Digital Marketing Industry Pricing Survey from Credo (updated 2019)

Average SEO agency and consultant rates

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Credo is very SEO-focused for the clients we bring in who are looking to hire. In fact, over 70% are looking for a project that has an SEO component (technical, content, outreach) involved.

There are many studies out there that show “SEO consultant rates” or “SEO agency rates”, and while those may have more respondents than ours they are also more global-focused and less focused on the specific countries that Credo serves.

So, this section is mostly about US and UK based SEO agencies and consultants, though we also give you a view into our view on the global SEO market and its rates.

The important takeaways from this section are:

• Worldwide, SEO firms charge an average of ~$149 per hour;
• 71% of US SEO agencies charge between $101-$200 per hour;
• Only 41% of UK SEO agencies charge between $101-$200. UK agencies are more likely to charge between $51-$150 per hour.
• The average SEO consultant hourly rate worldwide as of January 2019 is $148 per hour.
• 55.32% of US SEO consultants charge $101-$200 per hour, and 25.53% charge less than $100 per hour!

Let’s get into the numbers.

Average SEO firm rates worldwide

First, let’s look at the SEO firm average rates worldwide.

Average SEO firm hourly rates

Worldwide, SEO firms charge on average $149 per hour.

Here is how it breaks down:

As you can see, on average:

• 30.98% of SEO firms charge $101-$150 per hour;
• ~$17% charge over $200 per hour, which means
• ~83% charge under $200 per hour;
• 8.68% of our respondents charge under $50 per hour and ~29% charge under $100 per hour.

Now let’s look at some deeper cuts to see how the numbers change.

Link building is a common activity in SEO and is absolutely important for ranking sites. We were interested in whether firms that build links charge more or less than firms that do not.

Here are the findings:

Takeaways:

• A higher percentage of link building firms charge $101-$200 per hour than non link building firms.
• A slightly higher percentage of non-links firms charge more than $201 per hour;
• A higher percentage of non-links firms charge $51-$100 per hour than firms offering link building;
• 4x more non-links firms charge $501+ per hour than links firms.

Overall, this data surprises me a little bit, though then I remember that this is worldwide and the data skews lower than I usually think it will.

The figures I expected are that a higher percentage of links-offering firms bill between $101-$200 than non-links firms and that non-links firms charge more as a percentage in the higher hourly rates.

The other way we wanted to look at the data was by company size. Here are the results:

And here’s the data:

Hourly Rate	Solo	2 to 5	5 to 10	10 to 20	20 to 50	51+
Under $50	8.05%	12.90%	9.52%	10.53%	3.57%	4.00%
$51-$100	28.74%	19.35%	9.52%	0.00%	14.29%	24.00%
$101-$150	24.14%	41.94%	23.81%	47.37%	35.71%	16.00%
$151-$200	21.84%	12.90%	33.33%	31.58%	28.57%	28.00%
$201-$300	10.34%	11.29%	9.52%	10.53%	14.29%	20.00%
$301-$500	2.30%	0.00%	9.52%	0.00%	3.57%	4.00%
$501+	3.45%	1.61%	0.00%	0.00%	0.00%	4.00%
N/A	1.15%		4.76%

Average SEO firm minimum monthly Projects

Here are the SEO firm minimum monthly one-time projects as reported by our 242 respondents:

The raw data:

Project minimum	Count of Single project minimum	Worldwide SEO firm single project minimum
Under $1,000	55	22.73%
$1,000-$1,999	65	26.86%
$2,000-$2,999	45	18.60%
$3,000-$3,999	15	6.20%
$4,000-$4,999	7	2.89%
$5,000+	40	16.53%
Do not accept one-time projects	7	2.89%
No minimum	8	3.31%

The important takeaways:

• We are extremely heartened to see that 16.53% of the SEO firm respondents do not take minimum projects for less than $5,000!
• 49.59% (almost half) of the respondents report doing single projects for less than $2,000.

Average SEO firm minimum monthly retainers

Here are the SEO firm minimum monthly retainers worldwide as reported by our 242 respondents:

The raw data:

Worldwide SEO firm minimum monthly retainer
Monthly retainer	Count of Monthly minimum budget	Worldwide SEO firm minimum monthly retainer
Under $1,000	62	25.62%
$1000-1,999	66	27.27%
$2000-2,999	42	17.36%
$3000-3,999	25	10.33%
$4000-4,999	5	2.07%
$5,000+	23	9.50%
I do not accept ongoing engagements	4	1.65%
No minimum	15	6.20%

Average SEO firm rates (US)

Now that we’ve established the worldwide SEO agency/firm rates, let’s look at the US numbers.

