Blog · 2026-09-17
How to Choose an SEO Agency: Real SEO Costs, Quote Traps and Eight Questions to Ask (2026)
SEO agency retainers run from a few thousand to several hundred thousand a month, and the gap has nothing to do with effort. They are doing different work. This piece breaks down the three billing models behind SEO costs, how to read an SEO quote, and four lines that should make you walk away.
SEO is one of the few services where the money can produce nothing at all, and you will not find out for three months. So the point of choosing an SEO agency is not who pitches best. It is who is willing to spell out what they will do and how it gets measured.
What an SEO engagement actually covers
A complete SEO project usually has four parts. When you read a quote, work out which parts the agency is doing.
Technical
- Index status: which pages are indexed, which are not, and why
- Whether canonical tags and the sitemap contradict each other
- Status codes, duplicate content, crawl budget
- Site speed and the mobile experience
Content
- Keyword research: terms people actually search, not terms you invented
- Content production: how many pieces a month, who writes, who reviews
- Internal linking: new pages get crawled, old pages get connected
- Optimising and consolidating existing content
The other two parts are external links and performance tracking. The first is where things go wrong most often, the second is what gets skipped most often.
On links, if an agency tells you "we have a large network of high authority media where we can place you", ask what form that takes. Buying and selling links is named explicitly in Google's spam policies as a violation, and it is your site that pays for it, not theirs.
Three billing models for SEO
| Billing model | Typical range | When it fits | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| One off build plus monthly maintenance | Build from tens of thousands, retainer 10,000 to 50,000 | New sites or a rebuild | Ask how many pieces of content and how many hours the retainer covers |
| Pure monthly consulting | 10,000 to 100,000 per month | You already have a site and your own editors | Execution not included, so you need someone to do the work |
| Guaranteed rankings | Priced per keyword | Not recommended | See the next section |
The range is wide because the work varies so much. A 3,000 a month retainer and a 50,000 a month retainer are rarely the same service. The first usually buys a basic technical check and an article or two. The second buys full keyword research, a content pipeline, link building and real reporting.
There is a practical way to sanity check an SEO quote: divide the monthly fee by the number of content pieces promised. A researched, well structured Traditional Chinese article of 2,000 words or more does not go for less than a few thousand at market rate. If the quote says 10,000 a month for ten articles, those ten articles are filler.
Four lines that should make you walk away
Hold the line on the fourth one. Insist on view access to the raw platforms so you can see impressions, clicks and positions first hand. Agencies willing to give it are usually the ones with nothing to hide.
Eight questions to ask before you sign
- How were the target keywords chosen? You want to see search volume, difficulty and the reasoning behind the selection. Real numbers pulled from a tool, not gut feel.
- What gets delivered each month? How many articles, how long, who writes, who reviews, and whether you need to supply industry material.
- How far does the technical work go? Just an audit report, or does it include making the fixes.
- How are external links built? Format, sources, disclosure. If they buy links, you carry the risk.
- How is performance measured? Rankings are not the finish line. Organic traffic, enquiries and conversions are. Who installs the tracking and where.
- How often are reports delivered, and what is in them? Is there a month on month comparison, and an explanation of what changed and why.
- Who owns the domain and the platforms? The domain, hosting, Search Console and the analytics property must be registered in your name.
- What gets handed over at the end? Content, source files, account access, technical documentation.
Question seven works the same way with any agency, and the detail is in How to choose a marketing agency.
Three checks you can run yourself right now
You do not need a quote for these. Run them today and you will be able to tell whether an agency's diagnosis is hitting the real issues.
One, count how many of your pages are indexed. Type site:yourdomain into Google and look at the number of results. If it is far off your actual page count, you have an indexing problem. A common cause is canonical tags fighting the sitemap, and we wrote up how to diagnose it: new site with nothing indexed.
Two, read the query report in Search Console. Which terms are actually surfacing you right now? If they are all brand terms, you are only reaching people who already know you, and you are not reaching new customers.
Three, check whether your own pages are competing with each other. When several pages cover the same topic, Google does not know which one to rank, and none of them do well. The diagnosis and the fix are in fixing keyword cannibalisation.
Our SEO packages, priced in public
We do not guarantee rankings and we do not sell links. We get the foundations right, then keep producing content that people actually search for.
| Service | Price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Build | $900 USDT | Site architecture, technical SEO, initial content, tracking implementation |
| Monthly maintenance | $400 USDT / month | Content production, internal link upkeep, index monitoring, monthly reporting |
Delivery runs four weeks with output every week, not everything dumped on the final day.
What that means in practice:
- Technical SEO: canonical and sitemap alignment, status code fixes, structured data, crawl budget
- Keyword research: real search volume and difficulty pulled from tools, no guesswork
- Content production: each piece targeting one real search term, with internal linking planned in
- Index monitoring: index status checked page by page, anything missing gets diagnosed and resubmitted, with IndexNow pings
- Performance tracking: raw access to Search Console and your analytics property, both in your name
Full specifications and the delivery checklist are on iGaming SEO site build, and pricing for everything else is on Pricing. If tracking is not in place yet, start with tracking and attribution setup from $150. Do not pour money into content before the tracking is right.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find a good SEO agency? Ranking articles are mostly content marketing, so take them lightly. It is more useful to check whether the agency's own site ranks, whether they can show verifiable case studies, and whether they will give you view access to your own platforms.
How much does SEO cost per month? The market is wide, from a few thousand to several hundred thousand. Judge it by dividing the retainer by the promised output and checking whether the unit cost makes sense, rather than looking at the headline number.
How long does SEO take to work? A new site usually needs three to six months before a trend appears. An existing site getting technical fixes can move faster. Treat any promise of results in one month with suspicion.
Can I do technical SEO without producing content? You can, but the ceiling is low. The technical side makes your site readable to Google. Content is the reason Google has to rank you at all. Fix the foundations with nothing built on top and rankings will not appear by themselves.
Should I buy external links? No. Buying and selling links is named explicitly in Google's spam policies, and your site carries the risk. Put the budget into content and technical work instead.
We solve this kind of problem every day
Describe your situation and we will tell you straight whether it is doable and roughly what it costs.
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