Most small businesses pay roughly $1,000 to $5,000 per month for ongoing SEO services, with single-location local work at the lower end and competitive multi-city or national work at the higher end. One-off audits are commonly quoted in the low thousands as a project. Kihan Marketing starts SEO at $1,500 per month, month to month, with no long term contract.
Ongoing SEO for a small business typically lands in the range of roughly $1,000 to $5,000 per month. That is a broad market range rather than a precise figure, and where you fall inside it depends on how many locations you serve, how competitive your industry is, and how much of the work is content production versus technical repair.
The range is wide because SEO is not one service. It is a bundle of technical fixes, content, on-page work, internal linking, local signals, and reporting. A cheap quote and an expensive quote can both say the word SEO and describe completely different amounts of labor. The price question is really a scope question.
Kihan Marketing starts SEO at $1,500 per month and growth packages at $3,000 per month, both month to month with no long term contract. If the website itself needs rebuilding first, website design starts at $5,000.
Price tiers map to labor hours and scope, not to secret techniques. Every agency is working with the same search engines. What separates a $1,000 month from a $4,000 month is how many pages get written, how deep the technical work goes, and whether a senior person is genuinely looking at your account or just forwarding a report.
| Monthly spend | Typically covers | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Under $750 | Automated reports, a few directory listings, occasional generic blog posts | Almost nobody. Usually loses money for the buyer |
| Roughly $1,000 to $2,000 | Technical fixes, on-page work, a handful of new pages monthly, local profile work, real reporting | Single-location local and service businesses in one metro |
| Roughly $2,000 to $4,000 | All of the above plus a real content program, internal linking, link earning, conversion fixes | Competitive categories or businesses serving several cities |
| $4,000 and up | Multi-market or national campaigns, large site architecture work, e-commerce catalogues, dedicated strategist time | E-commerce, multi-location brands, national lead generation |
Rule of thumb
If the monthly fee would not cover even two solid days of a specialist's time in your market, ask what is actually being done with it.
Quotes vary because agencies are pricing different amounts of work and different levels of accountability. One quote might be a junior running a checklist tool. Another might be a strategist rebuilding your site structure, writing pages that answer real buying questions, and fixing the technical problems stopping Google from crawling you properly.
Three factors move price more than anything else. Competition in your category, because a Seattle personal injury firm needs far more work than a Seattle upholstery shop. The state of your existing site, because broken structure and thin pages need repair before growth. And geography, because ranking in one suburb is a fraction of the work of ranking statewide.
When you compare the cost for SEO services across proposals, set the headline number aside for a moment and count the deliverables. Then divide. You will often find the cheap quote is more expensive per unit of actual work.
A proposal you can safely say yes to tells you what will be done, who will do it, how it will be measured, and how you leave if it is not working. If any of those four are vague, the number on the page is not really a price. It is an opening position.
Run this checklist over any quote you receive, including ours. An agency that flinches at these questions is telling you something useful for free.
Ask this one question
If I cancel in month four, what do I keep? The answer tells you whether you are buying an asset or renting a position.
Cheap SEO is usually not a discount, it is a smaller amount of work described in the same language. The real danger is not the wasted fee. It is that low-effort tactics can leave your site in worse shape than when you started, and unwinding that costs more than doing the job properly would have.
These are the patterns that should make you slow down and ask harder questions before committing any budget.
Expect early movement within weeks and meaningful traction in 60 to 90 days. Early movement means impressions climbing, new queries appearing, and previously invisible pages starting to surface. Meaningful traction means enquiries you can trace back to organic search. Anything faster is usually either a very easy market or a very generous reading of the data.
The payback maths is simpler than it looks. Work out what one new customer is worth to you over their lifetime, then work out how many you need each month to cover the fee. Where a customer is worth a few thousand dollars, one extra job a month can carry the whole program. For low-ticket businesses you need volume, and that changes which tier makes sense.
This is also why month to month terms matter. If the work is good you stay because it is working. If it is not, you should be free to leave without a penalty clause making the decision for you.
Choose based on how much of the work you can genuinely own yourself. A freelancer is usually the cheapest route and works well for a clear, narrow job. An agency costs more but covers technical, content, and strategy without you managing three contractors. In-house only makes sense once search is a major channel and you can keep a specialist busy full time.
The hidden cost in the cheaper options is your own time. A freelancer who needs briefing, approvals, and chasing is not free, and neither is doing it yourself at eleven at night. Price each option including what it takes out of your week.
To talk through which tier fits your situation, call Kihan Marketing on (425) 954-3452. SEO starts at $1,500 per month, growth packages start at $3,000 per month, and everything is month to month.
Most small businesses pay in the region of $1,000 to $5,000 per month for ongoing SEO. A single-location local business in a normal competitive market usually sits in the lower half of that. Businesses competing across several cities, or in expensive categories like legal, medical, or home services, sit higher simply because there is more work to do. Kihan Marketing starts SEO at $1,500 per month and growth packages at $3,000 per month, month to month with no long term contract.
Rarely, and it is often worse than doing nothing. At that price there are not enough hours in the month to do meaningful technical work, write real content, and think about strategy. What usually gets delivered is an automated audit, a few directory submissions, and generic blog posts. The risk is not only wasted money. Low-quality links and thin pages can create problems that cost more to unwind later than proper work would have cost upfront.
An audit is the diagnosis, monthly SEO is the treatment. An audit tells you what is broken and where the opportunity sits, delivered once as a document with prioritised fixes. Monthly work is the execution: fixing technical issues, writing and optimizing pages, building internal links, and adjusting as results arrive. Audits are commonly quoted in the low thousands as a project. Many businesses start with an audit, then decide whether to implement in-house or hire out the ongoing work.
Expect early movement within weeks and meaningful traction in 60 to 90 days. Early movement shows up as rising impressions, new keywords appearing in Search Console, and pages that were invisible starting to surface. Meaningful traction means actual enquiries you can attribute to organic search. Sites with existing authority move faster, brand new domains take longer because they have to earn trust first. Anyone promising page one rankings in thirty days is describing an outcome they cannot control.
No, and be cautious of anyone insisting on one. Long minimums usually protect the agency’s revenue rather than reflecting how long the work takes to start. Good work earns renewal on its own. That said, SEO compounds, so switching providers every two months guarantees you never get past the setup phase. The sensible structure is month to month terms with an honest commitment to give the work a fair run. Kihan Marketing works month to month with no long term contract.
At minimum: a technical review plus the fixes that come out of it, on-page optimization of your key pages, a defined amount of new or rewritten content each month, internal linking, and reporting you can verify inside your own Google Search Console and Analytics. You should own the website, the content, and every asset created. Anything described only as ongoing optimization, with nothing countable attached, is not scope. Ask exactly what happens in month one, month two, and month three.
They cost differently rather than one being cheaper. Ads buy traffic that stops the moment you stop paying, and clicks in competitive categories can be brutally expensive. SEO is a build cost that keeps returning after the spend stops, but it takes 60 to 90 days before it carries real weight. Businesses that can afford both often run ads for immediate leads while SEO builds underneath. If you can only pick one and you need leads this week, start with ads.
Kihan Marketing gives you a written scope and price within one business day. No pressure, and nothing to sign to see it.
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