“How much does SEO cost?” is the first question every Australian business owner asks — and the industry is famously bad at answering it. Here’s a straight breakdown of what SEO actually costs in Australia in 2026, what you get at each price level, and how to spot a quote that’s too good to be true.
The short answer
Most Australian small businesses pay $500 to $3,000 per month for ongoing SEO. Under that range you’re usually buying reports rather than work; well above it you’re paying for enterprise scope most local businesses don’t need.
Typical SEO pricing models in Australia
Monthly retainers (most common)
- $500–$1,000/month — entry-level local SEO: on-page fixes, Google Business Profile optimisation, citations, a modest amount of content. Right for single-location businesses in low-to-medium competition.
- $1,000–$2,000/month — the small-business sweet spot: technical SEO, regular content, local landing pages and genuine link building with meaningful monthly hours.
- $2,000–$5,000/month — competitive industries (legal, finance, medical, trades in big metros) or multi-location businesses.
- $5,000+/month — national brands and eCommerce at scale.
One-off projects
- SEO audit: $500–$2,500 depending on site size and depth.
- Site migration support: $1,000–$5,000 — cheap insurance against losing rankings in a rebuild.
- Hourly consulting: $100–$250/hour for most experienced Australian consultants.
What actually drives the price
Four things move an SEO quote more than anything else: competition (ranking a cafe in Toowoomba is not ranking a lawyer in Sydney), your starting point (a technically sound site costs less to grow), scope (one location vs ten, five services vs fifty), and content needs (whether pages need to be written from scratch).
The cheap-SEO trap
$199/month SEO exists because it sells, not because it works. At Australian labour rates that buys maybe one hour of real work — the rest is automated reports and offshore directory submissions. The damage shows up later: spammy links that need disavowing, duplicated “location pages” that trip Google’s spam policies, and a year of invoices with nothing to show. If a quote won’t tell you how many hours of actual work you’re buying and what will be published where, walk away.
What we charge
Our Brisbane SEO packages are month-to-month: $500/month (small business local SEO), $1,100/month (15 hours of monthly SEO work) and $1,500/month (25 hours, for competitive industries) — all inc GST, all reported in plain English. No lock-ins, no surprises.
FAQ
Is SEO worth it for a small business? If your customers search for what you sell, yes — organic search is usually the cheapest lead source over a 12-month window, because the work compounds instead of stopping when the budget does.
SEO or Google Ads? Ads buy immediate visibility and stop the moment you stop paying; SEO takes months to build and keeps paying after. Most of our clients run a small ads budget while the SEO compounds — the channels share keyword data.
Can I do SEO myself? The basics, absolutely: claim your Google Business Profile, write clear service pages, collect reviews. The gap appears in technical fixes, content velocity and link building — which is where the hours go.
Want to know what your site specifically needs? Ask us for a free audit — we’ll tell you what to fix even if you never hire us.