How Much Does SEO Cost in Melbourne? A Straightforward Guide for Small Business

You’ve heard the extremes: “$300 a month SEO is fine” vs “If you’re not spending $10k, don’t bother.” Reality sits in the middle. This guide explains what Melbourne small businesses typically invest in SEO in 2025, what you get at each level, and how to avoid paying for noise instead of meaningful outcomes.

Typical price ranges (and what they really mean)

Australian guides published over the last 12–18 months commonly cite monthly ranges from roughly $750–$5,000+, with Melbourne-specific pages quoting $800–$3,500+ for small businesses, and higher for complex eCommerce or national campaigns. Hourly consultant rates are often $100–$250+, with one-off audits $1,500–$5,000. These numbers won’t fit every case, but they’re a sensible reality check.

What drives the spread?

• Competition & geography: Ranking “plumber Melbourne” is pricier than ranking in a small regional town.
• Scope: Technical fixes, content creation, digital PR, and local SEO are different disciplines.
• Speed expectations: Aggressive timelines require more hours, more content, and more links.
• Site size & tech debt: A clean, fast site is cheaper to rank than a slow, messy one.

What you should get for your money (by tier)

$750–$1,500/month (starter/maintenance)

• Baseline technical fixes (crawl errors, metadata), Google Business Profile work, and a light content cadence or on-page updates.
• Clear monthly reporting and a backlog of priorities, not “set and forget.”

$1,500–$3,500/month (growth)

• Everything above plus strategic content (topic clusters, service pages), structured data, internal linking, and local link outreach.
• Conversion improvements on key pages.
• Measurable goals (non-brand impressions, local pack share, qualified leads).

$3,500–$7,500+/month (competitive/eCommerce)

• Technical SEO at depth (templates, pagination, JS rendering), programmatic content, digital PR, and regular CRO testing.
• Ongoing dev collaboration and analytics instrumentation.

One-off audits ($1,500–$5,000)

• Prioritised 90-day roadmap, technical crawl, content gap analysis, local visibility review, and tracking fixes. (If an audit doesn’t include instrumentation guidance, it’s half a job.)

How to evaluate proposals (so you don’t get burned)

Insist on specificity

• Inputs: # of pages optimised, content pieces per month, link acquisition approach.
• Outcomes: Movement in non-brand search, local pack visibility, conversions/leads — not just “rankings.”
• Access: You own GA4, Search Console, Tag Manager, and the CMS logins.

Use page experience as a forcing function
Google’s emphasis on real-world user experience hasn’t gone away. Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaced First Input Delay as a Core Web Vital in March 2024, and mobile-first indexing is now the norm. If your site is slow or clunky on mobile, you’re fighting with one hand tied. Aim for LCP ≤ 2.5s, INP ≤ 200ms, and CLS ≤ 0.1 at the 75th percentile — then invest in content and links.

Red flags

• Guaranteed #1 rankings.
• Long lock-ins without clear deliverables.
• Proprietary “secret sauce” that hides accounts, data, or logins.
• “We’ll add more keywords for a fee” when fundamentals aren’t fixed — a pattern that’s drawn media scrutiny in Australia.

What should a Melbourne small business actually budget?

As a rule of thumb:

• Local service business: $1,200–$2,500/month for steady growth (plus a one-off audit to start).
• Competitive metro niches/eCommerce: $3,000–$6,000+/month.
• DIY with guidance: Engage a consultant for a deep audit and monthly coaching if you have internal capacity.

If that sounds high, remember SEO is a compounding asset. Unlike pure ads spend, the content and technical gains you build keep working — provided you maintain them.

Internal links

• Link “pricing expectations” to SEO Melbourne and to your “Local SEO in Melbourne” post for GBP and review tactics.

You want more of the right customers finding you — without gambling your budget. I’ll be your guide with a plain-English plan, transparent pricing, and measurable wins. See how I scope, prioritise, and report on results on my SEO Melbourne page, then book a quick call to map your first 90 days.