What this page can and cannot say
This page is published by Search Scope, a Perth SEO consultancy that sells AI SEO services. That is the conflict of interest, and it shapes what follows: the publisher’s own rates are quoted as one disclosed, verifiable data point, a third-party Australian price guide is quoted as the only published market band this publication has found, and no Perth average is stated because no Perth market survey has been conducted. A survey of Perth providers’ published rates is on the planned research list; until it runs, a “Perth average” would be an invention.
The three shapes AI SEO is sold in
DOCUMENTED Across the published sources read for this page, AI SEO work is priced in three shapes, sometimes combined.
| Shape | What it is | Typical form |
|---|---|---|
| Audit | A diagnosis: access, entity clarity, retrievability, evidence, prompt coverage. See what a credible audit examines. | One-off, fixed price, sometimes credited against later work |
| Foundation or entity project | A bounded cleanup: one canonical set of business facts, structured data, corroboration plan. | One-off, priced by how far the footprint has drifted |
| Monthly programme | Ongoing prompt tracking, content restructuring, corroboration and placements. | Month to month, with add-ons for more tracked prompts, profiles or placements |
Placements on third-party sites, where a programme includes them, are usually invoiced as media at cost on top of a management fee. Engineering work such as fixing a client-rendered site sits outside consulting fees on every source read.
The published Australian market band
DOCUMENTED What’s The Damage, an Australian consumer price guide, publishes AI SEO cost ranges it describes as last verified in September 2026: a standalone SMB programme at $2,000 to $5,000 per month, an add-on to an existing SEO engagement at $500 to $1,500 per month, an entry or monitoring tier at $1,000 to $2,500 per month, specialist or competitive programmes at $4,000 to $8,000 or more per month, a one-off AI visibility audit at $1,500 to $5,000, and schema and technical foundation work at $1,000 to $3,500. It states that “most Australian small businesses pay $2,000 to $5,000 per month for a standalone AI SEO program in 2026” and that scopes remain unstandardised across providers.
That guide does not publish its sample or method, so it is a published estimate rather than a measured market. It is quoted here because it is the only Australian range this publication has found in a source it does not own.
The publisher’s published Perth rates
DOCUMENTED Search Scope’s Perth service page, read on 9 September 2026, publishes: an AI Visibility Audit at $1,500 one-off, or $3,000 for ecommerce and multi-location, credited in full against an Entity Foundation booked within 30 days; an Entity Foundation from $1,950 (single location), $3,450 typical, from $5,500 for multi-location or a catalogue; a local programme from $1,499 per month; a high-competition and ecommerce programme from $3,999 per month; add-ons of $150 per month for ten extra tracked buyer questions, $250 per month per additional buyer profile, $400 per month for weekly rather than fortnightly tracking, and $250 plus media at cost per placement beyond the included allowance. All ex-GST, month to month, 30 days notice, no lock-in.
Those figures are stated because they are verifiable on a live page and because the publisher relationship makes omitting them look like concealment. They are one provider’s prices. Against the third-party band above, the local programme sits below the band’s standalone floor and the higher programme sits inside it; whether either is representative of Perth is exactly what a survey would establish.
What drives the range
INFERRED From the published scopes, five variables move the price, and the largest is rarely the AI-specific work:
- What sits underneath. Site structure, internal linking, missing pages, thin author and expertise signals, absent schema. On some sites a general SEO overhaul comes first and the AI work waits behind it. This is the driver businesses underestimate most because it is invisible from the front end.
- Competition. A specialist trade with four competitors needs less research than a category where national brands publish original material.
- Platform and technical access. A modern CMS versus a locked platform can turn a two-hour change into a two-week one. Control over structured data matters.
- Content needs. Restructuring existing pages is cheaper than writing new ones; a small consistent site needs a fraction of the work of a large drifted one.
- Platform coverage. Each AI surface needs its own testing. Covering Google alone costs less than covering Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.
Why outcome-based pricing does not exist here
DOCUMENTED No platform documents a way to guarantee inclusion, citation or recommendation, and Google states that serving is not guaranteed. A provider pricing on a promised citation is either defining the term loosely enough to always claim it or billing for something else. Work is priced for work: access, clarity, evidence and measurement, which is a weaker promise than the alternative and the accurate one.
Hidden costs to budget for
Developer time if the platform needs engineering to render or to carry markup. The business’s own time: a few hours in the first fortnight for access and fact verification, then an hour or two a month supplying the expertise nobody else can. And original assets, where research, tools or data are the thing worth citing; producing them is a cost separate from deciding to.
What is documented and what is inferred
- Documented: the three engagement shapes as published; the What’s The Damage bands; Search Scope’s published Perth rates; the no-guarantee position.
- Inferred: the five cost drivers.
- Not established: any Perth average, median or distribution. No survey has been run.
- Conflict of interest: the publisher sells these services. Commercial enquiries belong with Search Scope, not with this publication.