How much does SEO cost in Australia? Real 2026 numbers

Last reviewed: 21 July 2026

Here is the answer most agencies make you book a call to hear: credible Australian agencies charge $500 to $3,000 a month for small-business SEO, the sweet spot for campaigns that actually move is $1,500 to $3,000, and under $300 a month you are almost always buying offshore link-spam. We checked the published rate cards in July 2026. This guide gives you the real bands, what each one buys, and the traps.

One thing worth knowing up front: roughly half the agencies we checked publish no prices at all. "Get a quote" is not a scandal, custom scope is real, but it also lets an agency price you on how you sound on the phone rather than on the work. Every number below comes from a rate card or package page an agency chose to publish.

The price bands, from the bottom up

$150 to $300 a month: the mill zone

Almost nothing credible lives here. The plans we found in this band promise things like "10 backlinks a month" for $150, which at Australian labour rates is only possible with automated, offshore, bulk link-building, the exact behaviour Google's spam systems are built to catch. Some of these outfits wear Australian addresses; check the ABN and where the team actually sits. The risk is not that the work does nothing. It is that a burned link profile costs real money to clean up.

$400 to $700 a month: the credible entry floor

The cheapest fixed-price plan we found from a credible onshore agency was $500 a month plus GST, typically covering a set number of keywords, basic on-page work and monthly reporting, often with a three-month minimum term. "From $399" floors exist too, though "from" pricing usually means the real quote lands higher. At this level expect maintenance-grade SEO: useful for a local business with light competition, not a campaign that will shift competitive rankings.

$1,500 to $3,000 a month: the sweet spot

This is where most Australian agencies concentrate their small-business clients, and where the published guides from the bigger specialist firms put the majority of effective campaigns. The money buys real hours: technical fixes, content written and shipped monthly, local search work, and link-building done by hand. If ranking matters to your revenue and your market is contested, this is the honest band.

$5,000 and up: competitive, national, ecommerce

Rate cards from the larger Sydney agencies run $5,000 to $10,000 a month for competitive niches, national campaigns and ecommerce. If someone quotes you this and you are a local service business, the quote is for a different kind of client than you.

What AI search optimisation costs

The new line item. Specialist agencies now sell AEO and GEO, getting your business quoted by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, as standalone retainers at $2,000 to $5,000 a month, with one-off AI visibility audits at $1,500 to $3,500. Others fold basic AI search work into their normal SEO retainers without a separate price.

Our honest read, which we have published before: the groundwork is not expensive. Letting the AI crawlers in, adding an llms.txt file, structured data and answers plain enough to quote, that is careful work, not dark art, and it helps your normal Google rankings at the same time. Anyone charging thousands a month for only that is renaming old work. The full detail is in our guide on how to show up in AI search.

The traps in Australian SEO pricing

• Lock-in terms at the cheap end. The sub-$700 plans mostly carry three-to-six-month minimum terms. The setup fee they don't charge is hiding in the months you can't leave.
• "From $X" floors. A "from" price is a headline, not a quote. Ask what YOUR scope costs before comparing it to a fixed price.
• Offshore mills with local addresses. A capital-city address and a .com.au domain prove nothing. Check the ABN, ask who does the work and where.
• Guaranteed rankings. Nobody controls Google's results. A guarantee is either meaningless (a ranking for a search nobody makes) or a lie.
• Deliverables priced in links. "30 backlinks a month" is a spam quota, not a strategy. Good link work is slow and specific.

How to buy SEO without getting burned

1. Get the price in writing before anyone asks for your budget.
2. Prefer month to month. An agency confident in its work doesn't need a contract to keep you.
3. Ask exactly what ships in month one. "Research and strategy" for the first two months is billing you to read your own website.
4. Keep Google Search Console and Analytics under YOUR ownership, with the agency added as a user. If they leave, your data stays.
5. Ask who does the work. A sales team plus account managers plus an offshore delivery team is three margins between you and the person typing.

What we charge

We publish our prices, which is still rare enough in this market to say plainly: monthly plans from $289 a month plus GST, up to $1,490 a month for the full SEO plus AI search package, all month to month with no lock-in and no setup fees. There is an optional $199 onboarding survey where we come out, walk your business and survey your site so we fully understand what we're optimising, and a one-off $890 AI Search Audit if you want a fix list before committing to anything monthly. The full breakdown, including exactly what each plan includes, is on our SEO & AI search packages page.

Why cheaper than the bands above? We build and host the sites we optimise, so the technical work that agencies quote hours for is often minutes in code we already know, and there is no sales team to feed.

Common questions

How much should a small business spend on SEO in Australia?

From published Australian rate cards checked in July 2026: credible agencies charge $500 to $3,000 a month for small-business SEO, and the majority of effective small-business campaigns sit between $1,500 and $3,000. Under $500 a month you are usually buying templated on-page work with no real link or Google Business Profile work; under $300 you are almost always buying offshore link-spam that can hurt you.

Why is very cheap SEO risky?

At $150 to $300 a month the numbers only work with automated, offshore, bulk link-building, the exact behaviour Google's spam systems target. A penalty or a burned link profile costs far more to clean up than the money saved. If a plan under $300 promises dozens of backlinks a month, that is the tell.

What does AI search optimisation (AEO) cost?

Specialist Australian agencies price standalone AEO and GEO retainers at $2,000 to $5,000 a month, and one-off AI visibility audits at $1,500 to $3,500. Some agencies bundle basic AI search work into normal SEO retainers instead. The groundwork, crawler access, an llms.txt file, structured data and quotable answers, is not expensive to do and also helps normal rankings.

Are there one-off SEO options instead of a monthly retainer?

Yes, but they are rarer in Australia. The common one-offs are audits: technical SEO audits, and AI visibility audits at $1,500 to $3,500 from specialists. A good one-off audit gives you a prioritised fix list any developer can action, which suits businesses that want to do the work themselves.

Sources: published rate cards and pricing pages checked 21 July 2026, including StudioHawk's SEO pricing guide, SEO Sydney Experts' published rates, Digital Eagles' packages, and Sydney AI-search cost guides (HornTech; Websites That Sell). Prices are what providers published on that date; always confirm current pricing directly.

Want the phone to ring without paying an agency's sales team first? See our packages and prices or talk to us: we'll tell you honestly which plan fits, even if it's the cheapest one.