How much does ecommerce SEO cost?

The short version: three cost layers

Between $43 and $8,000 a month, and that range is honest rather than evasive. The cost of ecommerce SEO depends on who does the work. There are three layers: you with a tool stack, a freelancer or consultant, or an agency retainer. Each has published prices, and this page quotes only the ones I could verify.

The people searching for this are mostly comparing quotes. "ecommerce seo packages" draws 110 US searches a month and "ecommerce seo services" 1,300, at a $123.78 cost per click (DataForSEO, US, September 2026). That CPC is what agencies pay to reach you, which is worth remembering when you read their numbers.

Layer 1: do it yourself with a tool stack

The tool layer is the cheapest and the most often overstated. These are the prices for the tools a store actually needs, read on the vendors' pricing pages in September 2026:

• CrawlRaven. A free plan for one site, no card. Lifetime licences launched at $49 for three sites. Lifetime pricing steps up as licenses sell, so check the pricing page for the current batch.
• Ahrefs. Starter at $29 a month, Lite at $129.
• Semrush. The SEO plan at $139 a month, or $117.33 a month billed annually.
• A Shopify SEO app. Cheapest paid tiers run $9 to $59 a month. Details in the next section.

A realistic stack is one keyword tool and one app. Ahrefs Lite at $129 plus TinySEO at $14 is $143 a month, or $1,716 a year, plus a one-time CrawlRaven licence. Swap Lite for Starter and it is $43 a month. Nobody needs Ahrefs and Semrush both.

Our answer on what SEO tools cost covers the wider market. The catch with layer 1 is not the price. It is that tools find problems and someone still has to fix them, which is where the next two layers come in.

What Shopify SEO costs

Shopify SEO costs the same as ecommerce SEO plus an app or two. In our roundup of the best Shopify SEO apps, checked on the Shopify App Store in September 2026, the cheapest paid tiers run $9 (SEO Manager) to $59 (Hyperspeed) a month. Year one at monthly billing is $108 to $708.

JSON-LD for SEO is $399 a year, annual only. TinySEO starts at $14 a month and Smart SEO at $14.99. Most stores need one app, and a store that needs all of them has a theme problem. The Shopify SEO checklist covers what to fix by hand before you pay for anything.

Layer 2: a freelancer or consultant

Freelancer and consultant rates come from surveys, not price lists, so treat them as a band. Three sources publish their numbers:

• Ahrefs polled 439 SEO service providers (updated August 2024). The average hourly rate was $111, and the most common band was $100 to $150 an hour, charged by 25%. Freelancers averaged $1,348 a month and consultants $3,250.
• Backlinko surveyed over 300 SEO professionals (updated December 2025). Hourly rates ran $50 to $100 for most, and the average monthly cost was $1,000 to $2,500.
• WebFX's pricing page (September 2026) puts consulting at $75 to $200 an hour and a freelancer at about $1,400 a month.

Ecommerce work sits at the top of those bands, because collection pages, faceted URLs and product feeds are specialist territory. Go Fish Digital's ecommerce pricing guide (December 2024) puts it at $75 to $200 an hour. Hire a consultant when you have a developer and a writer but no one setting priorities.

Layer 3: an agency retainer

Most agencies say "custom". I looked for ecommerce agencies that publish numbers and found few. Here is what is public, read in September 2026:

• 1Digital Agency publishes every tier: ecommerce SEO retainers from $899 to $5,999 a month (Launch $899, Essential $1,599, Pro $2,499, Plus $3,299, Premium $4,499), and $185 an hour for out-of-scope work.
• WebFX's ecommerce SEO page states $750 to $8,000 a month for small and mid-sized businesses. Its general pricing page puts retainers at $1,000 to $5,000.
• Thrive publishes no ecommerce price. Its proposal form's lowest budget bracket is $2,500 to $5,000 a month, and its SEO pricing page says $500 to $10,000 or more.
• Agency guides that rank for this question. NewMedia (August 2026) says $2,500 to $8,000 a month for standard stores. SeoProfy (May 2026) says retainers start around $1,000 and pass $15,000.

For scale, the SaaS market is more transparent. In our roundup of SaaS SEO agencies (July 2026), credible specialists clustered at $5,000 to $15,000 a month. MADX Digital now publishes $3,500, $5,500 and $9,500 a month on a 12-month term (September 2026). Ecommerce retainers start lower and top out in the same place.

An agency makes sense above roughly 1,000 products, when the crawl problems need a developer and the content needs a team. Before you sign, read what a professional SEO audit costs, because the audit is where most retainers start.

What a store actually needs, by catalogue size

Catalogue size decides the cost more than anything else, because it decides whether your problem is content or crawl. Match the layer to the store:

• Under 100 products. Layer 1. The platform defaults are a day of work and the rest is collection copy and buying guides. Budget tools plus your own time, or a writer by the piece.
• 100 to 1,000 products. Layer 1 plus a consultant for one audit and a quarterly review. Duplicate URLs, thin collections and filter pages start to matter here.
• 1,000 to 10,000 products. Layer 2 on retainer, or a small agency. Crawl budget, faceted navigation and feed quality need a developer's time every month.
• Over 10,000 products. Layer 3 or an in-house team. This is enterprise SEO, and our enterprise SEO audit guide explains why the checks change at that size.

That maps to our ecommerce SEO checklist, which runs from platform defaults to internal links in that order. If you dropship, read whether SEO works for dropshipping stores before you spend anything.

Where the money actually goes

Most of the cost is content and developer time, not tools. The arithmetic makes the point:

• Tools: $43 to $143 a month for the stack above.
• Consultant time: 10 hours a month at the Ahrefs survey average of $111 is $1,110.
• Agency execution: 20 hours of collection copy at 1Digital's published $185 an hour is $3,700.

Tools are under 10% of even a modest budget. That is why the useful question is not how much ecommerce SEO costs but what the paid hours should go on first. A ranked list of fixes is worth more than a cheaper retainer.

Check what you are paying for

If you are already paying someone, check what the money bought. With the CrawlRaven MCP server connected, ask for the pages that moved. Replace the bracketed store with your own:

Using CrawlRaven for [your store]: compare the last 90 days with the previous 90. List the collection pages that gained the most clicks and the ones that lost the most, with their top queries. Then tell me which of my open technical issues touch the losing pages.

CrawlRaven joins Search Console, GA4 and a 200-point crawl into one ranked plan, so the hours you buy go on the fixes that move clicks. The free plan covers one store, no card. Lifetime licences launched at $49 for three sites. Lifetime pricing steps up as licenses sell, so check the pricing page for the current batch.