What does SEO cost for a small business?
What you pay for when you buy SEO, what is one-off and what is ongoing, what you can do yourself, and which promises deserve a follow-up question.
By Daniel Aideborn · Published 21 October 2026 · 4 min read
Short answer: SEO costs in two ways. A foundation that is laid once, where the technical side, the structure and the most important pages fall into place, and ongoing work where new content is written, existing content is updated and the results are followed up. The price depends on how much content is needed, how fierce the competition is for what you want to be found for, and how much already exists.
Below is what you pay for, what is one-off and what is ongoing, what moves the price, what you can do yourself, and which promises should make you ask once more.
What you pay for
- A technical foundation. Pages that may be indexed, load quickly, work on a phone and have titles and descriptions of their own. It is done once and checked from then on.
- Pages that answer what people search for. One page per service, with what a customer needs to understand what you do and what it costs. This is often the largest part of the work.
- New content. Articles that answer the questions your customers ask before they buy. It is the ongoing work that keeps the site growing.
- Updates to what exists. Pages that slip in the results or have gone stale are rewritten, instead of new ones being added all the time.
- Follow-up. Someone looks at Search Console and the analytics, sees what works and adjusts. Without follow-up you do not know what you are paying for.
One-off work and ongoing work
| Part | When | What decides the time |
|---|---|---|
| Technical SEO | Once, then checks | How the site is built and how much is wrong today |
| Structure and a page per service | Once | How many services you have and how much text exists |
| Articles | Ongoing | How often and how deeply you want to write |
| Content updates | Ongoing | How large the site is and how fast your field changes |
| Follow-up and reports | Ongoing | How often you want a review |
The foundation is the part most often skipped. Without it new content helps less, because search engines find it harder to understand what the site is about. What the foundation contains is in Technical SEO: what a small business actually needs.
What decides the price
- Competition. Being found for a service in your town is a different job from being found for the same words across the whole country.
- The amount of content. Five service pages and one article a month is a different job from fifty product pages and an article a week.
- What already exists. A site with good copy that only lacks structure is cheaper to improve than one where everything has to be written from scratch.
- Who writes. If you write and someone else edits and publishes, it costs less than having everything produced for you.
- How long. SEO rarely pays off within a month. An arrangement that runs for only a couple of months often pays for the foundation but never for the effect.
What you can do yourself
- Connect the site to Google Search Console. It is free and shows which searches you already appear for.
- Give every page a title and a description of its own that say what the page is about.
- Create and fill in a Google Business Profile if you have customers in a particular area. How that works is in Google Business Profile: how your business shows up locally.
- Write down the ten questions customers ask most often before they buy. That is your first content plan.
Promises that deserve a follow-up question
- A guaranteed first place. No one can guarantee a particular ranking on Google, and Google itself warns against anyone who does.
- Hundreds of links in a short time. Bought or automatically created links break Google's rules and can do more harm than good.
- No reports. You should be able to see what has been done and what it has led to, every month.
- Accounts in the supplier's name. Search Console and the analytics should sit in your account, so the history stays with you if you stop working together.
- A long commitment with no notice period. Ask what happens if the results do not come.
What it costs with me
Basic technical SEO, indexing through Search Console and analytics are part of every launch package. Liovall Growth is the ongoing work: ongoing SEO, articles, keyword research, updating existing content, website maintenance, analytics and a monthly results report.
- Liovall Growth From 3 990 SEK/ month, excl. VAT
All prices exclude VAT. Larger software products (SaaS), web applications and iOS apps are quoted individually. See prices
How long it usually takes before the work shows is in How long does SEO take before it shows?.
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