How much does SEO cost in New Zealand?
Most New Zealand businesses pay $500 to $3,500 a month for SEO, excluding GST, and a one-off audit costs $1,000 to $3,000. Below are the ranges from published NZ price lists, what moves a quote up or down, how AI search changes the scope, and exactly what I charge for SEO. I publish my prices because a buyer deserves a number before a sales call.
How much does SEO cost in NZ in 2026?
SEO in New Zealand typically costs $500 to $1,500 a month for a single-location local business, $1,500 to $3,500 a month for a competitive or national campaign, and $3,000 to $10,000 or more for large ecommerce and enterprise sites. One-off audits run $1,000 to $3,000 and senior consultants charge $100 to $250 an hour. Almost every published figure excludes GST.
| What you are buying | Typical NZ price (excl. GST) |
|---|---|
| Local SEO, one location | $500 to $1,500 a month |
| SEO for competitive or multi-location markets | $1,500 to $3,500 a month |
| National ecommerce or enterprise SEO | $3,000 to $10,000+ a month |
| AI search optimisation (GEO/AEO) | $1,000 to $3,000 a month |
| One-off SEO audit | $1,000 to $3,000 |
| Senior SEO consultant, hourly | $100 to $250 an hour |
| "SEO packages" under $300 to $500 a month | Usually automated. Treat with caution |
Ranges compiled from 28 published NZ agency price lists and pricing guides, 2025 to 2026, checked September 2026. Add 15% GST.
Check the tax line before you compare quotes. Nearly every NZ agency prices SEO excluding GST, and GST is 15%, so a $1,500 monthly retainer is $1,725 including GST. A GST-registered business can normally claim that back, so the excluding-GST figure is the one to budget against.
What each SEO budget buys
The monthly figure is really a number of hours. At $500 to $1,500 you buy enough time to keep one location's Google Business Profile, service pages and reviews in order. At $1,500 to $3,500 you buy new content every month, technical work and authority building across several services or towns. Above $3,500 you are funding national or ecommerce campaigns with heavy content and link work.
$500 to $1,500 a month: one location, local customers
For a trade or service business with one base and customers within driving distance. Each month: profile updates, review requests, a new or improved service page, citation fixes and a report on calls and enquiries. It will not win nationwide searches.
$1,500 to $3,500 a month: competitive markets and several locations
For busy categories, several services or towns, or buyers across the country. Each month: keyword research mapped to pages, new content, technical fixes, link building and reporting on enquiries.
Above $3,500 a month: national campaigns and ecommerce
For large online stores and companies competing nationally against well-funded rivals. The money goes into site architecture, content marketing at volume and digital PR. Most small and mid-sized New Zealand businesses can't make it pay back.
Content and links push any budget up: a well-researched article costs $200 to $600 in New Zealand, and link building is often priced separately. An "SEO package" is a retainer with a fixed scope, premium or basic: judge it on its monthly deliverables, not the name of the tier.
What does local SEO cost in NZ?
Local SEO for one location in New Zealand usually costs $500 to $1,500 a month, excluding GST. That covers Google Business Profile management, review generation, local citations, service and suburb pages and monthly reporting. Multi-location or metro campaigns in competitive trades run $1,500 to $3,000. Packages under about $500 rarely fund enough hours to change your map pack position.
The map pack is decided largely by your Google Business Profile, so a verified profile is the precondition. Cost then follows competition. A plumber targeting central Auckland competes with dozens of established profiles on the same search results page; one in a small provincial town may need only a one-off setup, then a few hours a quarter. What the work involves month to month is on my local SEO page.
One-off SEO audits, projects and hourly rates
A one-off SEO audit in New Zealand costs $1,000 to $3,000 for most business sites, and deep technical audits of large sites run to $6,000. Fixed-price setup projects sit between $1,200 and $5,000. Hourly SEO consultants charge $100 to $250 an hour, with senior specialists at the top of that band. An audit makes sense when someone on your side can act on the plan.
Choose an audit over a retainer when:
- you have a developer or marketer who can carry out the fixes
- you want a second opinion on work you are already paying for
- you are planning a redesign or site migration and need a checklist before launch
Hourly consulting suits advisory calls, migration planning and guiding an in-house team, not sustained content and link work. Either way, the deliverable should be a prioritised list of fixes you own, not a login to a tool.
