What SEO costs in South Africa, and what you should get each month

Our SEO costs R950 a month for a business website, and R2 000 or R3 000 a month for an online store. Other providers in South Africa charge anything from a few hundred rand to many thousands, and the price tells you very little on its own. What matters is the work you can see on your site every month, so this article lists what that work should be and how to check you're getting it.

SEO (search engine optimisation) means changing your website so Google understands what you offer and shows it to people searching for it. Nobody can promise you a position. Google says so itself: its guide to hiring an SEO states that "no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google". What a provider can promise is the work.

Our SEO service page has the full detail. Here's the short version, and then the checklist.

What do our SEO plans cost?

Plan	Price	Who it's for	What you get each month
Business website	R950/mo	Service businesses, clinics, contractors	Keyword tracking, page fixes, one article, a report
Online stores: Grow	R2 000/mo	Stores on Sirat Retail OS	20 product and category pages rewritten, 2 articles
Online stores: Accelerate	R3 000/mo	Larger stores	40 pages rewritten, 4 articles, and we watch who links to the store

The business website plan is optional, and it isn't part of the price of a website we build. If you stop, free monitoring stays, so you'll still hear from us if something on the site breaks.

Why does an online store cost more?

A service business might have ten pages that matter. An online store has hundreds of product and category pages, and each one competes for its own searches. Rewriting 20 or 40 of those a month is real work that a ten-page site doesn't need. If you run a store on something other than our system, the store plans won't fit, and we'd tell you that on the call.

What should you get each month, from anyone?

Use this as a checklist for any SEO provider, including us. If you can't tick most of it after three months, ask why.

• A list of the searches they're working on. Real searches your customers type, with a rough monthly volume. "Plumber Durban North", not "brand awareness".
• Changes you can see on the site. Page titles rewritten, descriptions fixed, a new article, a broken link sent to the right page. You should be able to open the page and find the change.
• Errors fixed from Google Search Console. Search Console is Google's free tool that shows which of your pages it has trouble with. A provider should have access to yours and fix what it reports.
• Content written for a search someone actually makes. An article nobody searches for is a cost, not an asset.
• A report in plain English. What changed this month, what moved in search results, and the plan for next month. Charts are fine. Charts on their own aren't a report.
• Access stays yours. Your Search Console and analytics should be in your name, with the provider added as a user.

What should you never pay for?

Guaranteed rankings. See Google's own line above. Anyone guaranteeing first place is guessing, or is planning something Google penalises.

Bought links. Google's spam policies list "exchanging money for links" as link spam. A cheap package of hundreds of links can do lasting damage to a small site, and cleaning it up costs more than the package did.

A monthly PDF with no changes. If the report shows graphs and the site hasn't changed, you're paying for a report.

Long lock-in contracts. Our business website SEO plan can be cancelled with 30 days' notice. If a provider needs 12 months to prove anything, ask what you'll see in month two.

How long before SEO shows results?

It depends on your trade, your town and the state of the site when we start. A site with broken pages and missing titles often moves soon after the fixes. A new site competing against established businesses for a busy search takes much longer. We won't give you a number of months, because any number would be a guess.

What we can give you is a baseline. In the first month we connect Search Console and record where your pages show up today. Every report after that compares against it, so you can see what moved and what didn't, and decide for yourself whether it's worth R950 a month.

When is SEO not worth paying for?

We'd rather tell you now than take the money.

• You need calls this week. SEO builds over months. If the phone has to ring now, a small Google Ads budget is quicker. Our article on what Google Ads costs covers that.
• The website itself is the problem. If the site is slow, broken on phones or doesn't say clearly what you do, SEO work sits on a weak base. Fix the site first. Our website cost guide explains what that costs.
• Very few people search for what you do. Some trades get most of their work through referrals and a handful of searches a month. A good Google Business Profile and a clear website may be all you need.
• You won't be able to keep up with enquiries. More visitors only help if someone answers them within a day.

What questions should you ask an SEO provider?

Google's hiring guide suggests asking for examples of past work, what results they expect and how they'll measure them, and how they'll tell you about changes they make to your site. We'd add three of our own:

1. Who owns the accounts? Search Console, Google Analytics and the Google Business Profile should be in your name.
2. Will you change my site, and who approves it? You should know what goes live before it does.
3. What happens if I stop? You should keep everything that was written and published. On a site we build, the content and data are yours and exportable at any time. Our article on who owns your website goes through the rest.

Here's how we answer the questions. We work from the searches your customers make. You get a monthly report that says what we did, what moved and what we'll do next. And we reply within one working day.

Is it cheaper to do SEO yourself?

Yes, if you have the time. The basics are free: set up Search Console, write a clear title and description for every page, make sure each service has its own page, and keep your Google Business Profile current with photos and replies to reviews. Done properly, it's a few hours a month.

What a provider adds is consistency. It's easy to start strong and let it slide by month three, because the shop or clinic needs you more. If that sounds like you, a monthly plan is the cheaper option in the end.

Where do we fit?

We're a good fit for owner-run businesses in Durban and KZN on a business website plan, and for online stores anywhere in South Africa on our store system. We're not the right choice if you want someone to promise first place, or if you need a large content team producing dozens of articles a week.

If you'd like to see what we'd change first, ask for an estimate at /price or WhatsApp us on +27 73 453 8352. We'll look at your site and tell you whether SEO is worth it for you right now.