What determines the price of SEO, and how to compare two quotes

The price question usually arrives in the first or second email, and the answer “it depends” helps nobody. So let us unpack what it actually depends on — and how to compare two quotes when the numbers differ by a factor of two.

Why there is no single number

SEO is not a product with a weight and a size. The same goal means different work on a new domain and on a site that has run for ten years. The first has no history and no links, but also no inheritance. The second may have good age and, at the same time, ten years of faults to untangle: duplicate pages, broken redirects, subpages sitting outside the index.

That is why any serious quote starts by looking at the current state. If somebody gives you a price without opening the site and without asking for Search Console data, they are selling a list of tasks, not a result.

Four things that actually move the price

1. The starting state. Whether we begin by repairing or by growing. Sometimes the cheapest win is fixing one technical fault that keeps half the site out of the index — that is days of work, not months.
2. Competition in the queries. A broad query and a narrow professional one are not the same job. The stronger the pages in the top ten, the more content and links are needed, and the longer it takes.
3. Number of languages. Each language is its own set of pages, its own keywords, its own hreflang. Two languages are not twice the price, but they are considerably more than one.
4. Who writes the content. This is usually the largest single line in the budget. If the copy comes from you the price drops noticeably — and the risk that the project ends up waiting for content goes up.

Fifth comes the budget for links, but that is a separate line and depends on the niche: in some fields topical publications are plentiful and cheap, in others almost absent.

How to put two quotes side by side

You cannot compare a number with a number when the contents differ. Ask both suppliers the same four things:

• What is the output of the first month — a report, a prioritised list of tasks, or changes already made?
• Who writes the copy, and how much of it arrives per month?
• Is the link budget inside the price or separate?
• What exactly gets measured, and when is the first report?

If one quote includes content and the other does not, the cheaper quote is not cheaper — it is simply smaller.

What a cheap quote usually leaves out

Three things whose absence surfaces later: the technical work on the site itself (somebody has to put the changes in), writing the content, and setting up measurement. If a quote covers “keyword analysis and recommendations”, the recommendations land on your developer’s desk — and the cost you did not see is their time.

The other frequent place is the guarantee. No one who does not work at Google can guarantee a particular position in it. A promise of “top ten in three months” means in practice either a query so narrow that nobody searches for it, or a promise there is no intention of keeping.

A sensible place to start

If price is the deciding factor, the cheapest first step is an SEO audit: after it you can see whether your case needs monthly work or whether one technical fix is enough. Commissioning a large engagement before the audit is like budgeting a renovation without seeing the flat.

If the starting state is already known and the question is scope, look at what an SEO service actually includes — the composition of the work is set out there. An exact number is possible only once the scope is settled.