What should a tradie pay for SEO?

Ask five agencies what SEO costs and you’ll get five very different numbers, usually without a clear reason for any of them. Here’s how to make sense of it, with our own price on the table.

What the price depends on

• How competitive your trade and suburb are. A quiet search in a specific suburb takes less effort to win than a crowded one across a whole city.
• How many trades and suburbs you want to show up for. Every one needs its own page, and every page needs to be worth reading.
• Where you start. A site with problems to fix, or a Google profile that needs rebuilding, needs more work before anything can move.
• How much real work happens each month. SEO is steady pressure, not a switch. You’re paying for the work, not for a promise.

What around $1,500 a month covers

It’s enough to do the whole job properly, not a cut-down version of it. The work is the same kind of work you’ve seen described across this site: fixing what’s holding the site back, getting your Google profile complete and correct, building the suburb and service pages that can actually rank, keeping on top of reviews, and a plain monthly report that tells you what moved, what didn’t, and what changes next month.

When you may need to go up a tier

$1,500 a month is the right spend for most tradies. The exception is when you’re up against a competitor with deep pockets: a large business or a well-funded agency client putting serious money into SEO every month. In a crowded trade and suburb, matching that pressure may take a tier or two more. That means more pages, more links and more ongoing work, not a different kind of work. We’ll tell you honestly in the audit whether your patch needs it, and you don’t pay for more than you need.

No contract, 30 days’ notice

There’s no lock-in. If it isn’t working for you, give 30 days’ notice and you’re free to go. That keeps us honest, and it’s how we think SEO ought to be sold. If the work is good you won’t want to leave, and if it isn’t you shouldn’t be stuck.

Why some agencies charge double

Plenty of agencies charge $3,000 a month or more. Some of them pass the day-to-day work to overseas contractors, so a good part of the price is account management sitting on top of work done somewhere else. That isn’t automatically bad, but it’s worth knowing who is actually working on your site and your suburb. Ask them. A good agency will tell you plainly.

Red flags at any price

• A 12-month contract. If they’re confident in the work, they don’t need to lock you in.
• A guarantee of page one. No one controls Google, and anyone promising a date is selling something else. See how long SEO really takes.
• No report, or a report you can’t read. You should be able to see what was done and what changed.
• No straight answer on who does the work.
• A vague list of what’s included. “Full SEO service” isn’t a scope.

Questions to ask any agency

• What exactly will be done in the first month, and in the months after?
• Who does the work, and where are they based?
• What do I get to see each month?
• What happens if I want to stop?
• Which searches are you targeting for me, and why those?

Is it worth it?

Work out what one extra job is worth to you. If a single extra job a month would cover the fee, the sums work. Just remember rankings take time, so expect to pay for several months before enquiries arrive, which is the other reason a lock-in contract should make you cautious.