Ongoing SEO in Australia typically runs from a few hundred dollars a month for a sole trader to several thousand for a competitive agency campaign. Clearway's standalone SEO starts at $450 a month, with the one-off foundation work usually built into your site (AI visibility is a separate product, more on that below). The honest answer is that it depends on how competitive your market is and how fast you want to move, so here is the real breakdown.
First-party, so you know these are real and not estimates: we quote SEO at $450 a month, the two most recent quotes we have sent both came in at that, and ongoing work pairs with a website foundation we have already built to be found. The wider market ranges below are general Australian pricing, given so you can sense-check any quote you get, including ours.
The short version: a range, and why it is a range
Nobody can give you a single number for SEO honestly, because the work scales with how hard your competitors are pushing. Roughly, the Australian market sorts into these bands:
- DIY tools (Ubersuggest, SE Ranking and similar): $20 to $100 a month, plus all of your own time. Fine if you enjoy the work and have hours to spare.
- Freelancer or small studio: roughly $300 to $1,000 a month. This is where most sole traders and local businesses sit, and where our $450 lands.
- Established agency: $1,000 to $5,000-plus a month, usually for competitive niches or multi-location businesses that need heavy content and link building.
- One-off audit or setup: a few hundred to around $2,000, depending on site size. Often this foundation work is built into a new website instead of charged separately.
If your trade plus suburb is not very competitive, you sit at the lower end. If you are fighting ten established competitors for a high-value search, you sit higher. A good provider tells you which before they quote.
One-off vs monthly: only one of them is ongoing
This is the part most people are never told, and it is exactly why some SEO is a one-off and some is monthly. The foundation, a clean fast site, the right titles and meta, schema that hands Google the facts, and getting you listed consistently, is done once, usually as part of your build. The active work, reviews, fresh content, Google profile activity and new pages, is monthly, because rankings are a position you hold against competitors who are also pushing. The one-off gets you set up correctly. The monthly is what climbs you up and keeps you there.
What actually changes the price
- Competition in your niche and area. More competitors fighting for the same search means more content and more links to get past them.
- How many services and suburbs you want to rank for. One service in one town is cheaper than ten services across a whole region.
- Content volume. Ongoing articles and new pages cost more than maintenance, but they are usually what moves the needle.
- Link building and digital PR. Earning authoritative links is the slow, expensive part, and the main reason agency retainers climb.
- Reporting depth. A simple monthly report is cheaper than a full dashboard with call tracking and competitor monitoring.
What about AEO, getting found by AI?
Here is the bit most providers are not pricing yet. More buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI a question and take the answer without clicking a single blue link. AEO, answer engine optimisation, is the work of becoming the business those assistants name. AI engines and Google's crawler read many of the same on-page signals, so SEO and AEO overlap heavily. We run AI visibility as its own product, Clearway Found, because it is real ongoing work in its own right: Found by AI is $349 a month, or Found Everywhere bundles it with this SEO for $499 a month. If you already pay for SEO, adding AI visibility is only about $49 more, because the foundation is shared. Being early on it is a real edge while most agencies are still only selling classic SEO.
What we charge, plainly
No fixed tiers and no lock-in. The foundation work is usually built into your website, so you are not paying twice. Ongoing standalone SEO starts at $450 a month, scoped to your goals and the competition you are up against. AI visibility (AEO) is a separate product, Clearway Found, from $349 a month, or $499 a month bundled with SEO. Both are separate from our optional $150 a month care plan, which just covers hosting, edits and support, not active ranking work. You own your site either way, so you are never held hostage.
When SEO is not worth paying for yet
Honest section, because nobody else writes it. If you are booked out on word of mouth with no plans to grow, do not pay for SEO yet. Set up a free Google Business Profile, keep your hours and phone current, and put the money into the work. SEO earns its keep when you want to be found by people who have never heard your name, and when there is genuine search demand for what you do. If your problem is not getting found, SEO will not fix it.