SEO is priced by the month, and the price follows the work: how many pages have to be written and fixed, how strong the sites on the first page are, and how many services and places you want to be found for. This page says what each of our services costs to deliver and why, lists every price we publish, and shows how to compare one agency’s quote with another’s.
SEO audit$0Free. No contract to sign.
The prices we publish today
Three kinds of price are on this site today. The SEO audit is free. Paid ads management is from $500 per cycle, and re-targeting from $400. Our dispensary marketing plans are from $999 a month, with two larger plans at $1,999 and $3,500. None of them comes with a contract.
SEO audit
Any business with a website
$0
- A grade from 1 to 100 and a letter score
- Keyword research for your business
- Technical checks: internal links, mobile performance, XML sitemap, crawl errors, robots.txt and indexation
- A written report of what to fix first
- Most audits take one to three business days
Search engine advertising
Ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing, shown to people searching for your product or service
from $500 per cycle
- Ad placement across Google or Yahoo and Bing
- Daily monitoring and conversion optimization
- Custom keyword creation and research
- Call tracking and recording
- Ad copy with split testing
- Web and mobile search ads
- Performance review and custom reporting
Display advertising
Text and banner ads on websites related to your business
from $500 per cycle
- Reach across top sites, ad networks and ad exchanges
- Call tracking and recording
- Conversion optimization based on your goals
- Ongoing performance reviews
- Custom reporting
- Banner and graphic creatives at an extra fee
Search re-targeting
Display ads shown to people who have already been on your website
from $400 per cycle
- Reach across top websites, networks and exchanges
- Call tracking and reporting
- Ad writing
- Mobile ads and landing page optimization
- Ongoing performance reviews
- Custom reporting for desktop and mobile
Mobile app advertising
In-app ads shown to people who are near your store or location
from $500 per cycle
- GPS targeting of nearby customers
- Ads shown by real-time distance from the business
- Ads that show your business details
- Mobile call tracking
- Custom reporting
Everything else is quoted for your business once we have done the free audit: monthly SEO plans, the local SEO package and its maintenance plan, social media management and websites. None of them comes with a contract. Get a quote.
Dispensary marketing plans
Our dispensary plans are the one service with a full published price list: three monthly plans with no long-term commitment, and you can upgrade at any time. What each plan does is on the dispensary marketing page.
Starter
The first of the three monthly plans
$999 a month
- 30 or more link partner placements
- 3 press releases for brand and local authority
- 50 local citation links
- Weekly mobile, desktop and Google Business tracking
- Local heat map reports, 5 mile radius
- 50 keywords tracked
Accelerated
The middle plan
$1,999 a month
- 75 or more link partner placements
- 6 press releases for brand and local authority
- 100 local citation links
- Weekly mobile, desktop and Google Business tracking
- Local heat map reports, 10 mile radius
- 100 keywords tracked
Domination
The largest of the three plans
$3,500 a month
- 125 link partner placements
- 9 press releases for brand and local authority
- 150 local citation links
- Weekly mobile, desktop and Google Business tracking
- Local heat map reports, 15 mile radius
- 200 keywords tracked
How much SEO costs, and what decides it
SEO costs what the work takes each month, and three things decide how much work there is: the state of your website, the strength of your competitors, and how many services and places you want to be found for. Google itself charges nothing. It says that it costs nothing to appear in its organic search results, and that it never accepts money to include or rank a site. Every dollar of an SEO price pays for somebody’s work.
The state of your website
A site that loads slowly, repeats its titles or has thin pages needs repair before monthly work can pay. With us, website optimization is an initial plan that you buy before the monthly service starts. It makes sure the site is optimized for speed, for function and for the user. The free audit tells you how much of this your site needs.
The strength of your competitors
Some businesses are more competitive than others and need more work done. If the sites on the first page are large and long established, passing them takes more work, over more months, than a search whose first page is weak. We measure this before we start, with tools, so that the amount of work is known at the beginning and not a few months in.
How many services and places you want to be found for
Each service you sell and each place you sell it in is a search of its own, and each search needs a page that deserves to rank. A plumber who wants calls for one borough needs fewer pages than one who wants all five, and a shop that sells to the whole country competes with the whole country.
What a monthly SEO plan pays for
- Website analysis: the structure of the site and the keywords it could rank for.
- Keyword research: the words a customer types to find a business like yours.
- Content writing: pages written around those keywords, which keep a buyer reading.
- On-site work: calls to action and text where they need to be, and the title and description of every page in order.
- Links from other sites.
- A monthly report: calls, leads and visits, organic, paid and referral, with what went up and what went down.
The work month by month is on our New York SEO page.
What local SEO costs
Local SEO is one of the most affordable ways into SEO for a local business, and we sell it in two parts: a one-time flat fee for the package, then a low-cost maintenance plan if you want one. The package starts with an audit of your business citations, to see what has to be added, changed, replaced or created. Then we build 50 of the top citations, complete with content and images.
The maintenance plan adds 10 to 15 citations a month, with social and video sharing. It can only be bought after the package. Google states that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, so the fee pays for work on the things Google does weigh: a complete and accurate Business Profile, reviews and a business that is well known. The service is on our local SEO page.
What Google Ads management costs
Paid ads have two costs: what the ad platform charges for the clicks, and what it costs to have the campaigns built and managed. Our plans start at $500 per cycle for search, display and mobile app advertising, and at $400 per cycle for re-targeting. A cycle is one test of a campaign, and you set its length: a day, a week or a month. Banner artwork for display ads is an extra fee.
The click budget is yours to set. Google’s help pages say that cost-per-click bidding means you pay for each click on your ads, that the amount charged for a click is often less than your maximum bid, and that for most campaigns you are never charged more in a month than 30.4 times your average daily budget. In any quote, ours included, ask which part is management and which part is budget that goes to the ad platform.
