Enterprise SEO costs US$7,000 to US$60,000+ a month in the US, going by the packages and guides agencies publish. In Australia it's A$6,000 to A$25,000+. One-off enterprise audits: US$10,000 to US$30,000+. Building the same team in-house costs US$420,000 to US$606,000 a year, and that's before a single page ships. Three things set your number: how big and messy the site is, how many markets you sell into, and how much actually goes live.
I'm Brenden House. I run Searchmaxxed, an SEO and AI SEO agency for enterprise, B2B SaaS, venture-backed, manufacturing and public-sector companies. On 27 October 2026 (AEST) I read every enterprise pricing page and cost guide below, then added the internal costs most quotes quietly leave out.
In summary
Expect A$6,000 to A$25,000+ a month in Australia and US$7,000 to US$60,000+ in the US, depending mostly on scope and how much goes live.
| What you buy | Published price |
|---|---|
| Enterprise SEO package, Australia | A$6,000 to A$25,000+ a month |
| Enterprise SEO package, US | US$7,000 to US$60,000+ a month |
| One-off enterprise SEO audit | US$10,000 to US$30,000+ |
| In-house team: director, technical SEO, content | US$420,000 to US$606,000 a year |
- The retainer isn't the whole bill. Add internal engineering, tooling and analytics upkeep, and a US$7,000 to US$15,000 retainer turns into a real US$15,500 to US$35,000 month on your books.
- Hours tell you little. Ask what goes live each month.
- AI search belongs inside enterprise SEO, and Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode need nothing beyond its normal SEO best practices.
- Price it against one customer. One contract can cover months of fees.
How much does enterprise SEO cost per month?
Enterprise SEO packages cost A$6,000 to A$25,000+ a month in Australia and US$7,000 to US$60,000+ in the US. Several agencies that rank for this search publish no enterprise price at all, and the ones that do start near A$6,000 or US$7,000.
This is my own selection of agencies and guides that put a number on enterprise SEO, and because I run Searchmaxxed, it's listed first. Treat it as a price map. It isn't an award.
| Provider | Market | What they sell | Published price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Searchmaxxed | Australia and US | Growth System, Agentic Search Engineering, Custom & Enterprise | Not published; quoted per business |
| SOUP Agency | Australia | Enterprise package, for sites over 40 landing pages | A$6,000+ a month, excl. GST |
| Safari Digital | Australia | Enterprise SEO, from its cost guide | A$7,500+ a month |
| Prosperity Media | Australia | Enterprise retainers, from its FAQ | A$10,000 to A$25,000+ a month |
| OuterBox | US | Enterprise package | US$7,000+ a month |
| WebFX | US | Silver, Gold and Platinum enterprise plans | US$12,550, US$16,750 or US$23,750 a month |
Each figure comes from the provider's own page, read 27 October 2026 (AEST).
The cost guides ranking for this search give wider ranges, because they describe the whole market rather than one agency's own plans.
| Guide | Range it gives for enterprise SEO |
|---|---|
| Directive (US, B2B) | US$7,000 to US$60,000+ a month, in three tiers |
| SEOProfy | $7,000 to $21,000+ a month, at about $90 an hour; currency not stated |
| TripleDart | $10,000 to $50,000+ a month; currency not stated |
| SEO.com (US) | US$10,000 to US$100,000+ a month |
| WebFX survey (250 US marketing and sales staff) | 52% of enterprises spend US$1,001 to US$7,500 a month |
That last row looks odd. It measures what companies say they spend, not what an enterprise package costs, and plenty of large companies only buy a small slice of SEO.
Why no Searchmaxxed price? We quote each company after looking at its site, markets and goals, so our packages are defined by output instead: page releases a month.
What is enterprise SEO, and why does it cost more?
Enterprise SEO is SEO for large, complex websites run by many teams. Thousands of pages. Several markets or brands. Changes that pass through engineering and approvals. It costs more because every fix, and every mistake, repeats across thousands of pages.
Terms you'll see on every quote:
- Crawl budget is how many of your pages Google will fetch, so crawling wasted on filters and duplicates slows everything else down.
- Faceted navigation is the filter system on product or resource listings, and left alone it can spawn millions of near-identical URLs.
- Hreflang tags tell Google which country and language version to show.
- JavaScript rendering is the browser building the page after load, and text or links that only appear then may be indexed late or missed.
- Log file analysis reads your server logs to see what Googlebot actually crawled.
- Templates are shared page layouts.
Fix one template and ten thousand pages change; break one and they all break, which is why enterprise work starts with technical SEO.
What do you get at each enterprise SEO price level?
