How Much Does SEO Cost for a Small Business?

If you've Googled this question, you've probably seen that it can run anywhere from $500 to $5,000 a month and ended up more confused than when you started. That's a large price range, and if we're being honest, the upper end of that range is probably out of budget for most small business owners. The other challenge is that those ranges don't really tell you what you're getting for your money, and if it's going to work to achieve your small business SEO goals. It also leaves out the most important part, and that's that, honestly, most small business owners are better off learning how to do SEO than outsourcing it, at least initially.

There are three options to manage SEO for your small business.

You can hire an agency or company to optimize your website one time and make sure you have covered the baseline SEO necessary for your business. This, however, doesn't cover the ongoing SEO work that you should be doing each month. This is a one-time expense.

You can hire an agency or company to set your small business SEO strategy and do the work each month so that your site is visible and generates leads for your business. This is an ongoing expense for months or years.

You can learn how to do SEO for your small business and work on optimizing your website with the guidance of an SEO expert, and manage the ongoing SEO work yourself or have your team help you with it. This is generally a one-time investment to learn how to do SEO for your small business.

I know the thought of handing off SEO and being able to check it off the list is very appealing, I get it. However, hiring a good small business SEO strategist is generally pricey and makes it harder for small business owners to just outsource it to someone they should trust. There are lower-cost options out there, but like with anything, you get what you pay for when it comes to SEO.

What it Costs for Someone to Set Up Your Small Business SEO Strategy

You can hire an SEO consultant, freelancer, or agency to set your small business SEO strategy for you. Sometimes web developers offer an SEO package as an add-on when designing a website. What's included in these packages can vary, as can the prices. I've seen SEO add-ons for a site build run $1,500 - $2,500 to have the designer add SEO elements to a website (this often includes creating your sitemap, setting up your site's Analytics and Search Console, and creating title tags and meta descriptions for each page). Some are beginning to charge extra for AEO or GEO (answer engine optimization or generative engine optimization) by adding FAQs to pages to help with AI search.

I offer small business SEO services, such as the SEO Foundations – Get Visible Package, which includes keyword research, answer engine question research, title tags, meta descriptions, copy review, and implementation on your site for a few thousand dollars. I also offer a complete, all-in-one SEO package that includes all of that plus your ongoing SEO visibility blog content strategy for Google and AI search with topics, keywords, AI questions, and SEO elements for your first 12 blog posts for around $6,000. If you'd like me to set up your small business SEO strategy, let's chat. I'd love to help you too.

What Agencies Typically Charge for Small Business SEO

That $500–$5,000/month range exists because SEO services can mean very different things depending on who's selling them. On the low end, honestly, you aren't often getting much actual work. For $500 a month, you're either getting someone with little experience or someone with experience who isn't doing much. You might get a monthly report that tells you how many visits your website got or how many links you earned, but you probably aren't getting ongoing content development or website updates.

I've seen agencies put junior reps and interns on accounts below $2,000 a month because it wasn't enough to justify using one of their strategists. Those junior staffers basically monitored the accounts, created reports, and someone else delivered them to the client, but almost no actual SEO work was ever done on them. It wasn't like the agency was recommending new pages or blog posts to create; they weren't researching new keywords or updating SEO elements on the site. They were just reporting how things were going and spending 1-2 hours a month on the account.

On the higher end, I've seen agencies charge up to $5,000 a month for small business SEO programs where they guaranteed a specific number of backlinks each month, ran reports, updated the site, and created weekly SEO-friendly blog content. While this is a more robust SEO strategy, it's out of budget for most small business owners. $60,000 a year for SEO for a small business is probably unnecessary, if I'm being honest. Programs at that level and price point are generally for larger businesses.

We worked with many enterprise companies at my last agency, and they spent $5,000- $10,000 per month on SEO. We had a few who spent $15,000 - $20,000, but in those cases, they were franchise organizations with hundreds or thousands of locations, and we were doing SEO for the corporate site, training local franchisees on SEO, and mapping out strategies for both local and national SEO. It was expensive because it was a very involved SEO strategy for a large organization.

What It Costs to Learn Small Business SEO Yourself

This is the most cost-effective option for small businesses. Yes, it involves learning how to do something you might prefer to outsource, but once you realize how much it can save you in the long run, learning how to do it will hopefully become a lot more exciting.

