How much does an SEO audit cost?

The same two words, "SEO audit", are used for a free report generated in thirty seconds and for a three-month project by a team of specialists, which is why quoted prices look so wildly different. The useful question is not what an audit costs but what you get for the money, and whether it will tell you what to do next. This page sets out the broad market ranges, what moves them, and how to judge an audit before you buy it.

What does an SEO audit typically cost?

These are broad, rough ranges for the UK, US, Europe and the Gulf, drawn from how audits are commonly priced rather than from any survey. Prices vary widely between providers and markets, so treat them as orientation, not quotes.

Price and usefulness are only loosely related. A short audit from someone who has looked hard at your business can be worth more than a hundred-page report nobody can act on.

What moves the price?

• Size of the site. A ten-page service business site and a store with five thousand products are different jobs. Large sites need crawling tools, sampling and much more analysis time.
• Scope. A technical-only audit, which checks whether Google can crawl, index and load your pages, costs less than one that also covers rankings, content, competitors, your Business Profile, conversion, ads or AI search.
• Who does it. A senior specialist who does the work personally costs more per hour than a junior analyst following a checklist, but usually needs fewer hours and reaches better conclusions.
• The deliverable. A spreadsheet of findings is cheaper than a prioritised plan with costs and a walkthrough. The plan is what you actually use.
• Whether fixes are included. Most audits diagnose only. Some include a set amount of implementation, which raises the price accordingly.
• Complexity. Several languages or countries, a recent website move, or a past penalty all add time.

What should a good audit include?

For an established service business, a useful audit answers the question you are actually asking, which is why you are not getting more enquiries from Google. That means it should cover:

1. Your most valuable searches. A short list of the searches that bring paying customers, where you rank for each, and who ranks above you.
2. Indexing and technical health. Whether Google can find, read and index your important pages, checked in Google Search Console rather than guessed from a tool.
3. Your Business Profile, if you serve customers in person: verification, categories, reviews and consistency with your other listings.
4. Competitors. What the businesses beating you have that you do not, page by page.
5. Conversion. Why visitors who arrive do not get in touch: clarity, proof, prices, speed and the contact route on a phone.
6. AI search. Increasingly, whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews name you when buyers ask. The guide to AI visibility audits explains what that part should check.
7. A ranked list of fixes, most valuable first, with rough effort for each, and a conversation to walk you through it.

What does a poor audit look like?

• Hundreds of warnings, no priorities. Tools flag every missing image description and long title equally. An audit that passes them on unfiltered has not done the hard part.
• A score out of 100. Scores from SEO tools are the tool maker's own invention. Google does not score your site that way.
• No mention of your actual searches. If the audit never names the searches your customers use, it is about websites in general, not your business.
• Nothing about enquiries. Rankings and traffic are means. An audit that never looks at whether visitors get in touch has skipped the stage where most money is lost.
• Every fix leads to the provider's monthly package. Some overlap is natural; a plan that only works if you hire them is a sales document.

Are free SEO audits worth anything?

Automated reports can catch genuine problems, such as broken links, missing titles or very slow pages, and running one costs you nothing. Their limits are judgement and context: they cannot tell which of fifty warnings is costing you enquiries, and they know nothing about your market or your competitors.

Free audits offered by agencies are usually sales tools, which is not a crime, but read them knowing that their job is to lead to a contract. If one tells you your site is in crisis, ask which specific problem is costing you enquiries and how they know.

Can you audit your own site for free?

You can do the first pass yourself in an afternoon, and it will make any paid audit better value because you will know what to ask.

1. Set up Google Search Console and read the Page indexing, Performance and Manual actions reports. The Search Console guide for business owners shows where each one is and what it means.
2. Check your Core Web Vitals report for slow or unstable pages; Core Web Vitals explained translates the scores.
3. Search your ten most valuable searches and note who appears above you, then compare yourself with them using the checklist in why your competitors rank above you.
4. Open your main pages on a phone and ask whether a stranger would know within seconds what you do, where, and how to get in touch.

If that leaves you with clear problems and the time to fix them, you may not need a paid audit at all. The guide to getting enquiries from Google shows how to put the findings in order.

What should you ask before you pay?

• Who will actually do the audit, and how senior are they?
• Which of my searches and competitors will you look at?
• Will you use my Search Console data, or only outside tools?
• What exactly will I receive, and will someone walk me through it?
• Will the list of fixes be ranked by value, and can I give it to someone else to implement?
• Is the price fixed, and when will it be delivered?

A provider who answers these plainly is likely to deliver something useful. Questions to ask an SEO agency covers the wider conversation if the audit is the start of a longer engagement, and how long SEO takes helps you judge whether the timeline in their proposal is honest.

What does the M/AFZAL Visibility Audit cost?

For comparison with the ranges above, M/AFZAL's Visibility Audit is $700, fixed, delivered in 7 working days. It covers your Google rankings for your 10 most valuable searches, what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews say about you, a review of why your website loses visitors, a review of your current ads, and a comparison with your two closest competitors. It ends with a 45-minute walkthrough and a ranked list of fixes that you keep, whether or not you hire anyone to carry them out. It does not include the fixes themselves; those are quoted separately, and the other published prices show what they cost.