SEO and AEO at Every Budget: What It Costs and What Actually Works

Every client eventually asks the same question.

“How do we come up higher on Google?”

And almost every answer they’ve gotten before mine has been some version of “hire us and we’ll handle it.” Which is fine if you have the budget for it. Most small businesses don’t — or they do, but they don’t know if what they’re being sold is worth the spend.

So here’s the honest version.

SEO isn’t one thing you buy. It’s a stack of work across technical health, content, local presence, and authority building, and what makes sense for your business depends almost entirely on what you can afford to put into it. Throwing money at the wrong layer is how most small businesses burn their SEO budgets with nothing to show for it.

And then there’s AI

The other thing that’s changed — and changed fast — is that people aren’t just finding businesses on Google anymore. They’re asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s own AI overviews for recommendations. That’s AEO: Answer Engine Optimization. Or AI search. Or whatever the industry decides to call it next year.

SEO and AEO aren’t opposites. They’re two sides of the same coin. Most of the work that helps you rank on Google also helps you get cited by AI — clean structure, fast load times, real content, clear answers to real questions. But the emphasis shifts.

A couple of things worth knowing about AI search, because they change how you spend:

Long-tail questions matter more than short keywords. Nobody types “best CPA Richmond VA” into ChatGPT. They type “I’m a freelance designer making about $80K and I’ve been doing my own taxes but I think I’m leaving money on the table — what kind of accountant should I be looking for and what should I ask?” The AI doesn’t surface ten results. It surfaces two or three, and it picks them based on which businesses have published content that genuinely answers that specific, detailed question.

The traffic that comes through AI is further down the funnel. Someone who clicks your link from a Google result might be in pure research mode. Someone who clicks your link after asking an LLM a detailed question has already spent twenty minutes getting personalized recommendations based on their exact situation. They’re not browsing. They’re vetting.

That’s a different kind of visitor, and it’s often a better one. Fewer visitors, but they convert harder. HubSpot recently shared on their podcast that this shift is already showing up in their own numbers:

“The people who come to us from AI search directly become customers at like 3 to 5x rate, but they also become customers at an order of magnitude faster because they’ve done their whole research and consideration process with that AI search.”

— Kipp Bodnar, CMO, HubSpot

If you want to get a sense of how your business is currently showing up in AI search, HubSpot has AEO tools on a free trial that’s worth running — just to see the landscape.

So when you see me mention AI search throughout this post, that’s why. The work overlaps with SEO, but the payoff curve is different.

Before you spend a dollar on any of it

One more reality check before we get to budgets.

SEO and AEO both sit on top of your website. If the foundation is slow, broken, or built on a bloated page builder that makes every page take four seconds to load, no amount of spend is going to fix that. You’re pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it.

Which is why every one of the tiers below starts the same way.

Step Zero: The foundation (one-time)

Before any ongoing SEO or AEO work is worth paying for, the site itself has to be in shape. This is the single biggest lever most small businesses have never pulled, and it’s the one that makes everything else you do later actually work.

A foundation engagement covers the stuff that’s either right or wrong — no amount of monthly retainer is going to slowly fix a broken title tag strategy or a homepage that fails Core Web Vitals. We fix it once, we fix it properly, and then the ongoing work has something to compound on top of.

Here’s what a typical foundation pass looks like:

Technical performance. Core Web Vitals, mobile performance, page speed, image optimization, script loading. All the stuff Google uses to decide whether your site is worth sending people to — and all the stuff LLMs are increasingly using to decide whether your content is worth crawling in the first place.

Site structure and internal linking. Making sure your pages are organized around what people search for, not your internal org chart. Internal links pointing the right places. Navigation that makes sense to both humans and crawlers.

Title tags, meta descriptions, and heading hierarchy. Every page on your site, reviewed and rewritten. This is tedious work and nobody does it well — which is exactly why it’s such a high-leverage fix.

Schema markup. This one’s become enormous for AEO. Schema tells search engines and AI systems what your content actually is — a service, a location, an FAQ, a person, a review. Without it, they have to guess. With it, they get cited.

Semantic HTML and accessibility. Machines read your site better when it’s built the way it’s supposed to be built. Accessibility work and AI-readability work aren’t two different things — they’re the same work with two different benefits.

Content audit. Which of your pages are thin? Which are redundant? Which are missing entirely for the things your customers actually search for? We identify what’s worth keeping, what needs rewriting, and what should be created.

Indexability and crawlability. No accidental “noindex” tags, no robots.txt blocking the wrong things, no canonical issues, no orphan pages that Google can’t find.

Rough investment: $3,500–$7,500 one-time, depending on site size and how much rewriting needs to happen. Usually bundled into a larger project if we’re also rebuilding the site, or run as a standalone engagement on sites that are structurally sound but haven’t been optimized.

This is the part that most agencies skip and most clients don’t know to ask for. It’s also the part that makes every dollar you spend after it work harder.

