When you want to drive long term website traffic, reach a larger audience and generate more leads/sales, search engine optimisation (SEO) is the perfect strategy. SEO is not a one-size-fits-all service because businesses differ in their needs (immediate results vs long term) and their marketing sophistication (how many different types of marketing you do each month) as well as marketing budgets (how much should you spend on marketing?).
SEO is a specialist skill – yes you can learn how to do it yourself (Google offers free training courses) yet hiring an expert will get you results faster and without the rookie mistakes. It’s also a fast-moving discipline with new techniques being introduced regularly. The most recent is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) – which ensures AI tools like ChatGPT and Google AI cite your content as sources – read the numero® ebook on this.
When you want to hire an SEO agency, you need to know how much SEO costs and what you get for your money.
In this post, we will help you to understand the cost of SEO so you clearly know how much to pay when you hire a professional SEO agency such as Numero.
Let’s explore some numbers.
Read on for in-depth information or call us at 09 390 3997 to discuss your unique requirements with an SEO specialist.
How Much Does Business SEO Cost?
The average cost of search engine optimisation in New Zealand is $1,850 to $6,000 per month. This covers micro businesses (1-3 people) up to medium sized businesses (20+ people). For one-off SEO projects, the cost can range anywhere between $5,000 to $25,000 depending on the size of the job and the specific details.
Small businesses can expect to pay an $150 to $300 an hour for SEO services.
What Affects the Cost of SEO?
A variety of factors influence the average cost of SEO services such as:
- The agency’s pricing model (hourly, retainer, length of contract)
- The agency’s experience (solo freelancer, 2 years experience up to 10 years plus)
- The goals of your SEO strategy (quick increase in sales leads vs long term web visibility)
- The timeline of your SEO campaign (3 months versus 18 months plus)
- The software, tools or resources required (your website has 10 pages or 1000s of pages)
When looking at SEO costs, it’s important to note that search engine optimisation is a long-term investment. SEO does not produce instant results. By investing in a well-designed SEO strategy, you are improving the visibility of your website, which will drive more traffic, leads and sales for your business.
In comparison to other online marketing strategies such as social media marketing and PPC, SEO will deliver powerful results for your business over the long-term. It will keep delivering a high ROI week after week whereas PPC will stop delivering results the moment you stop paying for the advertising campaign.
When comparing the costs of SEO, look for an experienced SEO agency rather than searching for the cheapest service. Low-cost SEO will not do your business any good. It will cause harm if shortcuts, link farms and other “black hat” SEO techniques are used. This will get your website in trouble, and attracting Google penalties and instant removal from search results. If you aren’t expert in SEO you will find it hard to spot this malpractice happening until it’s too late and Google has penalised your website removing it from search results.
How Much Does SEO Cost Per Project, Month and Hour?
SEO agencies price their services differently, and no two companies will quote the same rate. Your business model, company size and SEO requirements will determine the size and scope of your SEO strategy and how much it will cost you. If you have already done a lot of website SEO and want to maintain your keyword prominence or add a new service line the costs will be lower than if you have done no SEO in the past.
But there are some basic pricing models that a lot of SEO companies and consultants lean on to price their SEO services. These include hourly, monthly and project-based. Let’s take a look at the average cost of SEO services under each of these pricing models:
- Cost of Hourly SEO Services
Freelance SEO consultants typically charge by the hour, and the costs can range from $30 to $400 per hour. Most clients spend anywhere from $80 to $250 an hour, depending on whether they hire a freelancer or a small team and whether the SEO expert is a newcomer or has years of experience in SEO.
- Cost of Monthly SEO Services
This is the best option for business that understand ongoing SEO investment.
Monthly SEO plans can start from as low as $850 per month (as part of a basic plan, your SEO agency will carry out basic SEO tasks on your website. This includes keyword research, technical website SEO, copywriting and on-page SEO. Monthly plans can go as high as $6,000 a month or more (where the agency will create high-quality content and outreach to your website to build back links).
Most business find a middle ground and invest anywhere from $1,750 to $2,500 a month for a customised SEO campaign tailored to their requirements.
- Cost of Project-Based SEO Services
Although this model is not very common, businesses do hire an SEO agency to carry out extensive work for a specific campaign or project. One example can be rescuing your website after suffering Google penalties. Getting penalised is usually the result of poor practice SEO and black hat techniques. Because the requirements of a project depends on the needs of a campaign and the company, it is not easy to provide an estimate and the prices could range from $5,000 to $25,000 and more. The final cost will depend on the scope of the project, time frame and the level of experience of the agency.
What Does numero’s SEO Service Cover?
A big reason why there’s no standard rate for SEO is that the services vary from agency to agency. The cheapest SEO services offer keyword research and inserting these into your website. This is very basic. The more sophisticated SEO services include link building, SEO for AI artificial intelligence and GEO. A fully integrated digital marketing service blends SEO with advertising and other services. numero® offers “blended” marketing across all performance marketing services.
Our SEO plan may cover all or most of the following monthly SEO tasks:
- Crafting a customised SEO strategy
- Keyword research
- Designing and launching your SEO campaign
- Managing your social media pages
- Carrying out technical SEO audits
- Writing blog posts
- On-page SEO for your product/service pages
- Improving the page load speed of your website
- Improving your website’s technical SEO
- Launching an outreach campaign to earn backlinks from authority websites
This is just an example of the tasks that an SEO plan can cover. What you actually get will depend on the plan you choose, your customised SEO strategy and how it’s integrated with other marketing activities like advertising.
Is my SEO working?
Judging the success of SEO can definitely be traced and monitored. Here’s a high level summary of core SEO success metrics. Ask the numero team to explain these
Traffic and Visibility:
- Organic search traffic growth over time
- Search engine rankings for target keywords
- Click-through rates from search results
- Organic traffic as percentage of total website traffic
Engagement Quality:
- Time spent on pages from organic search
- Bounce rate for organic visitors
- Pages per session from search traffic
- Conversion rates from organic visitors
Technical Performance:
- Site loading speed and Core Web Vitals
- Mobile usability scores
- Crawl errors and indexing issues
Tools that measure SEO success
Essential SEO Tools
- Google’s Free Tools:
- Google Analytics 4 – Track organic traffic, user behavior, and conversions
- Google Search Console – Monitor search performance, indexing status, and technical issues
- PageSpeed Insights – Check site speed and Core Web Vitals
Comprehensive Paid Tools:
- SEMrush or Ahrefs – Keyword tracking, competitor analysis, backlink monitoring
- Moz Pro – Rank tracking, site audits, keyword research
- Screaming Frog – Technical SEO auditing
Specialised Tools:
- GTmetrix or WebPageTest – Detailed site speed analysis
- Ubersuggest – Low budget keyword and competitor research
How Much Should I Pay for SEO Services?
There is no standard guideline for SEO pricing. This means that anyone can claim to offer SEO services and charge any price they like. So the responsibility of deciding what is a fair price for SEO falls on you, the customer, especially in case of an ongoing monthly plans.
As we saw above, the cost of SEO is as varied and varied as the agencies in New Zealand. So you are perhaps wondering how much you should pay for SEO. So how do you get to the right number?
Here are some questions to consider:
- What is your website visibility and keyword goal?
- Are you a local business or a global business selling overseas?
- How much can you afford to pay?
- How much do your employees know about SEO?
numero® is happy to work alongside your in-house marketing team training them up to do advanced SEO work.
Request a Free SEO Audit
Claim your free SEO audit and receive our in-depth report outlining the strengths and weaknesses of your current SEO strategy along with a free action plan to boost your online presence.
For more information about our SEO services or to discuss your requirements, contact the numero® team today.
