How much does an SEO agency cost, and what's actually included in a retainer?
An SEO agency in 2026 typically costs between $2 000 and $20 000 per month, with the wide range explaining why it's such a confusing category. Here's what maps to what:
$500–1 500/mo — freelancer or offshore SEO templated packages. You get: monthly ranking screenshots, a few backlinks from low-quality sites, one blog post written by a non-native writer. What you don't get: actual seniors reviewing anything, technical fixes, real strategy. Fine for hobby projects. Dangerous for real businesses because the "work" often actively hurts your site (link spam, thin content).
$2 500–5 000/mo — solid junior-to-mid SEO agency. You get: real technical audit, some on-page work, 2-4 blog posts, 3-5 backlinks. Reporting is honest but limited. Good for smaller sites with low competition. Under-powered for competitive niches.
$5 000–15 000/mo — where serious SEO agencies play. This is our band ($3 500–18 000). You get: senior strategist on your account, monthly technical work, 4-8 pieces of quality content, 5-15 editorial backlinks, full attribution reporting, quarterly strategy reviews. Realistic for most SaaS and mid-market ecommerce brands that want to make SEO a top-3 growth channel.
$20 000+/mo — enterprise SEO. Multi-market brands, complex product taxonomies, in-house team augmentation, full ecommerce SEO with catalog management. This is where you'll find the big-name agencies like Distilled (now Brainlabs), Path Interactive, and boutiques like Aleyda Solis's Orainti.
Ixni's retainers:
- Ignite ($4 900/mo) — one focused channel (usually SEO optimization), tight scope.
- Momentum ($9 800/mo) — SEO + content + links, our sweet spot for most brands.
- Empire ($18 000+/mo) — full marketing agency retainer with SEO, content, links, and digital marketing.
What raises the cost within a band: number of locales (each language adds ~15%), catalog size (ecommerce), competitive niches (finance, insurance, gambling, health). What doesn't raise the cost: your company size or how impressed we are with your brand — we quote off scope, not off logo.
Payment terms: monthly, invoiced on the 1st, net 14. USD/EUR/GBP via bank or Wise. 3-month minimum. First discovery call is free.
How much do link building services cost, and what's the ROI horizon?
Link building services pricing scales with the quality and Domain Rating you're targeting:
$1 000–1 500/mo — low-quality bulk link building. Marketplace-sourced links from sites with DR 20-40 that exist mostly to sell links. Google discounts these to zero (best case) or penalizes your whole site (worst case). We don't offer this and you shouldn't buy it.
$2 500/mo — starter link building services. 5-8 editorial placements per month from real sites with DR 40+, real audiences, and topical relevance. This is our Starter tier. Good for early SEO, when you're building initial trust and each link matters.
$5 000/mo — full link building program. 10-15 links per month, including some DR 60+ placements from targeted digital PR outreach. This is where the real Domain Rating growth happens (2-5 points per quarter for mid-sized clients).
$8 000+/mo — high-DR editorial and digital PR. Custom outreach to DR 70+ publications, thought-leadership placement, HARO responses at scale, industry-specific research pieces that earn links naturally. For established brands defending competitive rankings.
Add-ons:
- Broken-link recovery — usually included, but for sites with big backlink profiles we run this as a separate one-off ($1 500 for 40-60 recovered links from valuable domains).
- Toxic-link disavow — one-off ($800 for a full audit + disavow file for GSC).
- Digital PR campaign — custom scope, from $3 000 per campaign (research + pitch + outreach + measurement).
ROI horizon: links influence rankings over 3-6 months as Google re-crawls and reweights. Month 1 of link building — you might see nothing. Month 3 — noticeable movement on targeted rankings. Month 6 — DR growth visible in tools, referral traffic starting to add up. Month 12 — compounded lift in organic traffic driven partly by these links.
If someone tells you links move rankings next week — they're selling something that either doesn't work (paid inclusion, sponsored posts marked nofollow) or breaks your site later (PBNs, marketplace links). Real link building is slow and defensible.
How we do it: every link is manually researched. Every pitch is human-written. Every placement passes a manual quality check on referring-domain traffic, topical fit, and outbound-link footprint. We publish the link acquisition report monthly with domain, URL, DR, and anchor — full transparency.
How much does ecommerce SEO cost, and how is it priced differently?
Ecommerce SEO retainers typically run $5 000-12 000/mo, higher than a comparable SEO agency engagement for a content-driven site, and here's why:
More work per URL. An ecommerce site has 10x-1000x more URLs than a SaaS site — product pages, category pages, faceted-navigation combinations, filters. Managing crawl budget alone is a significant technical workload.
Structured data is critical. Product schema with reviews, AggregateRating, Offer, Availability, Price — all required for the Rich Results that drive click-through in ecommerce SERP. Managing this at scale (across a 5 000-SKU catalog) needs template work and monitoring.
Merchant feed alignment. Google Shopping merchant feed must align with on-page data — title, description, GTIN, price. Misalignment causes disapprovals and lost visibility.
International complexity. Most ecommerce brands sell in 2+ countries. Each locale needs its own hreflang, currency, tax display, shipping information — all indexable, all consistent.
