SEO pricing is opaque because the deliverable is invisible. Two vendors quoting the same monthly fee can be doing completely different work: one fixing crawl and speed problems and publishing researched content, the other sending a rank report.
The three ways SEO is sold
- One-off technical audit: a fixed fee, a prioritised issue list, and enough detail for your developers to act.
- Monthly retainer: audit remediation plus content, internal linking, local SEO and reporting. Priced by output volume.
- Project scope: a migration, a cluster of new landing pages, or a schema and performance overhaul.
What a legitimate scope includes
- Crawlability, indexation, canonicals, sitemap and robots correctness.
- One page per search intent, with unique title, H1 and description.
- Content produced from real keyword research, not spun filler.
- Internal linking between service pages, case studies and articles.
- Structured data that matches visible page content.
- Core Web Vitals work on real mobile connections.
- Local SEO: Google Business Profile, consistent business details, local content.
- Search Console reporting on queries, pages and conversions.
How long before it works
Technical fixes can change impressions within weeks. Competitive commercial phrases such as "web development Sri Lanka" take months of consistent publishing and internal linking, because you are displacing pages with years of history.
Judge progress on leading indicators first: indexed pages, impressions on target queries, average position on your cluster, then inquiries. Our SEO service reports on exactly those, and a free website audit will tell you which technical issues are capping you today.
Walk away from
Guaranteed rankings. Bought backlink packages. Hundreds of AI-generated articles. Doorway pages for every city. All of them create cleanup costs that exceed whatever they saved.
