How to price SEO services: retainers, projects and hourly rates

Pricing is the question new SEO freelancers and small agencies ask most, and the one with the least useful answers. Rates vary too much by country, niche and experience for any single number to mean much. What you can choose deliberately is the model: how you charge, and what the client gets for it.

The four common models

Monthly retainer

The client pays a fixed amount each month for an agreed scope of ongoing work.

• Good for: ongoing work where results build over time, such as content, technical maintenance, link earning and reporting.
• Watch out for: scope creep. Write down what the retainer includes (hours, deliverables or both) and what counts as extra.
• Tip: a minimum term (three or six months is common) protects both sides, because SEO work rarely shows its effect in the first month.

Fixed-price project

One price for a defined piece of work: an audit, a migration, a site launch, a content plan.

• Good for: work with a clear end. It is also an easy first purchase for a client who does not know you yet.
• Watch out for: vague deliverables. "An SEO audit" can mean a two-page checklist or a sixty-page document. Say exactly what they will receive.

Hourly or daily rate

The client pays for time.

• Good for: consulting, training, and work whose size is genuinely unknown.
• Watch out for: it rewards slowness and caps your income at your hours. Many consultants move from hourly to project or retainer pricing as they gain experience.

Performance-based pricing

Payment tied to results, such as rankings, traffic or leads.

• The appeal: clients like paying only for outcomes.
• The risk: much of what affects results is outside your control: algorithm updates, the client's site changes, competitors, seasonality. Google itself warns that nobody can guarantee a top ranking. If you use it at all, use it as a bonus on top of a base fee, tied to something measurable you both agree on in advance.

Working out your price

A price you can defend starts from your costs, not from what others charge:

1. Decide what you need to earn in a year, including tax, tools, holidays and time spent finding clients.
2. Estimate your billable hours. Not every working hour is billable: sales, admin and learning take a real share.
3. Divide. That is your minimum effective hourly rate. Then price each project or retainer by estimating the hours and checking the result against that minimum.

Then compare with the market. If you are far below others with similar experience, you are probably underpricing; clients often read a very low price as a sign of low quality.

Make the price easy to say yes to

• Offer two or three options at different levels of scope. It turns "yes or no" into "which one".
• Price the outcome the client cares about, not your task list. "Fix the problems stopping new pages getting indexed" is easier to value than "crawl analysis, 10 hours".
• Put it in writing: scope, price, payment terms, what happens when the scope changes, and how either side can end the arrangement.

Raising your prices

Raise prices for new clients first; it is the least risky place to test. For existing clients, give notice (a month or more), explain what has changed, and consider keeping long-standing clients on their rate for a while.

Related reading

• How SEO freelancers find their first 10 clients
• Where SEO agencies actually get leads: the channels compared

How do you price your work? Share what has worked in the Careers and freelancing community.