Average SEO firm hourly rates (US)

Here’s the raw data:

Hourly Rate	SEO agencies
Under $50	2.22%
$51-$100	5.56%
$101-$150	40.00%
$151-$200	31.11%
$201-$300	15.56%
$301-$500	3.33%
$501+	1.11%

The interesting callouts are:

• 40% of US SEO agencies charge between $101-$150 per hour;
• A full 71% charge between $101-$200 per hour;
• ~20% charge $200+ per hour with ~4.4% charging over $300 per hour;
• ~8% charge less than $100 per hour.

Average SEO firm minimum projects (US)

Here are the US SEO firm minimum projects according to our 137 respondents:

The raw data:

Project minimum	Count of Single project minimum	US SEO firm single project minimum
Under $1,000	22	16.06%
$1,000-$1,999	37	27.01%
$2,000-$2,999	32	23.36%
$3,000-$3,999	9	6.57%
$4,000-$4,999	3	2.19%
$5,000+	27	19.71%
Do not accept one-time projects	3	2.19%
No minimum	4	2.92%

Average SEO firm minimum monthly retainer (US)

Here are the US SEO firm minimum monthly retainers according to our 137 respondents:

The raw data:

US SEO firm minimum monthly retainer
Monthly retainer	Count of Monthly minimum budget	US SEO firm minimum monthly retainer
Under $1,000	25	18.25%
$1000-1,999	41	29.93%
$2000-2,999	28	20.44%
$3000-3,999	17	12.41%
$4000-4,999	4	2.92%
$5,000+	14	10.22%
I do not accept ongoing engagements	1	0.73%
No minimum	7	5.11%

Average SEO firm rates (UK)

Now let’s look at UK SEO agency hourly rates numbers. We had significantly fewer UK agencies who do SEO respond than US (90 for US, 24 for UK) so these numbers are not as strong as US, but they’re still directionally helpful.

Average SEO firm hourly rates (UK)

Here’s the raw data:

Hourly Rate	UK SEO agencies
Under $50	8.33%
$51-$100	37.50%
$101-$150	29.17%
$151-$200	12.50%
$201-$300	12.50%
$301-$500	0.00%
$501+	0.00%

Here are the main callouts:

• A significantly higher percentage of UK agencies (45%) charge under $100 per hour than US agencies. In fact, more UK SEO agencies from our set report that than US even though we had 4x the number of US respondents than UK;
• 41% still charge $101-$200 per hour though, the same as the US. I suspect this is skewed by fewer respondents in the UK, but is interesting nonetheless.
• Zero UK SEO agencies in our dataset charge $301 or more per hour.

Average SEO agency rates

Now let’s look at the average SEO agency (2+ people) rates both worldwide and for the United States.

Average SEO agency hourly rates (worldwide)

Here are the SEO agency hourly rates worldwide for our 155 respondents:

The raw data:

SEO agency hourly rates worldwide
Hourly rate	Count of Average hourly rate	SEO agency hourly rates worldwide
Under $50	14	9.03%
$51-$100	24	15.48%
$101-$150	54	34.84%
$151-$200	36	23.23%
$201-$300	20	12.90%
$301-$500	4	2.58%
$501+	2	1.29%
N/A	1	0.65%

Average SEO agency project minimums (worldwide)

Here are the worldwide SEO agency projects minimums as reported by our 155 respondents:

The raw data:

Worldwide SEO agency minimum project
Project minimum	Count of Single project minimum	Worldwide SEO agency minimum project
Under $1,000	33	21.29%
$1,000-$1,999	39	25.16%
$2,000-$2,999	28	18.06%
$3,000-$3,999	10	6.45%
$4,000-$4,999	5	3.23%
$5,000+	31	20.00%
Do not accept one-time projects	5	3.23%
No minimum	4	2.58%

Average SEO agency monthly retainer minimums (worldwide)

Here are the worldwide SEO agency minimum monthly retainers as reported by our 155 respondents:

The raw data:

Worldwide SEO agency minimum monthly retainer
Row Labels	Count of Monthly minimum budget	Worldwide SEO agency minimum monthly retainer
Under $1,000	40	25.81%
$1000-1,999	38	24.52%
$2000-2,999	27	17.42%
$3000-3,999	19	12.26%
$4000-4,999	5	3.23%
$5,000+	17	10.97%
I do not accept ongoing engagements	3	1.94%
No minimum	6	3.87%

Average SEO consultant rates (worldwide)

Before digging into the average SEO consultant rates in US and UK, let’s look at them worldwide.

