What will this cost me?
A one-off audit: [KES RANGE — MBOGO TO FILL]. A defined project — a migration, a technical fix batch, a content build-out: [KES RANGE — MBOGO TO FILL]. An ongoing monthly retainer: [KES RANGE — MBOGO TO FILL] per month.
These are ranges, not fixed prices, because the drivers below move a specific quote up or down within them by a meaningful margin.
Pricing models
One-off audit. A fixed-fee diagnosis: a full technical, on-page, and (where relevant) local review, delivered as a prioritised findings document. No ongoing commitment. Good for a first engagement, or for checking a claim before signing anything larger. See what an SEO audit actually involves for what the deliverable should contain.
Project. A defined, scoped piece of work with a start and an end: a site migration, a batch of technical fixes, a content build for a specific set of pages. Priced against the scope, not the calendar.
Monthly retainer. Ongoing work, billed monthly, for sites and markets that shift enough to need continuous attention rather than a single fix.
Performance-based. Pricing tied to rankings or traffic hit. This is usually a warning sign, not a saving — the incentives it creates are covered in SEO red flags, and a provider confident in their own work rarely needs to structure pricing this way to prove it.
What drives the range
| Driver | Effect on price |
|---|---|
| Site size | More pages and templates mean more to audit and fix |
| Competition | A crowded sector needs more sustained work to hold position |
| Current technical state | A site with years of unresolved issues costs more to bring up to a clean baseline |
| Content production | Included content raises the fee; audit-and-fix-only engagements cost less |
A quote at the low end of a range for a large, technically troubled site in a competitive sector is a mismatch worth asking about directly.
What a low quote usually means
A quote well below the range for the stated scope usually means one of three things: the scope is narrower than it looks, the deliverable is templated rather than a genuine diagnosis of this specific site, or the work relies on shortcuts — bought links, thin content at volume — that carry the risks covered in SEO red flags. None of the three is disclosed upfront; all three show up in the deliverable if asked about directly.
Comparing the models
| One-off audit | Project | Retainer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commitment | None | Fixed scope | Ongoing |
| Best for | First engagement, second opinion | Migration, defined fix list | Shifting site or market |
| Typical price | [KES RANGE — MBOGO TO FILL] | [KES RANGE — MBOGO TO FILL] | [KES RANGE — MBOGO TO FILL]/month |
For the underlying question of whether any of this is worth spending on for a specific business, see is SEO worth it for a small business?