Ask ten agencies what SEO costs and nine will say “it depends — book a call.” It does depend. It's also perfectly possible to give you real numbers, which is what this page is for. We publish our own pricing, so we've got no reason to be coy about anyone else's.
In Australia in 2026, credible SEO typically runs $750–$2,000/month for a local small business, $2,000–$5,000 for competitive local or multi-location work, and $5,000+ for national campaigns. One-off audits run $500–$3,000. Under about $500/month, real work becomes mathematically impossible — that tier is where the horror stories live.
SEO cost is mostly labour: research, writing, technical fixes, link outreach, reporting. A $1,500/month retainer at honest agency rates buys roughly 10–15 hours of skilled work — enough to run a focused local campaign well. The same money spread across “unlimited keywords” and daily miracles buys theatre. When comparing quotes, convert everything to hours and deliverables; vagueness in that conversion is itself an answer.
The $300/month special isn't a discount — it's a different product. At that price the provider can afford roughly two hours of attention, so the work becomes automated: spun content, junk directories, links from networks Google has already mapped. Best case, nothing happens and you've burned a year. Worst case, you inherit a link profile that costs real money to clean up. The difference between cheap and good compounds monthly, in opposite directions.
The maths that matters: what's a customer worth, and how many does page-one visibility deliver? A Cairns trade averaging $600 a job needs three jobs a month to double a $1,500 retainer — and unlike ads, rankings don't switch off when spending pauses (see how the timeline compounds). If the maths doesn't clear that bar for your business, don't buy — our own worth-it analysis includes the cases where the honest answer is 'not yet'.
Our pricing is on the website — month-to-month, no lock-in, walk away whenever. The reason most agencies won't do this is the reason we do: hidden pricing exists to let quotes float to whatever the caller sounds able to pay. Published pricing keeps everyone honest, including us. What each package contains, line by line, is the packages teardown.
Not everything is a retainer. Common one-offs and honest Australian ranges: a standalone audit with prioritised fixes, $500–$3,000 depending on site size (ours is free because it doubles as our sales pitch — we're not pretending otherwise); a site migration or redesign support package — redirect mapping, launch checks — $1,000–$5,000, and worth every dollar measured against the rankings unplanned migrations destroy; a penalty or toxic-link cleanup, $1,500–$5,000+ depending on how enthusiastic the previous provider was; and one-off local setup (profile, citations, schema) for businesses that will DIY the rest, typically $750–$2,000. One-offs suit specific wounds. Rankings themselves are a fitness program, not a surgery.
The comparison every owner actually wants: Ads buys the top of the page tomorrow at a per-click price that never stops — in competitive Australian trades, $15–$80 per click, so a $1,500 monthly budget might buy 30–80 visits that end the day the budget does. SEO spends the same $1,500 building an asset: slower to start (see the timeline), but month twelve's thousand organic visits arrive at a marginal cost approaching zero, and keep arriving. The crossover typically lands between months four and eight, after which every month widens the gap. The grown-up answer is often both — Ads for immediate flow, SEO for the compounding base — shifting weight toward SEO as it matures. Anyone selling you an either/or is usually selling whichever one they stock.
Both exist. One-off work (audits, migrations, local setup) fixes specific problems; ongoing work builds and defends rankings. Rankings decay without maintenance because competitors don't stop — but 'ongoing' should mean month-to-month value you'd re-choose each invoice, not a contract you can't escape.
Because pricing is mostly labour hours × who's doing them × how much is actually done. A $500 and a $2,500 quote for 'SEO' are different products wearing the same name. Convert every quote to hours and named deliverables — the variation usually collapses into 'two hours of automation' versus 'fifteen hours of humans'.
Our pricing is published on the site — what you see is the arrangement. Genuine onboarding work is priced into month one rather than invented as a signing fee, and there's no lock-in on the other side of it.
The free audit, then the DIY list it produces: profile, reviews, titles and citations are all owner-doable (our DIY vs agency guide maps it). Spend money when the remaining work needs data, tools or hours you don't have — that's the honest entry ramp, and it costs nothing to stand on.
The free audit tells you what needs doing; the pricing page tells you what it costs. Radical, we know. Or read about our Small Business SEO service.
Get my free SEO audit →Every piece in Costs, Choices & Red Flags links back to the work: our Small Business SEO service.
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