SEO packages and pricing, laid out in full.
No discovery-call gatekeeping. The map shows how far each plan reaches and where the exits are: three published prices, what each one buys, what it costs to stop, and a calculator to test the return. Boltly packages start from $500 a month, month to month.
- Inner zoneStarter $500/mo
One location building its first rankings around the pin.
- City ringGrowth $900/mo
Competing across a city or region, several suburbs at once.
- Outer boundaryPerformance $1,500/mo
Crowded categories, several sites or a big catalogue. Extra scope beyond it is quoted in writing.
- Exits markedLeave any month
No lock-in, no setup fee, no remaining term to pay out.
How much does SEO cost in Australia?
Boltly's plans are $500, $900 or $1,500 a month, with no setup fee. Across Australian agencies prices vary widely, from small local campaigns to large ecommerce work, and few publish them. What you need tracks how competitive your market is and how much work your site needs, so a fair quote follows an audit.
Retainer
A fixed monthly fee for an agreed set of work each month. The most common model, and how Boltly SEO packages are structured.
Boltly: $500 to $1,500/moProject
A one-off scope with a fixed price, like an audit, a migration or a strategy build, quoted after we see the site.
fixed price, quoted after a lookHourly
Consulting or advisory time billed by the hour, useful for one-off guidance or steering an in-house team.
hourly rate agreed upfrontThe range is wide because SEO is a set amount of skilled work each month, and how much you need depends on your competition and the state of your site. A quiet regional niche can move on a small budget, while a national ecommerce category needs far more. Anyone who quotes SEO pricing before seeing your site is guessing, which is why Boltly publishes three plans and confirms the right one after a free audit.
Three SEO packages, line by line.
Each package lists the work behind the price. These SEO packages Australia-wide are starting points shown as "from", month to month, with no setup fee and no lock-in. Growth suits a business competing across a city.
| What's included | Starterfrom $500/moOne location | Growthfrom $900/moCity-wide | Performancefrom $1,500/moCompetitive & ecommerce |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audit & strategythe starting foundation | Initial audit | Audit + roadmap | Deep audit + roadmap |
| Local & Google Business Profilemaps and near-me | 1 location | Multi-suburb | Multi-location |
| On-page SEOtitles, structure, internal links | Core pages | Ongoing | Ongoing + templates |
| Contentpages and articles per month | Light | Steady cadence | High cadence |
| Link buildingrelevant authority | Add-on | Included | Included, higher intensity |
| Technical SEOcrawl, speed, schema | Essentials | Full | Full + monitoring |
| Reporting cadencereadable, no jargon | Monthly | Monthly + call | Monthly + strategy call |
| Best for | A single-location business finding its feet | Competing across a city or region | Competitive niches, larger and ecommerce sites |
| Get a quote | Get a quote | Get a quote |
Prices are indicative starting points scoped to your market. Bigger sites, tougher niches and more locations move the figure, which is what the audit works out.
Two businesses on the same tier can need very different work. A Starter plan suits a quiet suburban trade; for a business in a fierce category the same tier would be underfunded, and we'd say so rather than take it. The tier sets the shape and the reporting rhythm, and the audit sets the exact figure, so your quote matches the work your site needs to compete.
What actually drives your SEO pricing.
Five levers set the real figure inside a tier, and content cadence is usually the biggest, because content is where most of the monthly work goes. Move the toggles to see how each one pushes an indicative monthly figure up or down.
- A tougher category needs more content and links to win.
- Technical debt and a weak site add scope before growth starts.
- Content cadence is the biggest lever: more output, faster progress.
- More suburbs and deeper reporting add work.
Indicative estimate computed from your inputs, not a quote.
Content cadence decides SEO pricing more than any other driver, because content is the bulk of the monthly work and builds rankings most directly. A higher budget rarely buys a secret tactic. It buys more pages, more depth and more links earned to them. That's also why a cut budget slows results instead of stopping them: less work a month means a longer climb.
The SEO cost to return calculator.
Before you commit to an SEO cost per month, see the maths. Set your average customer value, monthly lead target and close rate, then pick a budget. Everything is computed live from what you enter, so it's your own numbers, not a promise.
