Three proposals marked “monthly SEO” are on your desk. One costs UAH 8,000, another UAH 20,000, and a third UAH 35,000. Each lists “keyword analysis, optimization, reporting.” Until you know how many pages will be checked, who will make the changes, and whether writing is included, you are comparing service names rather than work. A price without scope tells you about as much as a receipt that says “repairs” without listing the parts.
The cost of SEO includes people’s time, specific website changes, content production, external placements, tools, and review of results. An agency may include some items in a monthly retainer and bill others separately. That is one reason quotes differ. Below are public prices from four companies, checked on 6 November 2026, and a way to read an estimate. They are neither an “average SEO price in Ukraine” nor GrandMa’s rate card. Packages differ, and prices may change after this check; confirm them before paying.
1. A hypothetical UAH 20,000: what could fit into a month?
To open up the black box, let us break down a fictional UAH 20,000 payment. This is a teaching calculation, not our offer, market hourly rates, or any agency’s actual estimate.
| Work | Hypothetical scope and calculation | Amount | How to see the result |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO specialist | 7 hours × hypothetical UAH 1,000 | UAH 7,000 | A list of URLs, queries, decisions, and checked changes. |
| Content editor | 5 hours × hypothetical UAH 600 | UAH 3,000 | A finished page or revision with agreed facts, published on the site. |
| Developer | 4 hours × hypothetical UAH 1,000 | UAH 4,000 | Specific technical changes, links to live pages, and a check after release. |
| Analytics and reporting | 2 hours × hypothetical UAH 800 | UAH 1,600 | Search Console data by URL and query, an explanation of findings, and the next step. |
| Tools and coordination | Hypothetical balance | UAH 4,400 | Which services and coordination the project actually needs, without paying twice. |
| Total | 18 hours of work plus tools and coordination | UAH 20,000 | Clear scope, owner, and acceptance method. |
Real contracts will have different hourly rates, taxes, scope, and margins. The point is that UAH 20,000 cannot pay for unlimited technical fixes, dozens of new articles, and limitless link placements at once. If a contractor says “everything included,” ask for limits and a list of separately billed work. A neat timesheet is not an outcome if the work cannot be seen on live pages.
I like to start with one question: which problem are we solving this month? For a new site, it might be technical accessibility and core service pages. For a large store, category and product structure. For a site that already gets search visitors, missing query coverage and enquiry quality. The same sum buys different tasks, so the prices below are not a contest to find the cheapest supplier.
2. Public prices you can verify
These examples come from the companies’ own pages, checked on 6 November 2026. I show only what they state publicly. Check the scope and terms on the page and in the contract before paying.
| Company and source | Public price | Important scope detail |
|---|---|---|
| SUDUS·TEAM | Local package UAH 4,500/month; commercial package UAH 9,000/month | Different geography and tasks. The page lists packages and minimum terms; do not assume the local package’s scope applies to the commercial one. |
| SEO-Factory | Starter from UAH 8,000/month | Its page dates the prices to September 2026 and lists an audit, semantics for up to 150 queries, optimization of up to 10 pages, technical fixes, five links, and a report. Final price follows an audit. |
| Seo-Gen | Bronze from UAH 20,000/month; express audit UAH 5,000 one-off | A monthly package and one-off inspection have different scopes. The company says its express audit is not a full investigation. |
| FOCUS | Retainer from UAH 35,000/month | The page says writing, link placements, and programming are added separately under an agreed plan. |
Do not add these prices and divide by four. One package limits the number of pages; another sells management and charges separately for implementation. One serves a local business and another a wider market. Compare them only after you write down the same task and ask each team exactly what its sum covers.
Compare month one and later months, too. An initial audit and measurement setup may be one-off, while editing, technical oversight, and reporting recur. Ask whether initial work is included in the monthly amount or invoiced separately, and whether you retain access, materials, and a change history after the relationship ends. These details can change the project’s real cost more than a few hundred hryvnias between starting rates. If the site is not ready to accept changes, clarify the cost of implementation, not just a developer task list.
As of 6 November 2026, GrandMa’s SEO service page does not publish a fixed monthly rate. I will not invent one for a prettier table. For an estimate, send us your URL, market, most important pages, and definition of a useful enquiry. Then we can discuss scope, owners, and budget.
3. What raises or lowers the price
Condition of the site. If important pages are accessible to search, the structure makes sense, and the team ships changes promptly, time can go into new opportunities. If a redesign lost URLs, duplicates proliferate, and forms fail, the first weeks go into foundations. We cover how to check symptoms yourself and accept an SEO audit separately.
