What it costs, and what moves the number
Nobody publishes real numbers for this, so firms end up comparing a $600 proposal against a $9,000 one with no way to explain the gap, and usually conclude that one of them must be a scam. Neither is. They are selling different volumes of the same work, and this guide is about telling which is which.
What this covers
- 03 What the market actually charges
- 04 What changes the number
- 05 What price does and does not buy
- 06 What we charge, and why
- 07 What to refuse to pay for
- 08 How to decide what it is worth to you
Our own prices are published on this site and in chapter 06 below, so this guide is not a preamble to a quote. If the conclusion you reach is that a different provider fits better, that is a legitimate outcome of reading it.
What the market actually charges
There are roughly four bands, and they are separated by what arrives rather than by methodology. Everybody is doing the same categories of work; the difference is how much of each.
Under a few hundred dollars a month you get a small, real program: a handful of keywords, a handful of placements, basic reporting. It is genuinely better than nothing for a solo practice and it will not cover a firm with several practice areas.
Between roughly five hundred and two thousand you get volume that can cover a multi-area practice, plus technical audit work and a content plan. This is where most firms sit and where the return on the marginal dollar is usually highest.
Between two and ten thousand you are typically buying a dedicated strategist, custom content and campaign-level publishing. Above that you are buying a named agency and the institutional comfort that comes with it, which is a real thing to want and is not a search outcome.
What changes the number
- 01
How many practice areas you run
The single largest driver. One practice area in one market can be covered by twenty keywords. Three practice areas across a metro cannot, and no amount of clever prioritization makes twenty stretch to cover them.
- 02
How many offices
Each location needs its own profile, page and citation set. Multi-office firms need multiple domains covered, which is why plan tiers here are separated by domain count as well as keyword count.
- 03
How competitive your market is
The same practice area costs very different amounts of authority in a dense metro than in a smaller market. This is where price differences between otherwise identical proposals usually come from.
- 04
Whether content is included
Frequently it is not, and this is the most common source of a proposal looking cheaper than it is. Content is a separate line here for exactly that reason, priced openly rather than folded in invisibly.
- 05
What state your site is in
A site with structural problems needs remediation before anything compounds. That is usually a one-off cost, and skipping it makes everything after it less effective.
What price does and does not buy
Price buys volume, and volume is real. More keywords covered, more placements built, more content published, faster. A firm that needs forty keywords covered cannot get there on a plan that covers five, and no amount of skill closes that gap.
What price does not buy is sequence. The decision to fix indexation before building authority, to take the specific terms before the broad ones, and to publish situational content early costs nothing and matters more than the budget does. A well-sequenced small program beats a badly sequenced large one, routinely.
It also does not buy honesty about what is reachable. That is free and it is the thing most commonly missing at every price point, including the expensive ones, because at the expensive end the pressure to justify the invoice is higher rather than lower.
What we charge, and why
Published, month to month, cancel anytime, setup waived on every plan, with a dedicated account manager included at every level. The tiers differ by volume alone: the method, reporting standard and review process are identical on the smallest plan and the largest.
| Program | Basic | Silver | Golden | Platinum BEST VALUE | Titanium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $65 | $125 | $235 | $325 | $575 |
| One time | $75 | $140 | $260 | $380 | $620 |
| Domains | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Keywords | 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 100 |
| Guest posts, DA 20+ | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Web 2.0s, DA 50+ | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Amplification links | 1,500 | 3,000 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 |
| Keyword research | Standard | Standard | In-depth | In-depth | In-depth |
| Premium indexing | · | · | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| On-page technical audit | · | · | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Content gap analysis | · | · | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor traffic spy | · | · | · | Yes | Yes |
| Toxic link check, disavow | · | · | · | · | Yes |
| Turnaround | 8-10 days | 10-12 days | 12-14 days | 14-16 days | 16-18 days |
Website design is quoted separately from $400, one time. Content plans are priced separately again, from $26 a month, because folding them into a program price is how proposals end up looking cheaper than they are. Reputation management is offered through the parent agency and priced on request; we do not publish a figure for it because we do not have a verified one.
What to refuse to pay for
Four things that appear on proposals in this sector and are worth declining regardless of how they are framed.
Refuse a promised ranking. Nobody controls the ranking, so such a promise is either meaningless or written to be unfalsifiable. Read the definition of what is being promised and it is usually a term nobody searches.
A twelve-month lock-in justified by SEO taking time. It does take time. That is an argument for your patience, not for removing your ability to leave, and the two are being deliberately conflated.
Link counts without URLs. If you cannot open the links, you cannot know they exist, and a number in a report costs nothing to type. This is the single easiest place to overcharge in the whole industry.
Anything sold as guaranteed AI visibility. Structured data and clear writing genuinely help an assistant use your content. There is no placement to purchase, and a product claiming otherwise is describing something that does not exist.
How to decide what it is worth to you
The useful question is not what the market charges. It is what one additional signed matter is worth to your firm, and how many of them a program would need to produce before the spend is obviously correct.
For a personal injury practice at a typical matter value in the tens of thousands, a program at a few thousand a year clears that threshold on a single matter. For a DUI practice at a few thousand a matter, the threshold is several, which is a genuine reason to spend less rather than more.
The calculator on this site does that arithmetic with your numbers rather than ours, and it will recommend a smaller plan when the figures point that way. It also states plainly that the output is an illustrative projection based on figures you entered, and not a forecast, a guarantee, or a representation of results.
One last thing worth weighing. The expensive mistake in this market is rarely the invoice. It is spending a year on terms that were never reachable, which produces no matters at all while feeling like progress. That cost does not appear on any proposal.
Questions
How much does law firm SEO cost?
The market runs from under a hundred dollars a month to well past ten thousand. Our programs run from $65 to $575 a month with no contract and the setup fee waived. What changes the number is volume of keywords, placements and content rather than any difference in method.
What does law firm website design cost?
Ours starts at $400, one time, quoted per firm. The wider market runs from a few hundred dollars for a template to past twenty thousand for a custom build. Page count, whether content is written for you, and intake integration are what actually move it.
Is more expensive better?
Not reliably. Price buys volume: more keywords covered, more placements built, more content written. It does not buy a better sequence, and sequencing is what usually decides whether a program works. A well-sequenced small program beats a badly sequenced large one consistently.
Should we pay a setup fee?
You should understand what it is for before you do. Legitimate setup work exists, mostly audit and strategy. A setup fee also makes leaving expensive, which is convenient for an agency with a weak retention story. Ours is waived on every plan.
What is a reasonable budget for a solo practitioner?
Enough to cover local corrections, structural fixes and a modest authority build, which in practice is the $65 to $235 range. Most of the highest-return work available to a solo firm costs attention rather than money, and no budget substitutes for fixing practice pages that compete with each other.
How do we know we are not overpaying?
Compare deliverables, not prices. How many keywords, how many placements, how much content, and can you verify any of it. Two proposals at the same price frequently differ by a factor of five in what actually arrives, and the difference is invisible until you ask.
The other guides
- 01 How to audit a law firm website What to check, in order, and which findings actually move rankings.
- 02 A law firm SEO strategy that holds up Sequencing the work so early wins fund the terms that take longer.
- 03 Choosing an SEO agency The questions that separate a reporting habit from a marketing story.
A free analysis of what your firm can win
Five questions about your practice areas, your firm size and where you are losing to the directories. You get back the terms we would target first, with difficulty and volume attached, and an honest read on how long each one takes. No obligation and no call required.