How Much Can I Charge for SEO?

I don't offer SEO service myself but I think I would charge on how difficult to rank the keywords and their profitability. For me as a client, I would have no problem paying $5,000 monthly to rank keywords that make me $100,000+ a month, for example.

I am sure if you can make your client see the benefits and money he'll get using your service, I don't think it'll be hard to close a deal with him. But be careful with the promises though, because most people don't understand SEO and they expect too big or too fast results.

The first question you should ask yourself is .. Can you really rank the client's website for the keywords heour has in mind? SEO rates depends on many factors like the keyword difficulty, your reputation and the market rates

It totally depends up on the efforts you put it on. Do fix your charge based on how long you taking to do analyse about the keyword.

Since you gonna handle this project yourself, so you only know the stuff what you going to execute on this. IMO, your client wants to spend $$$ with you to get the things as he expected.

I know of somebody paying $1500/m for essential on page SEO and some Google Analytic reports sent monthly. They are ranking first for a few keywords, but those keywords receive 0 searches a month.

Personally, I dont take on clients for less than $500 a month (I range from $500-$1500). SEO has become very difficult as everything needs to be done manually.

Plus, the cost also includes the price for the knowledge I bring to the table and not just how many hours I spend on the account.

Aty said:

A professional SEOer doesn't ask how much to charge for his services.

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Not going to lie I kind of agree with this. The question you should be asking is how much value is he going to get from those top rankings? Assuming you actually know how to rank him for his competitive keywords, how much money does he stand to make? That should determine your fee, not some calculation based on hours or something like that.

Wrong... Every single Freelancer, Entrepreneur, Contractor etc should be totally clear about how much his time is worth.

How can you possibly charge your client for services rendered if you don't know how much your hour is worth? Lets say you spend 50 hours this month working on your clients project and next month you spend 35 hours... do you still charge the same "package" fee? If so, why? You clearly worked more or less at some point! So why are you over/underpaying yourself?

What I'm trying to get at is that YOU need to find YOUR own number... what's a decent sum you want to earn per hour? Then it's a simple matter of adding your running expenses and other costs (profit for example) to that number to finally find out what you can charge per hour (and remember that you need to pay taxes, so don't forget to add those on top!) At the end of that calculation you're left with your hourly rate.

I know it's a bit basic and broken down into clearly understandable chunks it's really only this:


Your Time + Running Costs + Other Expenses = Fee per Hour


Don't undersell yourself... you're trying to run a business that you can make money off... and not a charity! Try to sell your client a package based on Hours... and if he wants more, renegotiate.

Not less than 500$/month but depends on keyword competition.

Don't forget the jerk factor +15%. They can be sneaky usually around check writing time.
No free stuff til you both have mutual respect.