Pricing is where SEO resellers make or lose money. Price too low and you can’t afford good fulfillment or proper client service. Price too high without positioning and you can’t close deals. Here’s a practical framework.
Step 1: Know your true cost per client
Your cost isn’t just the wholesale price. Include:
- Wholesale fulfillment (e.g. $799/month)
- Your account management time (calls, emails, reports): often 2–4 hours per month
- Sales and marketing cost to acquire the client, spread over the expected lifetime
- Payment processing and software
If an hour of your time is worth $75 and you spend 3 hours per client per month, your real monthly cost on a $799 plan is about $1,024.
Step 2: Choose a pricing model
| Model | How it works | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | Fixed monthly fee for an ongoing SEO program | Most SEO clients; recurring revenue |
| Tiered packages | 2–3 retainers at different scope levels | Making the choice easy for the client |
| Project fee | One-off price for an audit, migration or content batch | Pre-sale audits, redesigns, fixed deliverables |
| Performance-based | Fees tied to rankings or leads | Rarely recommended; hard to measure fairly |
| Hourly | Billed per hour | Consulting only; poor fit for reselling |
For reselling, tiered monthly retainers plus optional project fees is the most reliable combination.
Step 3: Apply a markup
The standard is 2–3× wholesale:
| Wholesale | 2× | 2.5× | 3× |
|---|---|---|---|
| $399 | $798 | $998 | $1,197 |
| $799 | $1,598 | $1,998 | $2,397 |
| $1,499 | $2,998 | $3,748 | $4,497 |
Move toward 3× when you serve a high-value niche (legal, medical, high-ticket home services), include strategy calls, or bundle reporting across several services. Stay nearer 2× when you’re entering a price-sensitive market or bundling SEO into a larger retainer.
Step 4: Price by value and competition
Two clients on the same wholesale plan may deserve different prices. Ask:
- What’s a new customer worth to them? A roofer’s average job may be $12,000. A coffee shop’s average sale is $8.
- How competitive is their market? More competition means more work and a longer runway.
- How much are they paying for ads? If they spend $5,000 a month on Google Ads, $1,800 a month for SEO is easy to justify.
Step 5: Build your packages
A simple, effective structure:
- Foundation: for single-location local businesses. Business Profile, citations, on-page basics, light content, monthly report.
- Growth (anchor package): the plan you expect most clients to choose. More content, links and technical work.
- Market leader: for competitive or multi-location clients. Maximum content and links, AI search optimization, strategy calls.
Name packages by outcome, list results before deliverables, and make the middle package the obvious choice.
Step 6: Present pricing confidently
- Lead with the audit. Show the problem before the price. A branded audit makes the gaps concrete.
- Anchor to value. “Two extra jobs a month covers this investment.”
- Set minimum terms carefully. Many agencies ask for a 3–6 month initial commitment because SEO takes time to work, even if their partner is month-to-month.
- Don’t discount the retainer. Offer a reduced setup fee or extra deliverables instead.
Step 7: Review pricing twice a year
Raise prices for new clients as your results, case studies and niche authority grow. Review existing clients at renewal, especially when scope has grown.
Pricing mistakes to avoid
- Pricing to beat the cheapest competitor
- Charging the same price for every market and industry
- Ignoring your own time in the cost
- Promising results tied to specific rankings
- Under-pricing to win the first few clients, then struggling to raise prices later
Get our wholesale and suggested retail price list
Our reseller pricing sheet includes wholesale rates, suggested retail prices and margin examples for every plan and service. Or see current pricing.