How AI SEO pricing works

Agencies bill AI SEO in five main ways. None is right for everyone. The model should match who does the work after the audit and whether answers get tracked over time.

A retainer suits AI visibility because the answers move. Google says clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted inside the overall Web numbers in Search Console's Performance report, so the report can't show answer-level change on its own. That has to come from testing the same prompts every month, which is ongoing work by nature. A one-off audit or project makes sense when someone else will carry the work forward.

Google's own guide to hiring an SEO says no one can guarantee a first-place ranking on Google, and it flags secret methods, claims of a special relationship with Google and link schemes as warning signs. The same checks work for AI SEO. Run every quote through the list below, and see our guide on comparing marketing proposals for the wider checks.

• Promised citationsWalk away from any promise that you'll appear in ChatGPT or AI Overviews by a set date. No agency controls what those products cite.
• Relabelled SEOAsk which line items are AI-specific. If the scope reads exactly like a normal SEO plan, you're paying for a new label on the same work.
• Mass-produced pagesAsk how many pages they plan to write and why each one is needed. Google's spam policies treat generating many pages without adding value for users as scaled content abuse, however they're made, AI tools included.
• No baselineAsk to see the prompt set and the starting results before work begins. Without a first-month baseline, later reports can't show change.
• Agency-owned accountsYour Business Profile, Search Console, Analytics and website should sit in accounts you own, with the agency added as a user.
• One-sided exit termsThe ACCC says terms that let only one party end a standard form small business contract, or penalise only one party for ending it, may be unfair, and penalties for using unfair terms have applied since 9 November 2023. Read the exit clause first.
• Google's own questionsAsk for examples of past work, whether they follow Google Search Essentials, what results they expect and on what timeline, and how they'll tell you about changes.

Say a plumbing business in Caloundra has two AI SEO quotes on the table. Quote A is one monthly figure with no setup line. Quote B has a one-off audit and setup fee, then a smaller monthly figure. Every number in this example is illustrative, not a benchmark.

Start with the work, not the totals. Lay both quotes against the setup table above. If Quote A never mentions crawler checks, page restructuring or a baseline prompt set, it either folds them into the first months or skips them, and you need to know which. Then do the break-even sum. Work out the gross margin on an average job, then divide the monthly fee by it. If, for illustration, the fee equals the margin on three hot water jobs, the work has to bring in three extra jobs a month that wouldn't have come anyway, once it's had time to work. Ask each agency how they'd show you whether that's happening.

Measure it honestly. Search Console can't split AI Overview clicks from other Google clicks, so the evidence comes from three places: the monthly prompt test, visits from AI products in Google Analytics, and calls and forms traced to their source. Our guide on measuring ChatGPT referrals shows how to set the analytics side up. A typical engagement runs in this order:

• BaselineRecord the prompt set, the AI products in scope and today's result for each prompt: cited, mentioned or absent.
• Fix accessClear blocked crawlers, index the pages that matter and correct business facts that disagree across the site and listings.
• Rework pagesRestructure the service and suburb pages that the baseline shows are missing from answers.
• Re-test and decideRun the same prompts again, compare against the baseline and choose the next pages. No one can promise when an answer will change, so the report shows what moved and what didn't.