What drives the cost of SEO
Five things set an SEO price: how competitive your search results are, how many services and locations you need to rank for, the state of your site today, how much new content and authority the gap needs, and who does the work. Two quotes for the same business can differ threefold simply because one includes content and link building and the other does not.
- Competition. How strong the businesses already ranking are.
- Scope. Services times locations times markets, overseas ones included.
- Starting point. Technical debt or a pending migration means technical SEO comes first.
- Content and links. Whether new pages and backlinks are in the fee or quoted separately.
- Who does the work. A junior under an account manager, a freelancer or a senior specialist.
Price is only meaningful against what a customer is worth to you. If a client is worth $20,000 over the relationship, a $2,000 monthly retainer that wins one extra client a quarter pays for itself. If a customer is worth $200, it never will.
How AI search changes the scope and the price
AI search optimisation, also called GEO or AEO, adds work that classic SEO quotes leave out: testing the buying questions your customers ask in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, entity and schema work, and earning mentions in the sources those systems cite. Standalone AI search programmes in NZ run about $1,000 to $3,000 a month. Built into an SEO retainer, it should not double the price.
Few NZ providers publish AI search prices yet, so treat that range as a guide. Ask what the monthly report will show: the AI assistants and buying questions tested, by name, and your mention rate over time. If it only shows Google rankings, it is SEO reporting with a new label. The foundation is schema markup and consistent entity data, because large language models need to be sure who you are.
Google showed an AI Overview on 96% of the New Zealand cost and pricing searches I tested in my NZ Google AI Overviews Study 2026, so on questions like this one buyers read the AI answer first. The work itself is on my page on AI search optimisation.
Cheap SEO: red flags in a $200 a month package
Most cheap SEO packages in New Zealand cost $50 to $400 a month, and at that price there is time for an automated report and little else. Most of the NZ pricing guides I reviewed put the floor for real work at $300 to $500 a month. Affordable is fine when the scope is honest; cheap becomes expensive when it buys spammy links you later pay to remove.
Walk away when you see:
- Guaranteed number one rankings. No one can guarantee a position in Google, and Google says so.
- A link count sold as the product. "50 links a month" usually means link farms and spamdexing, which Google ignores or penalises.
- No list of deliverables. You can't check work you can't see.
- Reports on rankings and traffic only. Never on calls, enquiries or sales.
- A long lock-in contract before you have seen any results.
- Assets you don't own. The content, the accounts or the Google Business Profile held by the agency instead of you.
A smaller, honest scope is different: one location and one core service, done properly, is a legitimate budget option.
Is SEO worth paying for in your market?
SEO is worth paying for when enough people search for what you sell and one customer is worth several months of fees. In thin markets it often is not: the median New Zealand business-to-business industry gets about 395 searches a month in total, which caps search at a handful of customers a year. Check your own ceiling before you sign anything.
The arithmetic is short. Win a fifth of those clicks, turn 1.5% of visitors into enquiries and close a quarter of them, and search delivers about 3.6 new customers a year. Doing all three better gets you to about 22, not 220. That ceiling is what your return on investment has to fit under.
The Search Ceiling Calculator is the free tool that shows the most search can deliver for your industry. If the ceiling is low, do the search work once, then move the budget into proof and direct outreach, as The Thin Market Playbook explains. Under about $500 a month, doing the basics yourself beats hiring. Is SEO still worth it in 2026? Where there is enough demand, yes: AI assistants draw on the pages that already perform well in search.
What I charge
I publish my prices. Local SEO starts at $1,200 a month, an SEO retainer that covers Google and AI search starts at $2,500 a month, standalone AI search optimisation starts at $2,000 a month, a full SEO and AI search audit is $2,500 one-off, and advisory time is $200 an hour. All prices are in NZD, excluding GST, with no lock-in contracts.
