What drives the price of SEO
Two offers at the same price can mean very different amounts of work. Six things set the price:
- 01
Competition in your industry
A phrase that dozens of businesses with strong sites compete for needs more content and links than one in a small town.
- 02
Number of phrases and services
Every service and every city is a separate page, separate phrases and separate tracking.
- 03
Technical state of the site
A slow site, or one Google does not index, needs fixing before any content can work.
- 04
Content
How many articles and new pages are written each month, and who writes them: the provider or you.
- 05
Links from other websites
How many links a month and from where: business directories, guest articles, local news sites.
- 06
Reporting and contact
How often you get a report, what is in it, and whether you talk to the person who works on your site.
Monthly retainer, pay for results or hourly
There are four common ways to pay for SEO. Each one puts the risk in a different place, so it helps to know exactly what you are paying for.
| Model | How it works | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | A fixed amount every month for a defined scope: fixes, content, links, tracking. | The scope should be written down in numbers. A package name alone says nothing. |
| Pay for results | You pay for phrases that reach the first page of results. | It rewards picking easy phrases few people search for. A ranking is not the same as customers. |
| Hourly rate | You pay for the hours worked, as reported by the provider. | Monthly cost is hard to predict, and so is what those hours produced. |
| One-time audit | You pay once for a list of problems and recommendations. | An audit changes nothing on its own. Someone has to ship the fixes and keep them in place. |
Querora uses a monthly plan with numbers in the contract: phrases, AI questions, fixes, articles and links.
What a monthly SEO fee should include
When you compare offers, check that each of these can be counted:
A list of phrases
The exact phrases whose rankings are checked, and how many.
Fixes shipped
Changes made in your site's code, not just recommendations in a PDF.
Content in numbers
How many articles and pages are written each month, and for which phrases.
Links with sources
A list of the websites the new links come from.
Search Console data
Clicks, impressions and positions from Google's own tool, which you can check yourself.
A clear contract term
How long the first term is and how you cancel.
Red flags in SEO offers
Good signs
- Scope of work written down in numbers
- Access to your own Search Console and data
- A report that lists the changes shipped
- Links from named websites
- A clear term and cancellation rules
Red flags
- A guaranteed first place in Google
- Packages of hundreds of links with no list of sources
- A report with no data you can verify
- A price with no described scope
- Phrases chosen without you
SEO vs Google Ads: where the budget goes
With Google Ads you pay for every click on an ad, and the traffic stops when the budget does. With SEO you pay for work on your site, and clicks from the free results cost nothing per click.
Ads bring traffic from day one; SEO builds it over months, but it stays. Many businesses use both. Querora does SEO and AI visibility and does not run ad campaigns.
