How Much Does SEO Cost: Pricing and Quotes

How much SEO costs depends on what needs doing on your site, not on a one-size-fits-all price list. There are two reference points to help you get your bearings: international surveys of agency and consultant pricing, which we report with their sources, and our own prices, which we publish. Our monthly SEO consulting starts at €300 a month and our full SEO audit at €500, + VAT.

We are an Italian SEO agency that works online. If you are a foreign company that wants to be found by customers in Italy, or a company that wants visibility in more countries and languages, the prices on this page are the ones that apply, in euros.

On this page you will find what drives the price, the models SEO is paid for with, what a quote should contain and the warning signs of an offer to turn down.

What the price depends on

An SEO quote is an estimate of the work needed to take a site where it needs to be. Five variables move it the most.

• Size and condition of the site. A clean twenty-page site needs a few hours of technical work; an online store with thousands of product pages, filters and duplicates needs weeks just for the analysis.
• Competition on the searches that matter. Ranking for a niche service in one province is a different job from a nationwide product category fought over by marketplaces and big brands.
• Content to write or rewrite. Service pages, product pages, guides: they are often the biggest cost item, and it changes a lot depending on whether the copy is written by the company or by the consultant.
• Who implements the changes. If the consultant works directly on the site, it is one kind of job; if they hand instructions to an in-house or external developer, more steps and more checks are needed.
• Authority to build. A new site, with no links and no mentions, also needs work beyond its own pages. This is the least predictable part, which is why link building is usually quoted separately.

Pricing models

SEO is bought in four ways. They are not mutually exclusive: a project can start with a fixed-price audit and continue with a monthly retainer.

Model	How it works	When it makes sense
Monthly retainer	A set number of hours or activities every month, with a report	When the work is ongoing: content, technical work, measurement
Fixed-price project	One price for a defined outcome: audit, migration, keyword research	When the goal is limited and has an end
Hourly rate	You pay for the hours actually worked	For short consultations, reviews, training an in-house team
Pay for results	You pay for rankings reached or traffic gained	Almost never: see the warning signs below

What agencies and consultants charge

There is no reliable public survey of SEO prices in Italy. The two most cited surveys are international, in dollars, and should be read as an order of magnitude.

• Ahrefs, 2023-2024. Of 439 SEO service providers surveyed, 78.2% work on a monthly retainer; the most common retainer range is $501-1,000 a month, chosen by 20.4%, while the average is $2,917 a month, pulled up by the larger agencies. Prices rise with experience: those with 5-10 years in business charge on average more than twice the retainer of those with two years or less (Ahrefs, "SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost?").
• SE Ranking, December 2024. Of 260 agencies across North America and Europe, the most common monthly range is $500-1,000; in Europe only 9% charge more than $2,000 a month, compared with 22% in the US and Canada. The authors warn that the sample may not be statistically significant (SE Ranking, "SEO pricing survey insights").

These are market indications reported by external sources, not our prices. They tell you one useful thing: a retainer of a few dozen euros a month doesn't buy SEO work; at most it buys an automated report.

Our prices

We publish our starting prices so that whoever has to decide can get an idea before talking to us. They are + VAT; we put together the final figure for your project after looking at the site.

Service	Starting price	Best for
SEO consulting, Basic	€300 a month	Small sites, about 10 hours a month
SEO consulting, Advanced	€700 a month	Mid-sized sites and online stores
SEO consulting, Enterprise	€2,000 a month	Large sites, including those with more than 100,000 pages
Full SEO audit	€500, €1,000 or €2,000 one-off	Depending on the size of the site
Link building	On quote	Packages built around the project
SEO training	€800 (10 hours) or €2,200 (30 hours)	Individuals and companies

The monthly retainer includes reporting and basic implementation; more advanced implementation, for example tracking, is assessed separately. There are no multi-year contracts: you continue month by month.

What an SEO quote should contain

A quote that only says "SEO: so much a month" doesn't let you compare different offers. Before signing, check that it includes these items.

1. Measurable goals. Not "more visibility", but leads, sales or organic traffic to the pages that matter, with the starting figures from Search Console and Analytics.
2. Activities for the first month and the following ones. What will be done, in what order, and by whom: consultant, developer, in-house content team.
3. Hours or scope. How many hours a month or which activities are included in the price, and how anything outside that is paid for.
4. Reporting. How often it arrives, with what data and who explains it.
5. Access and ownership. Search Console, Analytics, accounts and content stay in the company's name, even when the relationship ends.
6. Duration and cancellation. If there is a minimum term, how long it lasts and what happens if the work doesn't deliver results.
7. Exclusions. Link building, content, development: what is not included, stated clearly.

Warning signs of an offer to turn down

• A guaranteed number one ranking. Google says so in its guide on choosing an SEO: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" (Google Search Central, "Do you need an SEO?").
• Bulk link packages. "100 backlinks a month" almost always means bought links or site networks: these are link schemes prohibited by Google's spam policies and can lead to a penalty.
• Payment per ranking on keywords chosen by the provider. It is easy to climb on searches nobody makes. If the price is tied to results, you choose the searches, based on the data.
• No explanation of the changes. The same Google guide advises being wary of anyone who won't explain what they will do on your site and why.
• Accounts in the agency's name. If Search Console or Analytics belong to the agency, you lose your data history when the relationship ends.

Who works with you

Your point of contact is Eugenio Tommasi, who has been doing SEO since 2009: almost twenty years of websites, migrations and penalties, with experience in Milan, Switzerland, Prague, Spain, Rome and Florence. We work online with companies across Italy and abroad.

The first step

To give you a quote, we need to see the site. Contact us with your website and your goals: from there we work out together whether you need a one-off job or ongoing work. You can write to us in Italian, English, Spanish, German or Portuguese.

Sources

Pages consulted and verified on October 14, 2026. The dollar figures are market indications reported by external sources, not SEO SRL prices.

1. Ahrefs, Joshua Hardwick, "SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost? 439 People Polled", updated August 15, 2024
2. SE Ranking, Svitlana Shchehel, "SEO pricing survey insights: How much does SEO cost in 2025?", December 13, 2024
3. Google Search Central, "Do you need an SEO?"
4. Google Search Central, "Spam policies for Google web search"