Which SEO plan is right for your business?

Last reviewed: 21 July 2026

Four monthly plans, three rebuild tiers, and one honest way to choose. This page gets you to the right one in about five minutes, including the cases where the right answer is the cheaper plan, or no plan at all until your website is fixed. All prices are on the page and all plans are month to month, no lock-in.

First question: is the site itself the problem?

Before you buy any monthly plan, look at the thing you'd be optimising. If your site is slow, looks dated on a phone, or you'd be embarrassed sending a customer to it, SEO money is going into a leaky bucket. Fix the bucket first: website rebuilds start from $390, with every old URL redirected so the rankings you already have survive the move. Then put a plan behind it. If your site is solid, read on.

"I just want a professional watching it": Starter, $289 a month

Starter is for businesses that don't need a campaign yet, they need coverage. Your Google Business Profile managed and posted to, the AI search basics done (crawler access, llms.txt), small site fixes shipped every month instead of piling up, and a plain-words report so you know what's happening. It's the cheapest credible plan published in Australia, and we'll say plainly what it isn't: it won't write new pages or chase competitive rankings. It keeps your presence sharp and stops the slow rot that costs enquiries.

Pick Starter if: you're a sole trader or small operation, enquiries are okay but you know the online side is unattended, and $289 is a comfortable spend to have it handled.

"My work comes from people nearby": Local, $495 a month

Local is built for trades and local services that live off "near me" searches: the plumber, the electrician, the physio, the cake maker. Everything in a managed Google Business Profile plus the thing that actually moves local rankings: suburb and service pages with proper local structured data, and a review strategy that gets used rather than talked about.

Pick Local if: your customers search "your trade + suburb", your Google profile is bare or unmanaged, and competitors with worse work outrank you because their online presence is tidier.

"I want it to grow, not just exist": Growth, $990 a month

Growth is the most popular plan for a reason: it's the first tier where we're building, not just maintaining. Everything in Local, plus technical SEO where fixes actually ship (we build and host sites, so nothing waits for "your developer"), a keyword strategy mapped page by page, one new page or guide written every month, and answer-first content that AI engines can quote. Comparable retainers from Sydney agencies run $1,500 to $3,000 a month; Growth is $990 because the technical work is cheap when you can fix the code yourself.

Pick Growth if: SEO is a revenue channel you want to invest in, you have real competitors fighting for the same searches, and you want a report that shows enquiries, not just rankings.

"I want to own the answers": AI-First, $1,490 a month

Your customers are already asking ChatGPT who to use. AI-First is everything in Growth plus the full AI search build-out: content engineered to be quoted by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, entity and structured-data work across the whole site, a monthly check of who cites you and who doesn't, and a quarterly AI Search Audit included. Specialist agencies sell this alone for $2,000 to $5,000 a month on top of SEO; AI-First is $1,490 with the SEO included.

Pick AI-First if: you're in a field where being the recommended name matters more than being one of ten links, and you'd rather get there before your competitors know the race started.

Not sure? Two low-risk ways in

The $199 onboarding survey: we come out, walk your business, and survey your site, market and competition, so any plan you pick is grounded in what we saw rather than what a form told us. Recommended with any plan, and it's the best $199 you can spend if you're torn between two tiers.

The $890 AI Search Audit: a one-off, prioritised fix list of what Google and the AI engines see on your site today, written so any developer can action it. If you want proof before a monthly commitment, start here; comparable audits run $1,500 to $3,500.

When we'll tell you to buy less

Some agencies size the plan to your wallet. We size it to the job, and sometimes the job is smaller than your budget. A brand-new business with no reviews and three pages doesn't need Growth yet; it needs Starter or Local while the foundations set. A business in a tiny niche with no real search competition doesn't need AI-First; it needs Local and patience. If the smaller plan fits, we'll say so at signup, in writing.

Ready? Sign up online

Pick your plan and sign up at plans.alienwebdesign.com.au: choose the plan, tell us about the business, and we confirm scope within one business day before any payment is taken. Prefer a human first? Talk to us and we'll recommend a plan honestly, even if it's the cheapest one. The full inclusions live on the SEO packages page and the rebuild packages page.

Common questions

Can I change plans later?

Yes, any month. Everything is month to month with no lock-in, so you can start on Starter and step up to Local or Growth when the business is ready, or step down if you need to pull money back for a season. The work compounds either way; nothing is lost by moving.

What happens after I sign up?

We confirm your details and scope within one business day, no payment is taken until that's agreed. Then the first month starts with the groundwork: access sorted, baseline measured, the highest-impact fixes identified and started. You get a plain-words report every month from there.

Do I need the $199 onboarding survey?

It's optional and recommended. We come out, walk the business and survey your site and competition so we fully understand what we're optimising. If you're remote or want to skip it, we start from a video call and what we can measure instead.

What if my website itself is the problem?

Then fix that first, and we'll say so honestly. SEO on a slow, dated site is pouring money into a leaky bucket. Website rebuilds start from $390 for a one-pager and from $749 for a five-page site, with every old URL redirected so the rankings you have survive.

Still torn between two plans? Ask us. Recommending the smaller one when it fits is how we keep clients for years instead of months.