A good SEO coaching program with an experienced SEO strategist like me will run you a few thousand dollars. The benefit is that it's a one-time expense, not an ongoing one. If you choose to learn SEO, you can join a program and learn what you need to do, and then manage your own SEO for years to come, allowing your business to grow profitably.

My Simple SEO Content program teaches you how to do everything in the all-in-one SEO package for less than half the price. The difference is you are the one doing the work (with my guidance) rather than handing it off.

Is SEO Worth It for a Small Business?

SEO is definitely worth it for small businesses. It takes time and effort to make it work. It's not like ads, where you turn them on, spend money, and people start seeing your ad and finding your website quickly. However, you also don't have to keep paying for traffic and visibility, or risk it all drying up as soon as you turn your ads off.

It takes time, but once you either have someone do the work for you or learn how to do it and optimize your website, you should start to see results. You should start showing up more often on Google or in AI search results. New people should start discovering your business, and if your site is set up for conversion, you should start generating more leads and making more sales.

It doesn't happen overnight; it takes a while to work. It could easily be 6-12 months before you start to see significant changes, and most of the time, we see the biggest changes in 12-24 months. It's a long-term strategy, but it can work for years. If you hire someone to set your strategy for you, can you afford to invest $6,000 that might take a year or more to be earned back? If you hire an agency at $2,000 a month, can you comfortably invest $24,000 this year before you start seeing money back from your work? The time it takes to work is one of the main reasons I feel so strongly that learning SEO for your small business is the smartest option for most entrepreneurs. Rather than investing $25,000 or more before seeing any results, they can learn how to do it for a lot less money and pay off their investment much faster. After the initial investment is paid off, they get to keep whatever money they earn from their SEO work because they aren't paying a consultant, agency, or for ads. It helps them be more profitable faster.

If you want to learn more about SEO for your small business, I break it all down in the Ultimate Guide to Small Business SEO.

Can ChatGPT Do SEO for You?

ChatGPT can't do SEO for you. It will tell you very confidently that it can, but I can tell you that it's not doing it right. I've tested the different tools, and they can't do SEO for you out of the box. If you're curious, here's a post I wrote about my experience trying to have AI do SEO for me. Read the full breakdown here.

Can AI Tools Help You Do SEO?

I have worked to train AI to help my students with SEO, saving them a lot of time. I have two custom GPT assistants that help with SEO. I am also teaching my students how to use AI to do a lot of the SEO work on their websites, but this isn't just asking ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity to do SEO for you… It's about training the tools with the right information so that they do it right. I've spent a lot of time training AI tools to help my students do SEO on their websites. Your standard account can't do it. If you want to learn SEO and have AI be your helper (and do a lot of the work for you), I'd love to teach you. Join me in Simple SEO Content, and I'll teach you how to do this.

How to Decide Which Path Is Right for You

• If your business has more money than time to spend on SEO: hire an agency, but ask questions about what you're getting for your money. Be sure to fully understand their strategy, what's included and what's out of scope, and that you agree on the program goals and success metrics before signing on with them.
• If you have more time than money to invest or want to limit your business expenses: take a course or join a group program like mine and learn how to do SEO yourself with guidance. This option is more work for you; however, it's also the most cost-effective and will help your SEO efforts become profitable faster.
• Want expert strategy without a monthly bill: a one-time done-for-you setup helps you set the foundation of your small business SEO strategy and create a plan. You then generally create your ongoing content yourself, following the plan your expert laid out.
• You want to learn but hate working in groups: 1:1 consulting is an option. It's more expensive than a group program, but you can have someone teach you SEO for your small business so you can manage it over the long term.

There's no wrong answer here. It's up to you to decide which option is best for you and your business. I know sometimes we want to outsource a task but realize it's better to learn how to do it ourselves. If you're realizing that and want me to teach you how to do it, let's chat. If you're interested in learning how to do SEO one-on-one, learn more about my marketing consulting program here. If you'd rather join the group program, learn more here.

FAQ: How Much Should a Small Business Pay for SEO?

If you take away one number from this post, it's this: there isn't one right number. What matters is matching spend to your business – both its goals and its budget. A monthly agency retainer, a one-time setup fee, or your own time are the three currencies you're choosing between, and any of them can be the right call depending on where your business is today. If you need help deciding which option is right for you, I'm here to help. Let's chat.