How to price ongoing SEO and maintenance
Last updated: July 2026
Ongoing SEO is the textbook retainer: monthly capacity, spread across strategy, content, technical care and reporting, month after month.
In short: a real monthly SEO retainer runs 14 to 27 hours across strategy, content oversight, technical care, authority work and reporting. AI compressed the production hours; the judgment work survived.
It is also the service where clients most often ask the modern question: "can't AI do this now?" So this article prices the retainer and answers the question, in that order.
What a monthly SEO retainer contains
At the calculator's default target rate of $31/h, that is roughly $430 to $840 per month, before any specialization premium. Agency-side retainers price higher for the same hours. A freelancer's advantage is that the client talks to the person doing the work.
The honest range
A real monthly SEO retainer runs 14 to 27 hours of work. Cheap "SEO packages" below a few hours of honest capacity are reporting subscriptions, and the market has learned the difference.
What AI changed here, honestly
More than in most services. AI made average content nearly free, and the internet is now flooded with it. That killed the old retainer model of "four generic articles a month", and clients who lived through it are right to be suspicious of content-counting packages.
What survived is worth more, not less: strategy (what deserves to exist at all), originality (information that is not already everywhere), authority (why anyone should trust this site), and the technical craft that never was generative.
A modern SEO retainer sells judgment applied monthly, with content volume as an output of strategy rather than the product itself. If a prospect wants the old model cheaper because AI writes now, they are asking you to compete with the flood instead of surviving it. That's probably a project you should decline.
What moves the price
Up: competitive industries, e-commerce catalogs, several markets and languages, content production included rather than briefed, recovery situations.
Down: local businesses with modest competition, a site you already audited (the roadmap exists), technical-only scope.
Price your version
Target rate
Target Pay
desired monthly income, before tax
Monthly Costs
monthly costs to stay afloat
Billable hours
billable hours per week
Weeks off
vacation, holidays, sick days
Drag any blue number to adjust (click it to type). Your inputs carry over to the full tool. Access full tool
Set your numbers: take your target rate and multiply it by the monthly hours the scope actually requires. Standard retainer rules apply: clearly written inclusions and exclusions, a 10% discount ceiling, and a cancellation notice period. Above all, sell the audit first. A retainer without a roadmap is like rowing without a compass.
What is your month worth?
Your target rate, monthly view, times the capacity the scope needs. That is the retainer, before you discount a cent.
Run my numbersFree, no signup. For real.
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