| Service | Price excl. GST | Incl. GST (15%) | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free AI Visibility Audit | $0 | $0 | Where you appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews today, which competitors get named instead, and your Google positions for revenue keywords |
| SEO and AI search audit (one-off) | $2,500 | $2,875 | Technical, content, entity and schema audit across Google and AI search, a competitor gap analysis and a prioritised 12-month plan you own |
| Local SEO (one location) | from $1,200 a month | from $1,380 a month | Google Business Profile, reviews, citations, service and area pages, and monthly reporting on calls and enquiries |
| SEO retainer, Google and AI search | from $2,500 a month (most $2,500 to $4,500) | from $2,875 a month | Technical SEO, content, on-page, authority building and AI visibility tracking; multi-location, national or overseas markets at the upper end |
| AI search optimisation (GEO/AEO) only | from $2,000 a month | from $2,300 a month | AI visibility baseline and tracking, entity and schema foundation, answer-ready content and citation building |
| Advisory and consulting | $200 an hour | $230 an hour | Strategy calls, migration planning, second opinions and in-house team guidance |
Prices are in NZD excluding GST for New Zealand clients. Overseas clients can be billed in USD, with no GST. Retainers are month to month, with no lock-in contract. If your search ceiling is too low for a retainer to pay back, I will say so.
I do the work myself. I have run search campaigns since 2006, for corporate, local and international clients, so every hour on your account is senior time rather than a junior working under an account manager. That is why my prices sit in the upper half of the New Zealand range and why I will tell you when a smaller budget, or no SEO at all, is the better call.
See what an SEO retainer includes month to month, and my background. I work with businesses NZ-wide and in the UK, Canada and the US.
Start with the free AI Visibility Audit: it shows where you stand in Google and AI search before you spend anything.
SEO cost questions
How much should I expect to pay for SEO?
Expect to pay $500 to $1,500 a month for local SEO and $1,500 to $3,500 a month for a competitive or national campaign in New Zealand, excluding GST. Large ecommerce sites spend more. The right figure depends on how much content and authority work separates you from the businesses already ranking, and on what one new customer is worth to you. Quotes without a list of monthly deliverables are hard to compare.
How much should I pay for local SEO?
For one location, $500 to $1,500 a month excluding GST buys genuine local SEO in New Zealand: Google Business Profile work, reviews, citations and local pages. A low-competition town can sit at the bottom of that range or need only a one-off setup. Competitive metro trades and multi-location businesses usually need $1,500 or more. Below about $500 a month there is rarely enough time for real work.
How much does it cost to hire an SEO consultant?
SEO consultants in New Zealand charge $100 to $250 an hour, or $1,000 to $2,500 a month for ongoing advice, based on published NZ rates. Senior specialists sit at the top of the band. Hourly work suits strategy, audits, migrations and guiding an in-house team. If you need content written and links earned every month, a retainer is better value than paying by the hour.
How much does an SEO audit cost?
A one-off SEO audit for a typical New Zealand business site costs $1,000 to $3,000 excluding GST, and large or complex sites can run to $6,000. A good audit ends with a prioritised list of fixes you own and could hand to anyone. Mine is $2,500 and covers AI search as well as Google. The free AI Visibility Audit is a shorter first look.
How much does AI SEO cost?
AI SEO, also called AI search optimisation, GEO or AEO, costs about $1,000 to $3,000 a month in New Zealand as a standalone programme, and audits run from a few hundred dollars to $3,500. Few NZ providers publish these prices yet. When AI search work is built into an SEO retainer, most of the foundations are shared, so it should add scope, not double the bill.
Is cheap SEO worth it?
Rarely. At $50 to $400 a month there is only time for automated reports and bulk links, and bad links can cost more to clean up than proper SEO would have cost. A small honest scope is a different thing: one location and one service done properly can be affordable. If your budget is under about $500 a month, doing the basics yourself is usually the better use of it.
Can I do SEO on my own?
Yes, for the basics. You can claim and complete your Google Business Profile, ask every customer for a review, fix page titles, and write one clear page per service using Google Search Console to see what people search. That covers a lot of a small local business's needs. Hire help when competitors outrank you on content and links, or when the time you spend costs more than the fee.
Do you work with overseas clients, and in what currency?
Yes. Alongside New Zealand clients I work with businesses in the UK, Canada and the US, delivered remotely with the same process and reporting. The prices on this page are in NZD excluding GST for New Zealand clients. Overseas clients can be billed in USD, with no GST added. The scope of the work and the month to month terms are the same wherever you are.
Is SEO still worth it in 2026?
Yes, where there is enough search demand. Search engines still decide which pages AI answers are built from, and AI assistants draw on the pages that already perform well in search. The question is whether your market is big enough to pay back the fee, which the Search Ceiling Calculator answers in a minute. The wider case is in is SEO still worth it in 2026.
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