Below US$15,000 a month, you're buying technical SEO, on-page work and steady content in one main market, with standard link building on top. From US$15,000 to US$30,000 you add digital PR, programmatic pages and conversion work. Above that? Languages, domains and dedicated engineering.
The clearest public breakdown is Directive's three US tiers, shown here beside the published packages.
| Level | Monthly price | Typical hours | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry enterprise | US$7,000 to US$15,000; A$6,000 to A$10,000 | 80 to 120 | Technical SEO, on-page work, content, standard link building, monthly reporting |
| Competitive | US$15,000 to US$30,000; A$10,000 to A$25,000+ | 120 to 200 | Programmatic SEO, digital PR, conversion work, multi-product content |
| Global | US$30,000 to US$60,000+ | 200 to 240+ | Hreflang across languages, custom automation, dedicated engineering, log files, AI Overview work |
US tiers and hours from Directive's guide. The Australian figures are my mapping of the agency prices in the first table.
Hours are how agencies cost the work. They're not what you're buying. What you're buying is what goes live, so look for the output line on every quote.
WebFX publishes one: up to 80, 100 or 150 target pages optimised across its three enterprise plans, plus 11 to 25 consulting hours a month. SOUP's enterprise package promises "higher content and link building volume" but gives no count. Most enterprise pages I read gave none.
We define our own packages by output. The Growth System is 30 page releases a month, and Agentic Search Engineering is 50. A page release is an approved new page or a substantial rebuild of one, and technical, schema and internal-link work doesn't count against it.
What drives the cost of enterprise SEO up or down?
Six things set the price. Page count, markets and languages, release speed, content volume, off-site work and the state of your measurement. Release speed is usually the biggest swing.
| Your situation | What the work adds | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|
| One product, one market, a clean site | Technical fixes, product and use-case pages, steady content | Entry enterprise |
| Several products or a big content library | Page families, internal-link systems, content audits | Entry to competitive |
| A crowded category | Comparison pages, original research, digital PR, links | Competitive |
| Several countries or languages | Hreflang, regional pages, separate competitor sets | Global |
| 50,000+ pages, filters, an old CMS | Crawl budget work, log files, template fixes | Competitive to global |
| Slow release cycles | More hours on tickets, meetings and rework | Raises every level |
Directive puts that last row bluntly: "At enterprises with quarterly development cycles, a six-week window for a critical fix is common". Enterprise SEO stalls between "approved" and "live".
What hidden costs come with enterprise SEO?
The hidden costs of enterprise SEO are engineering time, tooling, analytics and approval cycles, and on Directive's line items they can double your monthly spend.
Here's the arithmetic.
| Monthly line item | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Agency retainer (entry tier) | US$7,000 | US$15,000 |
| Enterprise SEO tooling | US$2,500 | US$5,000 |
| Internal engineering support, fully loaded | US$5,000 | US$12,000 |
| Analytics and reporting maintenance | US$1,000 | US$3,000 |
| Real monthly cost | US$15,500 | US$35,000 |
My arithmetic, from Directive's monthly cost table. Content and digital PR bought outside the retainer sit on top.
The retainer is only 43% to 45% of the bill. Directive says to "plan for 10-20 engineering hours per month as a minimum supporting cost", or the recommendations simply wait in a backlog.
We built Searchmaxxed around this cost. In every managed package, we build, approve and deploy the pages, technical work, schema and internal links ourselves. Need your own team to deploy? Then we hand over merge-ready changes, with the tickets written the way your team ships them. Your engineers review the work. They don't write it.
Measurement is the other hidden cost, and it fails silently, because broken tracking still produces numbers that look perfectly normal in the report. Here's one we found:
> A client's four enquiry types never counted as conversions. Their event names ran 41 to 50 characters; GA4 cuts at 40. The 40-character "career" event counted every time. Nobody had noticed, because the events still showed up.
Google's GA4 limits page confirms it: Analytics doesn't process "an event name with more than 40 characters". With tracking broken like that, no agency fee can be judged, so every Searchmaxxed package includes Search Console and GA4, wired and checked.
Is it cheaper to build an in-house enterprise SEO team?
At the start, usually not. Directive prices a US team of an SEO director, a technical specialist and a content strategist, plus tools, at US$420,000 to US$606,000 a year. That's before recruiting, management time or ramp-up.
| Option | Annual cost | Source |
|---|---|---|
| In-house team of three plus tools (US) | US$420,000 to US$606,000 | Directive |
| Competitive-tier agency retainer (US) | US$180,000 to US$360,000 | Directive |
| One in-house SEO director plus an agency (US) | US$310,000 to US$568,000 | Directive |
| One SEO manager's salary (Australia) | A$110,000 to A$120,000 average | SEEK, October 2026 |
| One SEO manager's salary (Australia) | A$101,406 average, 40 salaries | Indeed, updated 14 October 2026 |
Directive calls the hybrid model "often the most realistic option". One strong person inside owns strategy, stakeholders and the engineering relationship, while an agency supplies the volume and the specialist skills.