Our ecommerce SEO tiers:
- Ecommerce Starter — $5 000/mo. For stores with 100-500 SKUs, single locale. Includes technical, category-page rewrites, product schema audit + implementation, monthly reporting.
- Ecommerce Growth — $8 500/mo. For stores with 500-3 000 SKUs, 1-3 locales. Includes everything above plus digital PR for product-review coverage, content (buyer guides, comparison content), and internal linking automation.
- Ecommerce Enterprise — $15 000+/mo. Large catalogs, 3+ locales, complex faceted navigation, marketplace integration (Amazon SEO alongside DTC SEO). Custom scope.
Timeline expectations: First 90 days are usually 60% technical (fixing crawl, canonicalization, schema, hreflang), 40% category-page rewrites. Month 4+ shifts to content and link acquisition. Meaningful traffic lift usually visible month 4-6 on category pages, month 6-9 on product pages (they're slower because purchase intent is more selective).
What's not included by default: paid Shopping campaign management (that's our digital advertising module), packaging/product photography, Amazon PPC (we do Amazon SEO but not Amazon Ads).
If you have a small store (<100 SKUs), a full ecommerce SEO retainer is overkill. A $1 500-3 000 audit + implementation guide is usually enough for you or your developer to execute internally.
What does digital marketing service pricing look like, and how does it combine with SEO?
Our digital marketing service module (paid + lifecycle + content, excluding pure SEO) is priced from $2 800/mo as a standalone, or bundled into our Momentum ($9 800) and Empire ($18 000+) retainers alongside SEO and design.
Standalone digital marketing service ($2 800-8 000/mo). Includes:
- Paid search (Google Ads) — campaign structure, keyword bids, ad copy, landing-page optimization loop.
- Paid social (Meta, LinkedIn) — audience research, creative production, A/B testing, retargeting.
- Lifecycle email — flows for onboarding, activation, re-engagement, winback.
- Attribution setup — GA4 + server-side tracking + platform pixels aligned so we can measure across channels.
Media commission: 15% of ad spend for paid channels, with a minimum retainer of $2 800/mo. So if you're spending $10 000/mo on Google Ads and $5 000/mo on Meta, our fee is 15% × $15 000 = $2 250, plus baseline $2 800 = $5 050/mo total.
Social media marketing services (organic SMM) is a separate module — $1 800-5 000/mo depending on platform count. It combines well with digital marketing service work because organic and paid can share creative and audience insights.
How it combines with SEO: the strongest results come from running SEO + digital marketing + content together, because:
- SEO uncovers what people search for → paid uses same queries with more precise targeting.
- Content built for SEO doubles as landing-page material for paid.
- Paid retargeting brings organic visitors back to convert.
- Combined attribution shows the true customer journey (paid brand search → organic long-tail → email → purchase) rather than crediting the last click.
Bundle pricing:
- SEO + digital marketing service (Momentum): $9 800/mo — saves ~$1 000/mo vs. buying separately.
- SEO + digital marketing + design + content (Empire): from $18 000/mo — saves ~$2 500/mo.
We don't run paid alone (without SEO or content behind it) as a long-term engagement because it doesn't compound. Paid stops the moment you stop paying. SEO and content keep working. If you want purely a media buyer, we'll recommend a specialist.
How much is an SEO audit service, website design, or brand identity as a one-off?
SEO audit service: from $1 500 (10 hours) to $3 500 (20 hours). Deliverable is a written report (typically 30-60 pages) covering technical, on-page, content, and backlink analysis, plus a prioritized 90-day plan. Includes a 60-minute call to walk through findings. Turnaround: 5-10 business days.
The $1 500 version covers essentials: technical health, top-20 page audit, gap-analysis on your top 30 target queries, backlink profile snapshot, priority list. Good for smaller sites or a first look before committing to a bigger engagement.
The $3 500 version adds: detailed competitor analysis (top 5 in SERP), semantic clustering of ~500 keywords, content plan for 3 months, design-review of key landing pages, and a followup call 30 days after delivery to answer implementation questions.
Website design (one-off):
- Landing page: $3 000 design-only, $6 000 design + Framer/Webflow build. 3-4 weeks design + 1-2 weeks build.
- 5-10 page marketing site: $8 000 design-only, $18 000 design + build + CMS. 6-8 weeks design + 3-4 weeks build.
- Product UI/UX (SaaS, 30+ screens): from $15 000. 8-12 weeks.
Brand identity (one-off):
- Logo only: $2 000. Brief + 3 concepts + 2 rounds of refinement + final formats + mini guidelines. 3 weeks.
- Logo + brand system: $6 000. Adds typography, palette with usage rules, icon set, application examples, brand book (40-80 pages). 5-8 weeks.
- Full brand identity: from $12 000. Adds packaging, extended illustration system, motion guidelines, comprehensive brand manual, print-ready files. Custom timeline (8-16 weeks).
Consulting / strategy session (one-off): $500/hour, 3-hour minimum. For teams that want senior input on a specific decision (repositioning, market entry, agency selection, tool evaluation) without a full engagement.
Payment terms for one-off projects: 50% at kickoff, 50% at delivery. Bank transfer or Wise. Kickoff after the deposit clears.