The Dial AgencyInsights · 6 min read
SEO cost: what you pay for and when it pays back.
SEO is priced by the month, but it is bought for the years after. Here is what the money goes on and how to tell a fair price from a cheap one.
What the money goes on
- Audit and technical fixes. Finding and repairing what stops Google from reading and ranking the site. Mostly one-off work in the first month or two.
- Pages and content. New service and region pages, guides that answer customer questions, and improving pages that almost rank. This is the ongoing part and the biggest share of the cost.
- Local visibility. Google Business Profile, reviews and consistent listings.
- Links and mentions. Earning references from partners, press and directories. Slow, manual and the part cheap offers fake.
- Measurement and reporting. Search Console, rankings for the searches that matter and which pages bring enquiries.
Why it is priced monthly
Google rewards sites that keep improving. A one-off "optimisation" helps for a while and then fades as competitors publish and the web changes. Monthly work means pages are added, old ones are updated and problems are caught early. That is also why the first months cost the same as later ones but show less: the foundation is being built.
When it pays back
Technical fixes and a tidy Google Business Profile often show within weeks. New pages usually need three to six months to earn their position, and the real return comes in the second year, when a page written once keeps bringing enquiries at no extra cost per click. Compare that with ads, which stop the day you stop paying. Most businesses do best running both: ads for enquiries now, SEO for enquiries later.
How to judge a price
Ask what you get each month, in deliverables you can see: pages written, fixes shipped, links earned. Ask for the report format before you sign. A fair price buys hours of real work you can list. A cheap price usually buys automated reports and nothing else.
Warning signs
- Guaranteed positions or "first page in 30 days".
- Packages sold by the number of keywords, not by the work.
- Links bought in bulk from sites you have never heard of.
- No access to your own Search Console.
Our SEO service starts with a free audit and a written scope, so you know what you pay for before you pay. The 12 checks we run show what the first month looks like.
More customers from the same enquiries?
Send us your website. Within two business days you get a five-minute video that shows where enquiries are lost, with three fixes ranked. Free, and yours to keep.