Site size and competition. Ten service pages and a catalogue with thousands of products need different tools, rules, and editorial work. A competitive niche does not mean “twice as many keywords.” You need to identify queries the business can genuinely answer and the pages to create or improve for them.
Geography and languages. One Ukrainian region, the whole country, and several countries bring different queries, languages, local conditions, and competitors. Translation without checking search intent is not a substitute for market-specific work.
Implementation speed. If your developer can take a task only once a quarter, a good plan will wait in a queue. A larger agency budget cannot remove that delay by itself. Ask the estimate to separate writing a task, implementing the change, and accepting it on the live site.
Content and external placements. Writing may be the largest expense: researching a question, interviewing a specialist, drafting, checking facts, publishing, and updating. Links have costs for the placement, content, and follow-up verification. Agree on these separate lines before the month begins.
4. BETSA: when content becomes a system
In our BETSA case, we worked across a broad construction and renovation subject in Germany. A manual editorial queue could not quickly cover every relevant question, so the team built a managed content cycle with rules and business context. Over 202 days, from 13 June to 31 December 2025, the system published 1,222 WordPress articles. Across two equal 202-day periods, clicks from Google Search changed from 550 to 2,600, while impressions changed from 108,067 to 443,531.
Those are figures for one project and specific periods. They do not prove the system alone caused every extra click, and they say nothing about enquiries or revenue. The case does not disclose content production costs either, so a “cost per article” derived from it would be fiction. It shows something else: at scale, production, editorial rules, quality control, and measurement become part of an SEO budget. A company with five services does not need 1,222 articles. Start by checking whether your five pages answer buyers’ five most important questions.
Scale changes the time horizon as well as the estimate. Even with a technically sound site, search engines need time to discover and evaluate new pages. I would not give an owner a date when SEO will “pay for itself” without data on margins, sales cycle, and actual enquiries. A content plan should connect topics to pages and measurement, not only to a publication count.
5. Which payment model should you choose?
A fixed monthly retainer works for a regular cycle of work. The contract needs boundaries: what is included, which costs are separate, who approves new work, and how results are accepted. “SEO management” without those details gives you no way to check the invoice.
Hourly billing can suit limited diagnostics, advice, or a specific technical task. Ask for an estimate of hours, a cap requiring new approval, and a concrete deliverable. Hours logged do not prove a problem was fixed.
Paying for positions sounds simple but creates the wrong incentives. A provider can choose easy or branded queries that do not bring buyers and still report a met KPI. Position also varies by query, location, device, and time. Google explicitly warns that nobody can guarantee first place. Agreeing on verifiable work milestones, relevant visibility, and quality enquiries is more useful than buying a “top 10” promise.
6. How to read a monthly plan and report
Ask the agency for one page with four columns:
| Planned | Shipped on the site | Evidence | Next decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Improve two core service pages | Named URLs, new sections, and publication date | Open pages and compare them with the agreed brief | Should the query cluster expand? |
| Remove an indexing barrier | A specific technical change | Live URL test and Search Console status | What remains outside the index, and why? |
| Evaluate the previous cycle | Impressions, clicks, and enquiries for the relevant URLs | Data source, period, and measurement limits | Continue, adjust, or stop the hypothesis? |
The report need not be long. It should show what you paid for and what the team learned. List writing, links, programming, and tools separately. If included in the retainer, ask for a limit; if excluded, agree before spending. Check the live website, not just a screenshot from the task manager. We explain a short free inspection versus paid diagnosis here.
My short list of red flags in a proposal:
- a guaranteed “number one” or “top 10” without a specific query, market, and scope of the promise;
- “everything included” without a list of pages, work, and separate costs;
- a report on positions alone, without URLs, shipped changes, or enquiries;
- hundreds of links without explaining placements, price, and risk;
- a demand to transfer ownership of Search Console or the site to the contractor;
- hidden programming: tasks get written, but nobody owns the release;
- a “from” rate without saying what the starting amount actually buys.
One item does not by itself mean fraud. It means you should ask a concrete question and get a written answer before paying. If the team cannot provide one, the number in the proposal is not yet an estimate.
7. When monthly SEO is not the first step
If there is no website, or its pages do not explain what is being sold, first build a page and a way to receive an enquiry. If the business cannot update prices, facts, and copy, a content budget may sit in an approval queue. If you need leads this week, SEO is not a fast switch: assess other acquisition channels, including search advertising and its conditions, while putting the site in order.
The price of SEO only makes sense with the question, what work are we buying and how will we know it is done? Take the tables from this article, insert your pages, and ask an agency to fill the gaps. Then UAH 8,000, 20,000, and 35,000 become three different plans you can compare.