Average SEO consultant hourly rates

The average SEO consultant hourly rate worldwide as of January 2019 is $148 per hour.

Here is the data:

And the data:

Hourly Rate	Solo
Under $50	8.05%
$51-$100	28.74%
$101-$150	24.14%
$151-$200	21.84%
$201-$300	10.34%
$301-$500	2.30%
$501+	3.45%
N/A	1.15%

As you can see, the average is $148 per hour but the takeaways are:

• ~36% of SEO consultants worldwide charge less than $100 per hour;
• ~60% of SEO consultants worldwide charge less than $150 per hour;
• Only 5.75% of SEO consultants who responded to our survey charge over $300 per hour.

Average worldwide SEO consultant project minimums

Here are the worldwide SEO consultant project minimums from our 87 respondents:

The raw data:

Worldwide SEO consultant single project minimum
Row Labels	Count of Single project minimum	Worldwide SEO consultant single project minimum
Under $1,000	22	25.29%
$1,000-$1,999	26	29.89%
$2,000-$2,999	17	19.54%
$3,000-$3,999	5	5.75%
$4,000-$4,999	2	2.30%
$5,000+	9	10.34%
Do not accept one-time projects	2	2.30%
No minimum	4	4.60%

Average worldwide SEO consultant monthly retainers

Here are the worldwide SEO consultant monthly retainer minimums from our 87 respondents:

The raw data:

Worldwide SEO consultant minimum monthly retainer
Row Labels	Count of Monthly minimum budget	Worldwide SEO consultant minimum monthly retainer
Under $1,000	22	25.29%
$1000-1,999	28	32.18%
$2000-2,999	15	17.24%
$3000-3,999	6	6.90%
$5,000+	6	6.90%
I do not accept ongoing engagements	1	1.15%
No minimum	9	10.34%

Average SEO consultant rates (US)

Now let’s look at US SEO consultant (only 1 person in the company) rates. We had 47 such respondents.

SEO consultant hourly rates (US)

Here’s the raw data:

Hourly Rate	US SEO consultants
Under $50	2.13%
$51-$100	23.40%
$101-$150	27.66%
$151-$200	27.66%
$201-$300	8.51%
$301-$500	2.13%
$501+	6.38%

The interesting callouts are:

• 55.32% of US SEO consultants charge $101-$200 per hour;
• 25.53% charge less than $100 per hour!
• 78.72% of US SEO consultants charge between $51-$200 per hour;
• 16.92% of US SEO consultants who responded charge over $100 per hour;
• 6.38% of our US SEO consultant respondents charge $500+. This is 3 of the 47 who replied.

SEO consultant Project Minimums (US)

Here are the single project minimums for the 47 US SEO consultants in our dataset:

The raw data:

US SEO consultant minimum single project
Row Labels	Count of Single project minimum	US SEO consultant minimum single project
Under $1,000	7	14.89%
$1,000-$1,999	15	31.91%
$2,000-$2,999	12	25.53%
$3,000-$3,999	4	8.51%
$4,000-$4,999	1	2.13%
$5,000+	6	12.77%
No minimum	2	4.26%

SEO consultant Monthly Retainer Minimums (US)

Here are the monthly retainer minimums for the 47 US SEO consultants in our dataset:

The raw data:

US SEO consultant minimum monthly retainer
Monthly retainer	Count of Monthly minimum budget	US SEO consultant minimum monthly retainer
Under $1,000	7	14.89%
$1000-1,999	17	36.17%
$2000-2,999	9	19.15%
$3000-3,999	6	12.77%
$5,000+	2	4.26%
I do not accept ongoing engagements	1	2.13%
No minimum	5	10.64%

Average SEO consultant hourly rates (UK)

Similarly to the SEO agencies, we had dramatically fewer UK respondents than US respondents. We had 47 respondents in the US versus just 16 in the UK.

SEO consultant hourly rates (UK)

As such it’s barely worthwhile to give averages as they are so skewed, so here is the raw data:

Hourly Rate for UK SEO consultants	Count
Under $50	1
$51-$100	11
$101-$150	2
$151-$200	0
$201-$300	2
$301-$500	0
$501+	0

If you really want the averages, here they are:

Because we do not have enough data here, we will not call out interesting pullouts.