SEO Pricing Australia: What It Actually Costs, Published
You have three agency tabs open and not one of them shows a price. Every site says "contact us for a custom quote", which means a discovery call and a number four days later that you can't compare to anything.
So here it is. SEO pricing in Australia runs $990 to $3,490 a month for a small to mid-sized business with a competent provider. Our packages are $990, $1,990 and $3,490. One-off audits start at $1,500. Those figures don't change depending on how your website looks.
Below that you're buying automation. Above $5,000 you're mostly paying for an account manager, a Surry Hills lease, and a layer of people between you and the work.
- $990
- Entry price, published in full
- 30 days
- Notice to leave. No lock-in
- 1pm to 6pm
- AEST, senior-led, contactable
Our SEO packages and what each one includes
| Local $990/mo | Growth $1,990/mo | Authority $3,490/mo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | One service area | Multi-suburb or service | Competitive metro |
| Google Business Profile | Optimised, weekly posts | Yes | Yes |
| Local citations | 8 a month | 8 a month | 8 a month |
| Review system | Set up | Set up | Set up |
| Pages optimised | 2 a month | 5 a month | 5 a month |
| Articles | 1 of 1,200 words | 3 | 8 |
| Links | None | 4 quality | 8 plus digital PR |
| Technical work | Basic | Full fixes | Full fixes |
| Keywords tracked | 20 | 50 | 150 |
| Conversion tracking | No | Yes | Yes |
| AI search visibility | No | No | Yes |
| Contact | Monthly report, 20 min call | Fortnightly call | Fortnightly, quarterly strategy, Slack |
Same prices for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Tamworth. No postcode premium.
Run the sum
How many enquiries a month each tier has to bring in
The only sum that matters, and it changes completely with what you sell. Move these to your own numbers.
Each enquiry is worth about $420 at that rate. That is revenue, not margin, so apply your own margin.
Local
$990 a month · One service area
3 enquiries a month to break even
GrowthMost common
$1,990 a month · Multi-suburb or service
5 enquiries a month to break even
Authority
$3,490 a month · Competitive metro
9 enquiries a month to break even
Fees are the published monthly prices, in Australian dollars, ex GST. If the number for Authority is not realistic for your business, Authority is the wrong buy, and we will say so.
What is not included, so nobody is surprised in month two
Google Ads management
We don't touch paid search. If you need it we'll point you at someone who does.
Social media
No posting, no scheduling. Instagram does not rank your plumbing business.
Logo design, branding, print
Not our trade.
A website rebuild
We'll fix what's broken inside your existing site: speed, structure, broken links, mobile layout, indexing. If it's genuinely beyond repair we'll say so, and a rebuild is a separate quote.
Rank guarantees
Nobody can guarantee a position on a page they don't own. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, or planning to rank you for "emergency plumber Blacktown 24 hour cheap", which nobody searches for.
Content you haven't approved
Nothing publishes under your name unread.
What $990 a month actually buys you
Local is one service area, done properly. Your Google Business Profile gets worked every week, citations get cleaned up, two pages a month get rewritten to target what people actually type, and you get one real article. Enough to win the map pack in a suburb or two where the competition is half-finished profiles, which it usually is. Not enough to outrank an established competitor across fifteen.
Growth is the tier most businesses belong on. The difference is volume and links. Five pages a month covers your whole service and suburb structure inside a year instead of three. Four quality links a month is what moves a contested term, and conversion tracking means we can tell you which calls came from organic instead of guessing.
Authority is for businesses where one customer is worth thousands and the terms are contested. Family law in Melbourne. NDIS plan management.
Who should not buy Authority: any business under about $700,000 turnover, anyone with one location and a ten kilometre radius, and anyone who hasn't fixed their phone answering. Eight articles a month is pointless if calls ring out at 4:30pm. We've talked people down a tier before and we'll do it again.
Why cheap SEO costs more than doing it properly
The $299 a month operators aren't doing a cheaper version of this work. For the money you get bulk content lightly reworded, links from private blog networks (dead sites that exist only to sell links), directory submissions nobody visits, and a dashboard reporting movement on terms like "affordable plumbing services excellent quality" that nobody types. It's built to look like progress. It measures nothing.
Then the bill arrives. Cleanup runs $1,500 to $2,500 for the link audit and disavow work, plus about $180 a page to rewrite the spun content, which on a typical 30-page mess is another $5,400. Call it $7,000 to $8,000, and six to nine months before rankings recover. So $3,588 for the damage and $8,000 to undo it.
Month by month
What the first year usually looks like, and when you can leave
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- Technical and local foundations
- Google Business Profile movement
- Organic rankings
- Compounding
- You can leave
Month 1
Setup-heavy. Crawl issues, tracking, the Google Business Profile, and the pages that earn money first. We do not dress month one up as results.
Typical timing, not a guarantee. Thirty days notice applies in any month, with no exit fee and no clawback.
The payback arithmetic, worked out
The only sum that matters, and it changes completely with what you sell.