Tier 1: $250–500/month (DIY with guidance)

You’ve done the foundation. Now you need to keep momentum going, but you don’t have the budget to hire it out.

At this tier, I work more as a coach than a vendor. Monthly check-ins, a clear list of what to do next, and someone to tell you whether the thing you’re about to do is worth your time or not.

Here’s what you’d be doing with your time:

• Claiming and optimizing your Google Business Profile. For a local business this is the single highest-leverage free move you can make.
• Asking for reviews. Every happy client, every time.
• Writing one genuinely useful page a month. Not a blog post for the sake of a blog post — a real page that answers a real question your customers ask.
• Posting to your GBP regularly.
• Doing basic internal linking as you add new content.

What you’d get from me: a monthly call, a running list of priorities, and feedback on what you’re producing. The work is still yours; the direction is mine.

What to expect: Slow, steady progress. Over a year you’ll build out meaningful content, improve your local presence, and start showing up for long-tail searches that matter. You’re not going to dominate your market at this tier, but you also aren’t going to burn money waiting for someone else to save you.

Tier 2: $750–1,500/month (Modest monthly, real momentum)

You want someone to actually be doing the work, not just telling you what to do. At this tier, you can afford that — for a narrow slice of it.

Here’s what’s on the table each month:

• One to two real pages of content. Researched, written, and optimized for both search and AI citation. “Real” means 1,000+ words that actually answer a question, not SEO fluff designed to hit a keyword and call it a day.
• Ongoing GBP management. Regular posts, photo updates, Q&A responses, monitoring for category drift.
• Review strategy. Systems for getting reviews consistently, responding to them, and surfacing them on your site.
• Light tracking and reporting. Monthly check on what’s ranking, what’s not, where traffic is coming from, and which pages are starting to get cited.
• Minor on-page updates as new content creates opportunities for internal linking.

What to expect: Within six to twelve months, measurable progress on organic visibility and a content library that keeps producing leads long after we stopped writing any particular page. This is the tier where most small businesses start seeing SEO stop feeling theoretical.

Tier 3: $2,000–3,500/month (Proper ongoing work)

This is where you stop picking single lanes and start running a real SEO and AEO program.

• More content, and more strategic content. Three to four pages a month, with a real editorial calendar tied to the questions your customers are actually asking. We’re also producing content specifically designed to get cited by AI — long-form, answer-oriented, structured for machines as much as for humans.
• Active GBP and local strategy. Not just maintenance — actual local SEO work if that’s relevant for your business. Citations, reviews, local content, geo-targeted pages where appropriate.
• Outreach. Light digital PR — getting you mentioned, linked to, and cited on other credible sites. This matters for SEO (backlinks) and for AEO (AI systems weigh whether you’re referenced elsewhere when deciding whether to cite you).
• Real analytics and reporting. Monthly reviews of what’s working and what isn’t, with adjustments made accordingly. Tracking AI citations where we can.
• On-page optimization as an ongoing practice, not a one-time event.

What to expect: Within a year, you’re a known entity in your category’s search results. Google treats you as authoritative. AI systems start citing you when asked questions you’ve written about.

Tier 4: $5,000+/month (Full court press)

You’re in a competitive space, you’ve got a business model that can pay back the investment, and you want to dominate. This tier runs everything above in parallel, plus:

• Larger content volume. Six-plus pages a month, plus updates and refreshes to existing top-performers.
• Serious digital PR and link building. Targeted outreach, guest posts, being included in roundups and industry coverage. Not spam — the kind of coverage that actually builds authority.
• Paid media as a complement. SEO is slow. Paid search and paid social can fill the gap while the organic work compounds, and the data from paid campaigns makes the organic work sharper.
• Competitive monitoring. Who’s ranking for what, who’s getting cited, what content is winning in your space, where the gaps are.
• Deeper reporting. Monthly strategy reviews, quarterly bigger-picture analysis.

What to expect: You’re treating SEO and AEO like a real marketing channel with a real budget, and you’re measuring it against other channels on the same terms. This tier only makes sense if your business can pay back a $60K+/year investment — do the math before you commit to it.

The one rule that matters

Don’t spend at the next tier until you’ve gotten real value out of the one below it. And never skip the foundation.

I see small businesses jump straight to “hire someone for $3K/month” because it feels like the responsible thing to do. Meanwhile their site fails Core Web Vitals, their title tags are a mess, and their GBP is half filled out. No monthly retainer is going to fix that — it’s just going to pour good money on top of a broken foundation.

SEO and AEO compound over time, but only if the thing you’re compounding is real. Fix the foundation first. Layer on the ongoing work when you’ve earned the right to. Move up tiers when the previous one has paid off.

Not sure where you stand?

If you’re trying to figure out whether your site is costing you search visibility, a Website Workshop is usually the right first step. We map out what’s working, what’s not, and what the right foundation engagement looks like for your site specifically — so you know what you’re looking at before you commit to the rest of it.

Start with the foundation. Work your way up. And don’t let anyone sell you a tier you haven’t grown into yet.

Questions?