The calculator turns your own assumptions into a monthly picture of what return a budget needs to justify itself. It doesn't predict rankings, and it leaves out the compounding most campaigns see, where traffic keeps growing while spend holds steady, so treat the result as a floor. If the maths only works with optimistic numbers, that's worth knowing now. If it works at realistic ones, the budget is probably sound, and a free audit will tell us whether those lead numbers are reachable in your market. For real figures rather than calculator ones, our case studies include Portable Pods, which logged 45 leads in 30 days, and Clutter Clearing Colonics, which gets 30+ leads a month from its website and Business Profile (client-reported).
One in-house hire
- One person cannot master technical, content and links at once
- No cover for leave, and the recruiting risk sits with you
An agency team
- Technical, content, links and local, each done by a specialist
- Tools and processes already in place
- Month to month, so no long hiring commitment
One hire, or a whole team for less.
For most small and mid-sized businesses an agency costs less than hiring in-house. A specialist on staff means a full salary plus on-costs, tools and training, and even then one person can't cover every discipline SEO needs.
A Boltly retainer buys time from a 10-person team covering technical, content, links and local, for a fraction of one salary. In-house makes sense at larger scale, and even then the strongest setup is usually a hybrid: an in-house lead who owns strategy and an agency team for delivery. Our SEO consulting can help you plan it, and enterprise SEO is built for the hybrid model.
What a cheap retainer hides.
Two agencies can quote the same monthly figure for wildly different work. A "$3,000 retainer" can buy about forty hours of senior work or ten hours wrapped in automated reports, and the price tag tells you nothing about which. Reveal the two cards to see the same number buying very different value.
That's why the cheapest SEO pricing is often the most expensive once you count the cleanup: spun content, risky links and a site that needs repair before it can grow. Ask for the hours or deliverables behind any number, and judge affordable SEO by what it includes.
- Mostly automated reports and dashboards
- Spun or thin content, produced fast
- Low-quality links that can risk a penalty
- A shared junior, no senior strategy
Same figure, thin value.
- A senior strategist owning the campaign
- Genuine content written for your market
- Relevant links earned, not bought in bulk
- Technical work and a report you can read
Same figure, real work.
The trap with very cheap SEO is that the bill does not stop at the monthly fee. Spun content has to be rewritten, risky links have to be disavowed, and a penalised site can lose months of ranking while it recovers, so the true cost includes all the work needed to undo the damage. Offshore providers can be cheaper on paper, but often need the same rework and lack the local market knowledge that makes Australian content land. Expensive isn't automatically better either. Compare SEO pricing by the work behind the number, on both sides.
Two checks cost nothing. Ask any provider for last month's list of links, with the page each one sits on; a vague answer tells you a lot. And if you have already paid for a cheap link package, open the Manual actions report in Search Console, which shows whether a Google reviewer has flagged the site.
Retainer, project, hourly or performance.
The right pricing model depends on what you need. Pick the option that sounds most like you, and the recommended model appears beside it, including the one we usually steer people away from.
Monthly retainer
For ongoing growth, a fixed monthly retainer is the natural fit. It funds a steady amount of work every month so rankings compound, and it is how Boltly SEO packages are built. You pay for genuine work you can see in the report, not a mystery outcome.
What it costs to stop, before you start.
The price of an SEO plan includes what you'd owe to get out if the work isn't delivering. Put that number on the table when you compare quotes, before you find it in the fine print.
No term, so nothing left to pay out.
- There is no minimum term. Starter, Growth and Performance all run month to month, so there's never a balance of "remaining months" owed when you leave.
- The notice terms are in your proposal. You see them in writing, with the price and the scope, before any work begins.
- There's no setup fee to lose. Nothing was paid upfront that leaving early would waste.
- One caution: SEO builds over months, so stopping in month two usually means stopping before the work had time to show. Agree a review point at the start and judge the plan there.
A 12-month contract and nothing to show for it.
- Read three clauses tonight: the minimum term, the auto-renewal, and any fee for ending early. Note the dates.
- Ask for the work log. Request, in writing, an itemised list of what was done in each paid month: pages changed, content published, links built with their URLs.
- Know the law. Since 9 November 2023 it has been illegal to propose, use or rely on unfair terms in standard form contracts, and a small business is covered if it has fewer than 100 employees or turnover under $10 million.
- Raise it with the provider first and ask them to change or drop the term. If that fails, a small business can go to an ombudsman or dispute resolution service, or contact the ACCC about its options.