A plumber in the outer suburbs
Average job value $380. Around 55% of inbound calls turn into work, so each extra call from search is worth $209.
| Tier | Fee | Calls needed to break even |
|---|---|---|
| Local $990 | $990 | 5 calls |
| Growth $1,990 | $1,990 | 10 calls |
| Authority $3,490 | $3,490 | 17 calls |
Five extra calls a month is realistic once you're in the three-pack for two or three suburbs. Seventeen is not, unless you run several vans. A single-van operator belongs on Local. That's revenue, not margin, so apply your own margin.
A family law firm
Average matter value $4,000 to $12,000. Call it $6,000. Enquiry to engaged client runs about one in four, because people ring three firms then sit on it for a fortnight. Each enquiry is worth roughly $1,500.
| Tier | Fee | Enquiries needed to break even |
|---|---|---|
| Local $990 | $990 | 0.7 enquiries |
| Growth $1,990 | $1,990 | 1.4 enquiries |
| Authority $3,490 | $3,490 | 2.4 enquiries |
One extra matter a year pays for eight months of Local. Two enquiries a month clears Authority with room over. Tiny volume, enormous value, which is why the top tier suits a firm and makes no sense for the plumber. It's also why family law terms are contested. Every firm has run this sum.
One-off projects
| Project | Price |
|---|---|
| SEO audit (manual, to 500 URLs) | $1,500 |
| Ecommerce audit (to 5,000 URLs) | $2,500 |
| Site migration | $3,500 to $8,000 |
| Google Business Profile setup | $690 |
| Consulting or second opinion | $250 per hour |
Audits come back in five business days with a prioritised fix list your own developer can action. No obligation afterwards.
All prices here are Australian dollars and exclude GST. Price rises apply to new clients only, so sign at $990 and you stay at $990.
Questions
Questions we get asked
Straight answers, including the uncomfortable ones. Anything else goes to the person who does the work.
Ask your own questionWhy do you publish your prices when nobody else does?
Because hiding them wastes everyone's time. If $1,990 is outside your budget you'd rather know now than after a 45 minute discovery call, and we'd rather not run the call. It also means we can't quote the next person differently based on how their site looks.
Is there a lock-in contract?
No. Thirty days notice in writing, any time, no exit fee and no clawback. You aren't signing a twelve month term to get the monthly rate. We'd rather keep clients because the work is producing results than because a contract traps them. If we lose you in month four because nothing happened, that's on us.
How long before I see results?
Month one is setup-heavy and you'll see very little. Google Business Profile movement usually shows at 4 to 8 weeks. Organic rankings shift in month three or four and compound from month six. Anyone promising results in 30 days is lying, or sitting on a site already about to rank.
Can you guarantee page one?
No, and anyone who does is lying to you. We don't control the algorithm, your competitors, or what Google does with AI summaries next quarter. What we commit to is the deliverables listed above, every month, with the work shown, and an honest read of the numbers when they're not moving.
Why are you cheaper than a Sydney agency?
No CBD lease, no account managers, no sales team on commission. The senior person who scopes your work does the work. A $6,000 a month agency isn't spending $6,000 on your rankings. They're spending maybe $2,000 on the work and the rest on overhead.
What happens if it doesn't work?
You leave with 30 days notice and keep everything: the content, the pages, the profile, the citations, the tracking. At the three month mark we go through the data honestly. If the search volume in your niche is too thin to justify the spend, we'll say so rather than roll you into another quarter.
Free, by hand, no obligation
Start with the free audit, not a sales call
Four fields: your website, your main competitor, your service area, an email address.
Within two business days a real person spends 30 to 45 minutes on your site and your competitor's by hand. You get three genuine findings, one quick win you can action yourself without paying anyone, and one thing that needs help. No automated PDF, no 40-page template with your logo on it.
No obligation, and no sales call unless you ask. If you read the audit, do the quick win and never speak to us again, that's a fine outcome. We're contactable 1pm to 6pm AEST if you'd rather ask a question first.
- Turnaround
- Two business days
- Follow-up
- No sales call unless you ask
What clients say
In their own words
Upwork reviews, reproduced unedited apart from the spelling of Arbaz’s name.
We had an amazing work experience with Arbaz in the past, so we decided to rehire him for the SEO dofollow link building for our other websites. He delivered excellent results and met our expectations. He is a highly skilled and reliable SEO expert. We will definitely hire him again for our future projects. Thank you for your hard work and dedication. 👍
Working with Arbaz has been an absolute pleasure. His expertise in managing our off-page strategy is evident in the tangible results and increased visibility we've achieved. Arbaz is professional, diligent, and consistently goes above and beyond our expectations. He not only understands our goals but also offers insights that add tremendous value to our strategy. I appreciate his proactive approach and clear communication. We feel fortunate to have him as a part of our team and I highly recommend him to anyone looking for top-tier off-page strategy services.
Arbaz was incredibly helpful and dependable. His expertise in SEO is evident, and he did an outstanding job restoring many of our websites. I highly recommend working with him.