How Much Do Ecommerce SEO and AI Search Services Cost?

SEO retainers in published surveys run from about $250 to $10,000 a month, and none of those surveys covers ecommerce on its own. The low end describes small providers working for small sites, not the scope a $5 million to $100 million store usually needs.

No survey prices ecommerce SEO on its own. What exists are surveys of SEO providers in general, directory data, and a few signals about how brands are budgeting for AI search. This guide sets out what they show as of 22 October 2026, what drives the price, and how to compare quotes. It does not include CB/I's own prices, which are set after scoping each brand.

How much does ecommerce SEO cost?

General SEO surveys put a typical retainer at $500 to $2,500 a month, with providers in the US and Canada charging more, and no survey prices ecommerce SEO on its own.

Caveats change how these numbers read. The Ahrefs survey is several years old, and its averages use the top of each price band, so they run high. SE Ranking's own author notes its sample may not be statistically significant. Both surveys skew toward small agencies and include markets where prices are far lower than in the US.

Geography and experience move prices most in the data. In the Ahrefs survey, 79.1% of providers in the US and Canada charged more than $1,000 a month, against about a quarter of providers in India. In SE Ranking's survey, 22% of US and Canadian agencies charged over $2,000 a month, compared with 9% in Europe. Backlinko's survey of more than 300 SEO professionals, whose method is unpublished, found 34% of providers in the US, UK and Australia charging $2,501 to $5,000 a month and 19% charging more.

Pricing models compared

Most SEO providers sell monthly retainers, and many also offer projects or hourly work.

In the Ahrefs survey, 78.2% of providers used retainers, 48.9% charged per project and 34.8% billed hourly, so many use more than one model.

What drives the price for an online store

The surveys can only show the drivers they measured, which are provider type, experience and location. Agencies and consultants charged more than freelancers, and providers with five to ten years of experience charged more than twice as much as those with two years or less.

For an online store, other factors usually set the scope, though no survey measures them.

• Catalog size. A store with thousands of products needs templated fixes, feed work and category structure that a ten-page site does not.
• Technical debt. Duplicate URLs from filters, slow themes and broken redirects after a migration take time before any growth work starts.
• Content volume. Category copy, buying guides and product descriptions are written and maintained, and cost scales with how many are needed.
• Outside mentions. Earning reviews, press and links costs time or money. An older Ahrefs outreach study found only 12.6% of sites were willing to sell a link at all, and Google's spam policies prohibit paid links that pass ranking credit, so the cost that matters is earning coverage.

Ask any provider how catalog size changed its quote.

How much do GEO and AI search services cost?

There is no survey of what agencies charge for generative engine optimization or AI search work, so prices vary widely and depend on what each provider includes.

A German agency that compared published GEO prices in July 2026 found a factor of thirty between the lowest and highest figures. One GEO agency that publishes its prices lists retainers from about €7,000 to over €16,000 a month, a vendor price list rather than a market rate. Budgets are moving toward the work all the same. Digiday reported a Scribewise survey in which 55% of marketers said they had budget set aside for GEO, and 70% of those said GEO takes 11% to 20% of their budget, without saying whether that means marketing or search.

For a store, AI search work usually extends SEO rather than replacing it, adding product feed work, monitoring of answers in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity, and outreach to the sites those answers cite. Ask a provider to show which tasks are new and which are existing SEO under a new name.

Tracking tools are the part with public prices. Otterly lists plans from $29 to $489 a month, and Semrush's AI toolkit costs $99 a month for one project, both as of 22 October 2026. Enterprise trackers such as Profound do not publish prices. Check current pricing before budgeting, since these change often.

How to compare SEO quotes

Compare quotes on scope, people and measurement before price.

1. Ask for the work in hours or deliverables per month, broken into technical, content, product data, outreach and reporting.
2. Ask who does the work and how senior they are, since experience was among the strongest price factors in the surveys.
3. Ask how results are measured. Organic revenue, orders and AI referrals are better than rankings alone.
4. Ask what happens in the first 90 days, and whether the quote includes implementing what the audit finds.
5. Ask whether AI search work is included, and what it adds beyond standard SEO.

The in-house alternative is a useful check on any quote. Robert Half projects a mid-level US SEO specialist salary at $78,500 for 2027, before benefits, for one person covering one discipline. Agency or in-house for DTC growth marketing works through that trade-off, and how to choose an ecommerce marketing agency lists the questions to ask before signing.

Frequently asked questions

Why do SEO quotes vary so much?

Quotes cover different work. Location, seniority and scope drive most of the gap in published surveys, and catalog size and technical debt add more for online stores.

Is cheap SEO worth it for an online store?

It can work for a small catalog. For a store with thousands of products, a low retainer rarely covers technical fixes, feed work and content at the same time.

Should AI search be priced separately from SEO?

Only the work that is new, such as feed optimization for AI channels, AI answer monitoring and outreach to cited sources. Much of what helps AI visibility is standard SEO.