How much does SEO cost in Ireland? Actual numbers, not "it depends".
Short answer: a one-off technical audit runs €450 to €3,000. Monthly retainers run €250 to €900 for packaged plans and €800 to €2,500 for full-service local SEO. Hourly consultancy runs €50 to €300. A single-location Dublin business with normal competition should budget €800 to €1,800 a month for a real retainer — or a few hundred, once, for an audit it then acts on itself.
The three ways SEO is sold in Ireland
1. One-off audit: €450 to €3,000
You pay once and get a document. Nothing recurs. This is the cheapest way to find out whether you have a problem worth spending money on, and it's the only purchase in SEO where you can judge the value before committing to anything else.
At the low end you get a technical review of a small site. At €2,000 and up you should expect content and competitor analysis, keyword mapping and implementation support, usually for a larger or e-commerce site. Some Irish providers offer a free initial snapshot to scope the job — worth taking, because it costs you nothing but an email.
2. Monthly retainer: €250 to €2,500+
Ongoing work with an agreed scope. This is how most Irish SEO is bought, and where most of the money is wasted, because the scope is often vague and the results are slow enough that nobody notices for six months.
Packaged plans start around €250 to €300 a month and are usually local-focused: Google Business Profile management, citations, a monthly report. Full-service retainers start around €800 and should include technical work, content and links. Competitive Dublin campaigns and multi-location businesses run €1,500 to €3,500 and up.
3. Hourly consultancy: €50 to €300
You buy someone's time and direct it yourself. Sensible if you have an in-house marketer or developer who can execute and just needs someone who knows what to execute. Expensive and frustrating if you were hoping to hand the whole thing over.
What you should actually get for the money
The useful question isn't "what does SEO cost", it's "what am I buying at this price". Roughly:
€250 to €450 a month
Two to four hours of attention. Realistically: Google Business Profile management and posts, ten to thirty local citations, review response templates, a monthly report, and a small amount of on-page work. This works for a local business in a low-competition town whose website is already technically sound. It will not fix a technical problem.
€500 to €900 a month
Add keyword tracking across ten to thirty terms, monthly on-page optimisation of a handful of pages, a technical review each month, one or two articles, and some link acquisition. This is the band where a genuine strategy becomes possible for a single-location business.
€1,000 to €2,500 a month
Senior-level attention: ongoing technical work, a real content programme, digital PR or link building, conversion work, and someone accountable for a number rather than a task list. Appropriate for competitive Dublin verticals — solicitors, dentists, estate agents, trades in the city — and for anyone with national ambitions.
Above €2,500 a month
National campaigns, e-commerce with large catalogues, or multi-location businesses where each location needs its own work. If you're a single-location small business being quoted this, ask what specifically justifies it.
What drives the price up
- Competition in your vertical and county. "Solicitor Dublin 2" is a knife fight. "Farrier Leitrim" is not. The same work costs the same to do but takes far longer to pay off in the first case, so the retainer runs longer.
- How many locations you have. Each real location needs its own page, its own profile and its own citations. Multi-location pricing isn't a markup, it's more work.
- The state of the site you're starting from. A clean, fast WordPress site needs less remedial work than a five-year-old page-builder site with three SEO plugins fighting each other.
- Whether content is included. Writing is the most expensive line item in most retainers. A plan that includes four articles a month costs meaningfully more than one that includes none, and the "cheap" plan is not cheaper per unit of work.
- E-commerce. Product schema, faceted navigation, thousands of URLs and seasonal pricing all add real technical scope.
Red flags when you're comparing quotes
- A guaranteed number-one ranking. Not purchasable. Anyone offering it is either lying or planning to rank you for a phrase nobody searches.
- A twelve-month lock-in. SEO does take months, which is exactly why a good provider doesn't need to trap you. Thirty-day rolling is normal in Ireland now; treat a year-long contract as a question to ask, not a given.
- No named human. If you can't find out who will actually do the work and what they've done before, you're buying a process, not expertise.
- Deliverables measured in effort. "Ten backlinks a month" and "four blog posts" describe activity, not outcome. Ask what number is supposed to move, and by when.
- Reporting that only shows rankings. Rankings are a means. Enquiries, calls and revenue are the point. A report with no business metric in it is a report designed to look good.
- A retainer proposed before anyone looked at your site. The single clearest signal you're buying a template.
Where I sit, and where I don't
I don't sell monthly SEO. I sell one thing in this area: a €450 fixed-price Technical SEO & Get Found Audit, plus a free 5-point check so you can find out whether it's even worth buying. You then fix it yourself, give it to your developer, or ask me to do the fixing as a separate job.
That's a deliberately narrow offer. It suits you if you suspect something technical is wrong and you want a straight answer for a known price. It doesn't suit you if you want someone running search marketing every month — for that, my partner Denote does retainers and I'll happily introduce you.
The related number most people ask next is what it costs to keep a site running at all: see website maintenance costs in Ireland.
Questions about SEO pricing
Is a cheap €250 per month package worth it?
Sometimes, if you know what you're buying: two to four hours of attention, which covers Google Business Profile work and citations. The failure mode is paying it for a year while an unfixed indexing problem makes every one of those hours pointless. Spend €450 once to establish that first.
Should I buy an audit or a retainer first?
Audit, almost always. A retainer that starts before anyone knows why you're invisible spends its first three months guessing, on your money.
Why do the prices vary so much?
Because "SEO" covers different products. A €250 plan and a €1,500 retainer are not the same service at different quality levels; they're different amounts of work. Neither label tells you which you're looking at, so ask for hours and deliverables.
Is there VAT on SEO services in Ireland?
Generally yes, at the standard rate, where the supplier is VAT-registered. Many published prices exclude it, so check before comparing two quotes. If your business is VAT-registered you can usually reclaim it.
How long before SEO pays for itself?
Technical fixes can show within days. Competitive rankings take three to six months, sometimes longer. Budget for at least six months of any retainer before judging it, and insist on a baseline measurement on day one so there's something to judge against.
Can I do SEO myself?
The basics, yes, and you should. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile, ask customers for reviews, make sure every page says what you do and where, and keep the site fast. That's most of local SEO for a small business. The part worth paying for is finding the technical reason none of it is working.
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