Ecommerce SEO usually costs from about $500 to several thousand dollars a month on a retainer. In Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers, the most common retainer was $501 to $1,000 a month, 68.8% charged $2,000 a month or less, and the average was about $3,200 for agencies and $1,350 for freelancers. The survey covers SEO in general rather than stores alone, and its page was last updated in August 2024, so treat it as a guide. A larger catalog or work that includes making the fixes will generally sit higher.
How SEO is priced
Most providers work in one of three ways, and many offer more than one. In the same survey, 78.2% charged a monthly retainer, 48.9% charged per project and 34.8% charged by the hour.
| Model | Most common range in the survey | Average | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | $501 to $1,000 (20.4%) | Agencies $3,209, consultancies $3,250, freelancers $1,348.63 | Ongoing work on a store that keeps changing |
| Hourly | $75 to $100 (24%) | Consultancies $171.18, agencies $98.90, freelancers $71.59 | Advice, or a defined fix |
| Per project | $2,501 to $5,000 (21.2%) | Left out: the article's labels are unclear | An audit, or a one-off job such as a replatform |
What moves the price for a store
These are the questions that decide where a quote lands. A provider should ask you about them before naming a figure.
- Catalog size. Fifty products and fifty thousand are different jobs, and large catalogs bring problems with crawling, duplicates and filters that small ones don't have.
- Who makes the changes. A report telling you what to fix costs less than someone doing it in your theme. Ask which you are buying, because an unimplemented audit is worth very little.
- Platform and theme. A stock Shopify theme is simpler than a heavily customized store or a custom build.
- Writing. Rewriting category and product copy is real work, and it often makes up much of the bill.
- Competition. A niche with a few specialist stores needs less than one where you face national retailers.
- Starting point. A store with indexing problems needs fixing before anything else will pay off.
What you should get for the money
Compare what is delivered, because the price alone tells you little. A monthly engagement should give you:
- A written list of what will be done this month
- Fixes made on your store, or clearly scoped as advice for your team
- Work on the category and product pages that sell
- Checks on product structured data and feeds
- Search Console clicks and impressions for the pages worked on
- A list of every change made, and why
- Clear ownership: your accounts, your content, and a clean exit
Ask the questions Google itself suggests in its guide to hiring an SEO, including whether they will share every change they make and how they measure success. Be wary of anyone promising a position: Google says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking.
Is it worth it?
Work it out from your margin rather than your revenue, as a retainer is paid from what you keep.
| Monthly SEO fee (example) | $2,000 |
| Average order value (example) | $80 |
| Gross margin on that order (example) | 40% |
| Margin per order | $32 |
| Extra orders a month to cover the fee | 63 |
SEO also takes months to build, so allow for several months of fees before it can pay back, and don't take it on with money you can't commit for that long. If your store has few visitors and thin margins, fixing the basics yourself is a reasonable start: our Shopify SEO checklist is written for that.
What Gigabit charges
We don't publish an SEO price, because it depends on the store. We scope it after a free store audit and tell you what we would do and what it costs before you commit. See how our ecommerce SEO works.