In Australia, one SEO manager's salary already tops a year of the cheapest published enterprise package, and that one person can't run everything. Our comparison of an SEO agency vs a freelancer vs in-house covers the trade-offs beyond cost.
Do enterprise SEO packages include AI search, GEO and AEO?
Most enterprise packages now include some AI search work. They should. GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AEO (answer engine optimisation) both mean getting your company named and quoted in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews.
OuterBox's enterprise package lists "AI visibility optimization across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI experiences". WebFX's plans include "monthly AI content analysis reports", and Directive lists AI Overview and LLM optimisation in its top tier, the most expensive one.
Don't pay a big premium for it. Google's guidance on AI features is plain: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary". Crawlable pages, clear answers and matching schema do most of the work.
The extra part happens off your site. Our own testing shows why:
> We put 300 Australian agency-buyer questions to ChatGPT three times each, with search on. It pulled 17,870 search results into those 900 answers and kept 4,389 as sources. Being found is the easy part. About three in four results it reads never make the answer.
Making that cut depends partly on what other sites say about you, so links and digital PR matter for AI answers too. At Searchmaxxed, AI search sits inside every managed package, and Agentic Search Engineering adds AI answer tracking across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews.
How do you compare enterprise SEO quotes?
Convert every quote to one monthly figure, in one currency, before GST or sales tax. One-off fees go on a separate line. Then compare what goes live each month, and who puts it there.
- Write each quote as one monthly figure.
- Separate out audits, migrations and setup fees.
- Add your internal costs from the table above: engineering hours, tools and analytics upkeep, because those land on your budget whichever agency you pick.
- Get the monthly output in numbers: new pages, rebuilt pages, fixes, links.
- Ask who builds and deploys the work.
- Ask how long a typical fix takes to go from "approved" to "live" on a site like yours, and who chases it.
- Ask which AI engines they track.
- Ask what you keep if you leave. Pages, code, content, tracking and reports should all stay yours.
A worked example: one B2B SaaS company, two quotes
Take a venture-backed B2B SaaS company. It has a 6,000-page site, sells in the US and Australia, and gets two quotes for enterprise SEO from two different agencies.
Quote A is US$12,000 a month for audits, recommendations, content briefs and reporting. The company's own developers implement everything. Add Directive's engineering line of US$5,000 to US$12,000 and the real cost is US$17,000 to US$24,000, if the tickets get picked up at all.
Quote B is US$18,000 a month. This agency builds and deploys the pages and fixes itself, or hands over merge-ready changes. Engineering time drops to review.
Quote B looks dearer. On the real monthly bill it can come out level with Quote A, while shipping faster. Example figures, so run your own.
How do you know enterprise SEO is working?
Watch three things: what goes live, which searches you gain, and the pipeline those searches bring in. Be suspicious of sudden "AI traffic" jumps.
Directive's guide sets fair B2B milestones. Indexing and impression gains come in 60 to 90 days, rankings move from three to six months, and pipeline follows at six to 12.
Here's why the checking matters. On an enterprise B2B client's account:
> A client's GA4 showed AI-assistant visits jump from 354 to 6,050 in a month. Almost none of it was real. About 5,700 came in three one-hour bursts: same 1920x1080 desktop Chrome, all new users, no referrer, about 20 seconds each, landing on two pages. Real AI traffic was 385 sessions against 354 the month before, roughly flat.
A report built on the raw chart would have claimed a seventeenfold win. Ask your agency three things monthly:
- What went live, and which searches or AI answers changed because of it?
- How many enquiries, demos or deals came from organic search?
- Has anyone checked the traffic and the conversion events for bots and broken tracking?
Is enterprise SEO worth the cost?
Yes, when the profit from the customers it brings in covers the fee and your internal costs, so price it against one customer's value. Not against another agency's quote.
Say a B2B SaaS company keeps US$45,000 gross profit from each US$60,000 annual contract. A year of a US$15,000 retainer costs US$180,000, which means four new customers from organic search cover the whole fee, before your internal costs. The fifth is profit. Those are example figures, so plug in your own contract value and close rate.
