SEO Costs at a Glance

In the German-speaking market, monthly SEO budgets range between €500 and €10,000. That range is not arbitrary, it reflects real differences in starting position, competitive intensity, and goal.

Market ranges 2026

Hourly rates: €80–180 (broad market), €180–300 (specialized providers). All prices exclude VAT.

Our service tiers (as of July 2026)

Minimum term 12 months · Notice period 6 weeks · Engagements from €800/month

Six points that summarize the rest of this page

1. Distribution beats size. In one of our B2B engagements, the classic SEO share dropped from €1,500 to €1,000, and the visibility index multiplied, because the budget was deployed differently.
2. Think in annual budgets. The same investment, compressed into six months instead of twelve, achieves an effect sooner, because measures reinforce each other.
3. GEO costs 30 to 50 percent extra. Anyone offering AI visibility as a free add-on is shifting budget out of your ongoing SEO work.
4. First stable effect after three to four months. Economic break-even follows after that, typically six to twelve months in the market.
5. The hourly rate says little. Ask about the share of senior work and how many hours a person-day contains. 8 vs. 10 hours = a 25% difference.
6. The most reliable test: does a provider tell you what they can't do? Anyone who only names potential is selling, not advising.

What the price depends on

Four factors determine what professional visibility work costs in your case. The size of your company is not one of them.

1. The distance to the goal

Two companies with the same goal can need entirely different budgets, because they start from different positions. Four things matter:

• Technical condition. Is your website delivered cleanly and fully readable by search engines and answer systems?
• Existing content. Is there substance that can be reworked, or does content need to be created from scratch?
• Existing authority. Do others already link to you, is your brand mentioned?
• Structure. Is it recognizable what your website is about?

An observation from ongoing engagements: companies with good content and poor visibility offer the most potential. The substance is there, it simply isn't being found.

2. The competitive environment

A niche market with three providers, two of whom have been optimizing systematically for years, is more expensive than a large market where no one is doing anything.

Note for regulated industries: the higher costs in finance, health, and law don't stem from stronger competition but from the extra effort of demonstrating expertise verifiably.

3. The pace

The same work costs the same whether you spread it over six or twelve months. The result is still different. Compression works faster because measures reinforce each other.

The price of pace isn't financial. It sits on your side: approvals, content, and technical implementation need to happen at double speed.

4. The reach

One location in one region costs a fraction of twelve locations nationwide. Seven country markets with their own language versions aren't a bigger project, they're seven projects on a shared technical foundation.

What the price does not depend on

Not on your company size. A five-person business in a fiercely contested market needs more than a corporation in a niche.

Not on the number of your pages. Two hundred thin pages are often a smaller task than twenty good ones.

Not on your industry. There are only competitive environments at different stages of development.

Price is not measured by your size but by the distance between your current state and your goal, divided by the time you give yourself to close it.

Market prices 2026: hourly and day rates

The hourly rate is the number people ask about most. And the one that says the least.

Our rates (excl. VAT)

With every quote, ask two numbers: what is the day rate, and how many hours does a day cover? 8 vs. 10 hours at €1,500 means €187.50 vs. €150 per hour, a 25 percent difference.

Cost = rate × hours × qualification

An example: Provider A charges €90 and needs 20 hours (junior, with back-and-forth): €1,800. Provider B charges €180 and needs 6 hours (senior, knows the failure pattern): €1,080. The more expensive provider was the cheaper one, by 40 percent.

What these budgets have achieved

LOCAL SEO — regional energy retailer

Within five weeks: "heating oil [location]" moved from position 5 to 3, "heating oil price [location]" from 7 to 4, four newly gained rankings. Brand terms excluded: around twelve additional clicks per month.

Local visibility moves fast. Anyone in a local market who sees no position shifts after six months should ask questions.

CORE, from €1,500/month — shopfitting, B2B

Visibility index: from 0.007–0.03 (volatile, no trend) to 0.06 over roughly two years. A factor of 5. A zigzag became a steady climb.

