Nobody Can Tell You What SEO Costs Until They’ve Done This

Every week, I get some version of the same question.

“How much will it cost for me to rank for [keyword], [keyword], and [keyword]?”

I understand why founders ask it that way. You want a number. You’ve probably been quoted several already: wildly different ones, from agencies you’re not sure you can trust, promising timelines that feel too good. And you’re trying to make sense of it all.

The honest answer: I can’t tell you what SEO will cost until I understand your business, your website, your competitors, and what it will actually take to win in your specific market. Any agency that gives you a number before doing that work is either guessing or telling you what you want to hear.

Both will cost you.

The Wrong Question

When someone asks me “how much to rank for these keywords,” two things are almost always true.

One: the keywords they’ve listed are probably not what their ideal customers are actually searching for. Founders think about how they’d describe their own product. Buyers think about the problem they’re trying to solve. Those are different searches.

Two: they’ve been led to believe SEO is about showing up on Google’s first page for specific terms. It isn’t. Not really. First-page rankings are a mechanism. Revenue is the point. Most SEO conversations never start there, and that is where most SEO budgets disappear.

I do not charge per keyword. Nobody serious does. Ranking for a keyword that doesn’t bring buyers is not a result. It’s a number on a report that looks good until your sales pipeline tells the real story.

What Fixed Monthly Packages Actually Mean

Let me be direct about this.

Agencies selling fixed monthly SEO packages (₦150,000/month, $500/month, whatever the number) mostly do not know what they’re doing. Nine years in this industry. Not a controversial take among people who actually understand what SEO requires.

SEO cannot be sold as a one-size-fits-all service. Businesses are different. Websites are different. Competitive landscapes are different. The work required to rank a brand new domain in a crowded fintech market has almost nothing in common with what’s needed to recover a five-year-old e-commerce site that got hit by an algorithm update.

What these packages usually include is content writing and a handful of other activities that sound productive but may have zero connection to what your business actually needs. You get reports. You get blog posts. You get a call every month where someone tells you things are progressing.

Six months later, nothing has moved.

Not bad luck. The predictable outcome of applying a standardised solution to a problem that was never properly diagnosed. And it is what the traffic data shows when the work has no connection to what a business actually needs to grow revenue.

What I Actually Look at Before Cost Comes Up

When a potential client comes to me, these are the variables that need to be understood before any number leaves my mouth. Not boxes I tick quickly. Each one changes the answer.

Actual research. Actual audit. Actual understanding of what’s in front of us before I say anything about what it’ll cost or how long it’ll take. Not a ten-minute call.

When I Told a Client SEO Was the Wrong Move

About four years ago, an interior design business owner in Lekki came to me for a quote. She wanted organic visibility and leads her sales team could convert. Clear goal, motivated client, real budget.

I did my research. Brand new domain, brand new website, no established authority. And she needed to see positive results within three months because her marketing budget was tight and she needed the business generating quickly.

I told her SEO was not the right move for her at that point. I didn’t say it reluctantly. It was just true.

With a new domain and no authority, SEO was going to absorb her budget and produce almost nothing visible in that window. What she needed was Google Search Ads. Get real buyers to the site, generate revenue, and use the conversion data from those campaigns (what searches lead people to actually call, what does not) to build a sustainable SEO strategy later once the business had room to breathe.

Get the business generating first. Then invest in organic. Most agencies never have that conversation before they start collecting a retainer.

I don’t know what an agency selling a fixed monthly package would have told her. I know what would have happened to her budget.

The Result That Surprised Even Me

A US-based e-commerce client selling vitamin supplements. Established store, over 500 products, had been operating for years. Almost no investment in SEO over time. The only people finding them on Google were people already searching for their brand name. Everyone else was gone.

When I audited the site, the first thing I noticed was the product structure. Or the absence of one.

500-plus products across roughly 50 categories. No proper category pages. No logical architecture. Products existed. Structure did not. Google had no way to understand what this store was actually about beyond the brand name.

I knew fixing the architecture would produce results. I didn’t expect it to happen at that scale, or that fast.

By the end of month one, 300-plus product pages had been mapped to relevant categories with proper structure in place. By month three, weekly sales from organic had grown from an average of $20,000 to an average of $60,000.

One strategy out of seven. The others hadn’t started yet.

That result came from treating architecture and conversion as one job, not two. And from spending the time to properly diagnose what was actually wrong before deciding what to do about it. Not a package. Not a content plan applied to every client the same way.

Questions to Ask Before You Pay Anyone

If you’re talking to an SEO agency right now, here is what a good one does before price comes up.

They ask about your business goals. Not “rank higher” but what revenue or lead targets you’re working toward and in what timeframe. If they skip this, they’re selling a package, not building a strategy.

They want to audit your website before quoting. A price without an audit is a guess.

They’re honest about timeline. If someone promises first-page results in 30 days for a new domain in a competitive market, that’s not confidence. It’s desperation.

They explain specifically what they will do and why those activities are right for your situation. “We do on-page SEO, content, and link building” is not an answer. That’s a brochure.

If they quote you a fixed monthly package without looking at your site or asking about your business, that tells you everything. I ran every firm through the same scorecard, my own included.

When you’re ready to act, the practical ranking sequence is there. If you want to see the full scope of the engagement first, the SEO services page has everything.

If you want to know what your specific situation actually requires, book a free audit call. We’ll look at your site, your competitors, and your goals. You’ll leave with a clear picture of what’s needed and what it’ll realistically cost. Not a sales pitch dressed up as a proposal.