Management is the daily work: placing the ads, monitoring them, building keyword lists, tracking and recording calls, writing ad copy and split testing it, reviewing performance and reporting. Google also says that advertising with it has no effect on your site’s presence in its search results, so ads and SEO are bought for different reasons. The service is on our Google Ads and PPC management page, the other paid channels are on our advertising agency NYC page, and fee models are compared in our guide to Google Ads management pricing.
What social media and websites cost
Both are priced by the amount of work, and each is quoted after we have seen what you have.
- Social media marketing is a monthly price. It follows the number of networks we maintain for you and how often we post. Paid campaigns on Facebook and Instagram carry their own ad budget on top, as Google Ads do.
- A website is a one-time price. It follows the number of pages, who writes them, and what has to be carried over from the old site. Our rebuild for Golden I Construction meant rewriting 29 pages and 70 articles and keeping every old address working, which is a different job from a five-page site for a new business.
SEO pricing models compared
Agencies charge for SEO in three ways, and the right one depends on whether you need ongoing work or a single repair.
| Model | How you pay | Suits | Ask before you sign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly plan | A set price each month for a set amount of work | A business that needs pages, links and reporting month after month | What is done each month, and how you leave |
| One-time project | A flat fee for a defined job, such as an optimization, a citation package or a website | A site that needs repair, or a business starting local SEO | What is delivered, and what happens after |
| Hourly consulting | By the hour, for advice or for training your own staff | A business with people who can do the work themselves | Who does the work once the advice is given |
How to compare SEO quotes
Compare quotes by what is done each month, not by the monthly figure. Two quotes with the same price can hold very different amounts of work, and a quote that names no work cannot be compared with anything. Put these questions to every agency, us included.
- What will you do each month, and how much of it? Ask for pages written, pages fixed and links, as numbers.
- Is there a setup fee or an initial plan before the monthly price starts?
- Does the price include the ad budget, or is that paid to the platform on top?
- Is there a contract? How long is it, and how do I leave?
- Who owns the website, the content, the ad account and the Business Profile if I leave?
- What will the report show, how often, and in what unit: positions only, or calls and leads as well?
- What results do you expect, and in what time?
- Will you tell me every change you make to my site, and why?
The last two come from Google’s own guidance on hiring an SEO. The same guidance says that nobody can guarantee first place in Google’s results, and tells you to be careful with a company that is secretive or will not clearly explain what it intends to do. Our own list of warning signs is shorter: a contract with a lot of pages, no real pricing model, no reports, and questions that get dodged. To see how New York agencies differ, read our comparison of SEO companies in NYC.
What a price buys
A price buys hours of work, and the cheapest quote usually holds the fewest. That can still be the right purchase. A single-location business in a quiet market may need only a sound website, a complete Business Profile, citations and a steady flow of real reviews. A business that wants to be found across a city, for several services, against established competitors, is buying far more work. The mistake is paying the first price and expecting the second result.
How long before SEO pays for itself
Plan on months, not weeks. On our own campaigns we tell clients to expect real movement in three to six months, depending on how competitive the business is. Google’s starter guide says that some changes take effect in a few hours and others take several months. Two of our guides go further: how long SEO takes and whether SEO is worth it.
We ask clients to treat SEO as an investment: you spend a set number of dollars, and the return is measured in the leads or sales you receive. The arithmetic is simple. Divide what you paid in a month by the leads that month brought, and you have your cost per lead. Compare that with what a job is worth to you and with how many leads become jobs. Our monthly report gives you the calls and lead forms, so you can do that sum every month.
No contracts
We do not ask for a contract. “No contracts” and “pricing upfront” have been promises on our homepage for years, and the dispensary plans say the same thing in other words: flexible monthly plans, upgrade at any time, no long-term commitment. If the work is not bringing you business, you should be free to stop paying for it.
The first step costs nothing. Send us your website address, and we will grade the site and tell you what to fix first.
Questions people ask
How much does SEO cost per month?
It depends on the state of your website, the strength of your competitors and how many services and places you want to be found for. Those three decide how many pages and links a month the work needs. Start with the free audit, which tells you how much work your site needs before anyone names a price.
Why do SEO prices vary so much from one agency to the next?
Because the amount of work varies. One quote may cover a monthly report and a few edits, and another may cover new pages, links and call tracking. Ask each agency what it will do each month, in numbers, and compare those.
Is SEO a one-time cost or a monthly one?
Usually both. Repairing a website and building a first set of local citations are one-time jobs. Writing new pages, earning links and reporting are monthly, because your competitors keep working too.
Do I pay Google for SEO?
No. Google says that it costs nothing to appear in its organic search results and that it never accepts money to include or rank a site. You pay Google only for ads, and Google says advertising has no effect on your site’s presence in its search results.
What should a small local business buy first?
Find out where the site stands, then start local. The audit is free, and local SEO is one of the most affordable ways into SEO: a one-time package of citations, a complete Business Profile and a way of collecting real reviews. See local SEO.
Is there a setup fee?
For SEO, website optimization is an initial plan bought before the monthly service starts. For local SEO, the package is a one-time flat fee and the maintenance plan is optional. Ads plans are priced per cycle. A cycle is one test of a campaign, and you set its length: a day, a week or a month.
Do you require a contract?
No. We do not ask for a contract, and our dispensary plans state that no long-term commitment is required.
Can I get an exact price before I commit to anything?
Yes. Send us your website address through the audit form or the contact page. We look at the site and your market first, then tell you what the work is and what it costs.
SEO audit$0Free. No contract to sign.