Source: ACCC, Contracts: unfair contract terms and small business, read 5 October 2026. General information, not legal advice; get advice on your own contract.
When SEO is not worth buying yet.
Plenty of providers will take any budget. SEO isn't worth buying yet if the left-hand signs describe you, and spending early just wastes money. Fix the right-hand things first and the pricing decision gets easy.
Hold off if
- Your margins are too thin to fund several months before returns build.
- You can't handle more leads right now, so extra enquiries would go to waste.
- You need sales this week, and SEO builds over months.
- There's no search demand yet for a brand-new category nobody looks for.
Fix first
- Prove demand fast with a small paid-ads test while you get ready.
- Get the basics right: a site that converts and a way to answer enquiries.
- Sort capacity, so the leads SEO brings turn into booked work.
- Then start small with a Starter package once the foundations hold.
Telling a business to wait costs us a sale now. SEO only pays off when a business can fund the climb and handle the leads it brings, and starting before both are true makes a timing problem look like a failed campaign. We'd rather scope a small Starter plan when you're ready, or point you to a quick paid-ads test to prove demand, than take a budget that can't win.
SEO pricing, answered.
Boltly's SEO packages are $500, $900 and $1,500 a month, published in full. Across the wider market, prices vary a great deal between a small local campaign and a large ecommerce site, so compare what each quote includes. SEO cost depends on how competitive your market is and how much work your site needs, which is why we quote after a free audit.
Because SEO isn't a standard product, two quotes with the same label can buy completely different work. Put them side by side and ask each provider the same four things: how many hours a month, and who does them; which deliverables you'll see by name (pages, fixes, links with URLs); whether any of it is passed to a subcontractor; and what it costs to leave. A quote too low to pay for specialist hours is the giveaway, and so is one that can't answer the last question.
SEO costs what it does because it's skilled labour done every month. A retainer pays for a team's time across technical work, content, links and analysis, plus the tools they use. It is usually far cheaper than the paid ads it eventually reduces your reliance on, and cheaper than hiring the same skills in-house, which is why most businesses treat SEO pricing as an investment measured against return.
Rarely. A very low fee usually buys a few automated hours, spun content and risky links that can get a site penalised, so cheap SEO is often the most expensive option once you count the cleanup. Affordable SEO done properly means a smaller, focused scope at a fair price. Judge any cheap SEO offer by the deliverables behind the number.
A small business competing locally can often start from around $500 to $1,000 a month and grow the budget as results come in. The right figure is the one that funds enough monthly work to move your specific market, so a quiet niche needs less than a competitive city. We'd rather scope a small campaign than take a budget that can't win.
Month to month, with no lock-in and no minimum term, so there is never a balance of remaining months to pay out when you leave. The notice terms sit in your written proposal next to the price. SEO still takes months to build, so we suggest agreeing a review point at the start and judging the plan there, but the decision to stop stays with you.
A Boltly SEO package includes a technical foundation, on-page SEO, content, local and link work scaled to the tier, and a monthly report you can read. The exact mix shifts with what your site needs, which is the point of scoping it rather than selling a fixed box. Every package lists the work and the reporting cadence up front, so you can see what the price buys.
For most small and mid-sized businesses an agency costs less than hiring in-house. An in-house specialist means a full salary plus on-costs, tools and training, and one person can't cover every discipline alone. An agency retainer buys a whole team of specialists for a fraction of that, which is why a hybrid, one in-house lead plus an agency team, often makes sense only at larger scale.
Performance-based pricing ties some or all of the fee to results, like ranking positions or leads. It sounds safe, but nobody controls Google's results: Google's own hiring guide says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. So a ranking guarantee usually means keywords nobody searches, a refund with conditions you'll never meet, or risky tactics. Ask instead what work will be done each month, how leads will be measured, and what happens if nothing has moved by the review point.
A one-off SEO audit is priced on the size and complexity of the site, and a site migration usually costs more again because the risk is greater. Boltly includes a focused audit in every package, and quotes standalone audits or migrations in writing after we have seen the site, so the SEO cost reflects the actual scope. See our SEO audit service.
Get a custom quote in writing.
Tell us about your site and market and we'll run a free audit, then send a scoped plan with a monthly price. No lock-in, and the findings are yours to keep either way.