Sparring, €1,000–1,500/month — food publisher

Visibility index from 2.43 (February 2025) to 14.3 (July 2026). A factor of 5.9 in 17 months. Execution rested entirely with the client.

GROWTH, €2,500/month — industrial client, B2B

Phase 1: €1,500 in classic SEO, index from 0.012 to 0.017 over one year. Phase 2: SEO share reduced to €1,000, €1,500 shifted into content seeding and link building, index rose to 0.042. The pure SEO share had decreased. The result had tripled.

DOMINANCE, from €6,000/month — B2B shop after a relaunch

Visibility index dropped from 1.3 to 0.4. Rebuilt to 2.75 within roughly 15 months. Levers: reworking product data, flanked by technical work and link cleanup.

One-off services: audit, relaunch, recovery

What an audit really costs, and when it isn't worth it

An audit is the most common way to spend money on visibility without visibility changing. Not because audits are bad, but because in many companies they end up as a PDF on a drive.

Before commissioning an audit:

1. Who is going to implement the findings, in-house, external, or still undecided?
2. Is the implementation budget already secured?

Our ranges (excl. VAT)

Relaunch: before vs. after

Safeguarding beforehand: from €1,500, one-off.
Repair afterward: in one of our cases, 15 months of ongoing support at the upper end of the budget range. Beforehand, the scope is known. Afterward, it's the outcome of the diagnosis.

What do GEO and AI visibility cost?

As an add-on to existing SEO work: 30 to 50 percent. Pure monitoring starts at €149/month, that's diagnosis, not treatment. GEO service is included with us from €2,500/month, the full program from €6,000.

GEO is never free within an existing retainer. Either increase the budget by 30 to 50 percent, or shift the same share, in which case your SEO work stands still to that extent.

→ In depth: What do GEO and AI visibility cost?

Billing models compared

Every model distributes a risk. The real question is: which risk do you want to carry, and which behavior does it reward?

Our model: monthly retainer (12-month minimum term), fixed price or range for limited tasks, time-and-materials for consulting. No performance fee.

Notice period: 6 weeks · automatic renewal (stated explicitly) · all content created belongs to you even after the contract ends.

When does SEO pay off?

Instead of asking "is SEO worth it?", work backward:

1. Which organic rankings are you missing today?
2. What search volume sits behind them?
3. What click-through rate is realistically achievable?
4. How many of these visitors convert?
5. What is a lead worth?

Three corrections for an honest calculation:

1. Strip out branded terms, you would have gotten those clicks without SEO anyway.
2. Not every click would have converted, some traffic is informational.
3. Ads deliver instantly, SEO builds up, both calculations are valid, but different.

After these three corrections, our experience shows that a third to half of the originally stated value remains.

The myth is: you can't know in advance whether SEO pays off.
The reality is: you can calculate in advance what the result would need to be.

How SEYBOLD ONE calculates

Step 1: Visibility Quick Check — free, about 30 minutes

We look at your situation and tell you whether there's potential and where. No audit, no concept, no proposal. The most common outcome is a recommendation, not a collaboration.

Step 2: Potential analysis — €2,000 to 5,000, 75% creditable

Here we calculate instead of estimate: achievable search volume, realistically achievable positions, possible conversions, and the revenue tied to a given topic area. This analysis is yours to keep, even if you decide against working with us.

Step 3: Proposal

Only now does a number emerge for your specific case. It falls within one of the tiers, exactly where results from the analysis, not the conversation.

What we don't do

• No ranking guarantees, we guarantee services, not positions.
• No performance fee.
• No AI service where it doesn't carry weight, deliberately no GEO component in the entry-level tier.
• No collaboration without implementation capacity, we say so before signing.

SEYBOLD ONE has been active since 1998, owner-managed, around seven permanent employees. Co-initiator of DIN SPEC 33461. Your content and data belong to you, even after the contract ends.

Frequently Asked Questions