SEO Audit Cost
An SEO audit costs $500 to $5,000 at an agency and $300 to $1,500 from a freelancer, delivered in one to three weeks. Essel runs the same class of audit — 100 pages, 71 checks, a fix for every finding — for $10 flat, in minutes. Start with a free single-page scan.
The market
The ranges below are typical published rates for small-to-mid-size sites. The work being priced — crawl, check, verify, prioritize — is the same.
Essel site audit
flat · one-time · no card saved
Market rate
agency audit · retainers run $1,000–7,500/mo
Agency and freelancer ranges are typical published quotes; complex sites (migrations, penalties, international) justify human engagement — after the mechanical layer is done.
The free scan is the estimate. The $10 is the job.
Scan one page free
See the exact report you'd be paying for — every issue and every fix, unblurred, no sign-up.
Decide with the number
The free report says how many pages your sitemap lists. If the site warrants it, the full crawl is $10.
Fix, then verify free
One full re-crawl within 30 days shows fixed, new, and regressed — proof the $10 did its job.
What you get
The price covers real compute: a resumable 100-page crawl, external data lookups, and the LLM pass that writes your deliverables.
100-page crawl
pages chosen intelligently across your site's sections, not the first 100 found
71 checks
indexability, links, duplicates, structured data, Core Web Vitals, and AI-crawler access
A fix for every finding
effort estimate, where the change goes, a pasteable patch, and a verify step
Generated deliverables
rewritten titles and metas, JSON-LD blocks, llms.txt, and an internal-link plan
7-day action plan
findings ordered by impact per unit of effort, not by scary severity labels
Re-audit within 30 days
one full re-crawl included, showing fixed, new, and regressed issues
No subscription
one-time payment; no card kept on file
No teaser report
the free single-page scan already shows every issue and every fix, unblurred
Automatic refund
a failed run refunds itself; a finished one carries a 7-day refund window
Permanent report
a shareable link plus Markdown and CSV exports you keep
Here's what a real report looks like.
Your shape
Strong technical foundations, thin where AI engines look.
Your scores
Search engines can crawl and index it
AI engines can find, read, and cite it
Clear, complete, well-structured
How fast it loads and responds
Web presence and links
What AI thinks of you
Ask an AI assistant about your site and it says:
A free AI resume builder that imports LinkedIn profiles and turns them into ATS-friendly resumes in minutes.
Search foundations vs AI readiness
11 categories · renormalized 0–100Page speed
Perf –Authority & web presence
Fix these first
Highest-impact, with the exact stepsAlso in your report
A report tells you what's broken. Essel also writes what's missing.
The same engine behind this audit researches, writes, and publishes GEO-optimized articles for your site — on a cadence, autonomously.
FAQ
The questions people ask before budgeting for an SEO audit.
An SEO audit costs anywhere from $10 to over $5,000 depending on who runs it. Automated tools sit at the bottom of the range, freelancers typically charge $300 to $1,500, and agencies quote $500 to $5,000 or more for a manual audit of a small-to-mid-size site, delivered in one to three weeks. Essel's whole-site audit is $10 flat: a real 100-page crawl, 71 checks, and a concrete fix for every finding, delivered in minutes.
Agency pricing reflects senior time spent running crawls, reading the output, and writing up recommendations — plus the strategy conversation around them. The mechanical majority of that work (crawling, checking, verifying, prioritizing) is exactly what software does faster and without fatigue. Where a consultant still earns the fee is judgment on complex sites: migrations, international targeting, penalty recovery. Run the $10 audit first; if you then hire a human, they start from a clean issue list instead of billing hours to produce one.
A cheap audit is good when it is a real crawl with named findings and concrete fixes, and worthless when it is a single-page score with a sales call attached. Essel's $10 audit crawls up to 100 pages, names every affected URL, and pairs each finding with a pasteable fix — the same class of output an agency PDF delivers, minus the retainer pitch. The free single-page scan shows you the exact report format before you spend anything.
Most free SEO audits are lead magnets: a partial score, a blurred issue list, and a follow-up call from a sales team. Essel's free scan is complete for the page it audits — every issue named, every fix included, no sign-up required. The paid step exists only because a whole-site crawl and its generated deliverables cost real compute, and it is priced at $10, not at a consultation.
Four things drive audit pricing: site size, scope (technical only versus technical plus content and links), who performs it, and whether implementation is included. Agency quotes scale with all four. Essel's price does not move: up to 100 pages, the full 71-check scope including AI-search readiness, and the fixes are part of the report. Sites larger than 100 pages get the most-linked, most-recent pages chosen automatically.
Run the free single-page scan now. If the findings warrant the whole site, it's $10 — less than the first six minutes of an agency retainer.