I learned to price search this way in my own business:
Before Searchmaxxed, I built Radiant Roof Repairs from zero to more than A$1 million a year in revenue using SEO as the only marketing channel. Three high-intent Gold Coast roofing searches reached number one within 90 days. I did the pages, research, competitor checks and updates manually.
It's a very different business from yours, and the result is no forecast for your company. The maths still holds. When one customer is worth a lot, being the answer for the searches they make is worth far more than the fee.
Where does Searchmaxxed fit?
Searchmaxxed is an SEO and AI SEO agency for enterprise, B2B SaaS, venture-backed, manufacturing and public-sector companies. We do technical SEO, on-page SEO, content, link building, digital PR, GEO and AEO, so you rank in Google and get named in AI answers. Our enterprise SEO service sets out the work in full.
| Package | Who it suits | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Growth System | A company growing in one or two markets | 30 page releases a month, work on up to 4 existing pages, technical, schema and internal-link batches, one qualified link action a month, AI visibility tracking |
| Agentic Search Engineering | A crowded category or national market | 50 page releases a month, comparison, industry and integration page families, a monthly press release, digital PR and link campaigns, AI answer tracking |
| Custom & Enterprise | Several brands, several markets or a very large site | Scope built around you, which can include multiple markets, dedicated engineering, custom reporting and original first-party research |
Every managed package includes continuous audits, a 90-day plan broken into weekly releases, the build work itself and a monthly decision memo. You own the site, repository, content and data from day one, and terms are monthly, six-month or 12-month, agreed on the call. Want a smaller first step? Try the AI SEO Audit: five business days.
We work on a website you own, our Agentic Website, or ship merge-ready changes into yours. AI agents pull your Search Console and GA4 data, read the Google results and check what AI answers say about you and your competitors. That feeds the Managed Search Loop, which shows which page, fix or link should bring in the most pipeline next. We build it. Then we check the live page and measure what changed. Off your site, the Off-Page Source Layer builds the links, digital PR and mentions that Google and AI answers lean on.
Searchmaxxed's work has generated more than A$10 million in revenue through search for its clients.
Is Searchmaxxed right for you?
We suit marketing and growth teams at enterprise, B2B SaaS, venture-backed, manufacturing and public-sector companies that want SEO and AI search built and shipped. Want a strategy deck to implement yourself? We're the wrong call.
| Searchmaxxed is a good fit if | Look elsewhere if |
|---|---|
| Your SEO backlog is stuck behind your engineering queue | You have spare engineering capacity and only want advice |
| You want output you can count: page releases a month | You want hours or consulting days on the invoice |
| You want Google and AI search from one team, with no add-on | You only want to monitor AI mentions; a tool costs less |
| You want to own the site, code, content and data | You're shopping for the cheapest retainer |
| You compete in a crowded or multi-market category | You need organic search to fill this quarter's pipeline on its own |
| You want direct access to the people doing the work | You want an account manager between you and the team |
Committees that take weeks to approve a single page will slow us down, because every package depends on changes actually getting live.
Frequently asked questions
How much does enterprise SEO cost per hour?
In WebFX's US survey, 74% of companies paid US$25 to US$100 an hour for enterprise SEO. SEOProfy cites Clutch data: about $90 an hour. Most enterprise work is sold as a monthly retainer, though, so what ships matters more than the rate.
How much does enterprise SEO cost per year?
Published enterprise packages work out to about US$84,000 to US$720,000+ a year in the US. In Australia, they start near A$72,000 a year. An in-house team of three costs US$420,000 to US$606,000 a year on Directive's estimate.
How much do SEO packages cost?
Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers, last updated August 2024, put the average at US$2,917 a month. Enterprise packages start well above that. For Australian prices at every size, see how much SEO costs in Australia.
What is the 80/20 rule for SEO?
It's the idea that a small share of your pages and fixes produces most of the results. On enterprise sites, that means templates, top commercial pages and crawl problems come first, ahead of new content or another round of keyword research.
Can you do enterprise SEO in-house?
Yes, if you can hire and keep a director, a technical specialist and content people, then give them real engineering time every month. Many companies run a hybrid instead. One in-house lead sets direction while an agency handles volume and specialist work.
Is SEO dead or evolving in 2026?
Evolving. Google says its SEO best practices still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no extra requirements. The work now covers AI answers too.
How long does enterprise SEO take to work?
Directive's B2B guide puts early signs at 60 to 90 days, ranking movement at three to six months and pipeline at six to 12 months. Clean, fast-releasing sites move sooner.
What should you do next?
Write down what your current SEO spend puts live each month, and how long each fix waits for engineering before it ships. Then hold every enterprise quote against the tables above, with your internal costs added. Want us to scope it for your site and markets? Let's talk pricing.