How SEO gets quoted
Agencies in India quote SEO in a few common ways.
- A monthly retainer: a fixed fee for a fixed list of work each month.
- A project fee: one price for a defined job, such as an audit, a site move or a content push.
- Hourly or day-rate consulting: you pay for expert time while your own team does the work.
- A mix: a retainer plus separate fees for content or technical projects.
- Performance-based pricing: the fee depends on a result. Read the fine print, because the result must be something you control and can measure.
None of these is right for everyone. A retainer suits steady work. A project suits a clear, one-off job. Whichever you pick, ask for the work to be listed, not just named.
What moves the cost
- Site size and condition: more pages and more problems mean more work.
- Competition: ranking for a crowded topic takes more effort than ranking for a quiet one.
- Content needed: new pages and rewrites are the most time-consuming part for many sites.
- Locations and languages: each city or language is more pages and more profiles to look after.
- Your side of the work: slow approvals or no developer access stretch the timeline.
- Type of business: a shop with many products works differently from a service firm with a few pages.
These are our own observations from client work, not a pricing formula.
How long before it pays back
SEO usually shows results in 3 to 6 months. That is our experience, and it varies with your site and competition. Google's own page does not give a timeline. It says to ask any SEO what results to expect and in what timeframe.
That delay is why SEO is judged over months. A made-up example: a services firm spends three months fixing its site and writing pages, and sees little. In month five, enquiries from search start to rise. The first months were the groundwork. The numbers in the example are not real.
For how SEO fits the rest of the bill, see our guide to digital marketing cost in India.
What Google says about hiring an SEO
Google Search Central has a page called "Do you need an SEO?". We read it on 9 October 2026. It says:
- No one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google. If someone promises first place, find someone else.
- Be wary of an SEO who advertises a "priority submit" to Google, or claims a special relationship with it.
- Be wary of firms that email you out of the blue.
- Ask whether they will share all the changes they make to your site.
- Ask what results to expect, in what timeframe, and check references.
- A great time to hire is when you are planning a site redesign, the earlier the better.
It also says you remain responsible for what the companies you hire do to your site. So ask what they plan to do, and keep your own login to every account.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What exactly will you do each month? Please list it.
- Which parts are one-off and which are monthly?
- How will you measure success? Is it tied to enquiries or sales, not only rankings?
- Who owns the accounts, the content and the data if we stop?
- How long is the contract, and how much notice do we need to stop?
- Can I see work in a business like mine, and speak to a client?
Ours has a minimum of 3 months and 30 days' notice to stop. We start with a free 30-minute call with a strategist, then a one-page plan, and we send the quote within 2 working days.
Red flags in an SEO quote
- A guaranteed ranking or a guaranteed number of visitors.
- A package with no list of work, only a keyword count.
- A secret method the agency will not explain.
- Bought links or mass-made pages, which can get your site removed from Google.
- Reports that show rankings but never enquiries.
If you want to see how we run SEO, read about our SEO service.
