AEO·GEO4 min read한국어로 읽기

AI SEO Consulting Costs: What Actually Drives the Quote?

How AI SEO consulting quotes break down into audit, build, and retainer — and which variables actually move the price.

“How much does AI SEO consulting cost?” Any provider who answers that in one number without seeing your site is worth a second look. An audit-only engagement and a project where someone actually edits your code are two different jobs wearing the same name. What you can figure out before signing is how the cost breaks down and which variables widen the gap. This is a guide for reading the quote in front of you.

What line items make up an AI SEO consulting quote?

Most quotes split into three blocks: audit, build (implementation), and monthly retainer. Content production and engineering work are often priced separately, and whether those two are included changes the total more than anything else.

  • Audit (one-time): measured report on indexing status, structured data, rendering method, speed, and whether AI assistants currently cite you
  • Build (one-time): metadata and JSON-LD schema design, information architecture, llms.txt and sitemap work, template edits
  • Retainer (monthly): monitoring of indexing, rankings, and citations, plus content planning and ongoing fixes
  • Content production: priced per piece or per month — check whether it covers outlines only or finished copy
  • Engineering: the work of getting recommendations into the codebase. Without it, you are buying a document

Why do two quotes for the same work differ so much?

Technical difficulty and scope. Two factors dominate: how your site renders its content, and whether the consultant can touch the code at all.

  • Rendering: if body content is drawn by JavaScript, server rendering or prerendering work gets added to the scope
  • Template count: 1,000 pages built from 5 templates is a 5-template job. Ask about templates, not page counts
  • Access: repository or CMS access means fast execution. Without it, every change becomes a ticket waiting in someone else's sprint
  • AEO/GEO in scope: covering only Google and Naver rankings differs from also measuring citations in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude answers
  • Multilingual: hreflang and per-language schema multiply the work by the number of languages

Where do teams waste this budget?

The most common mistake is signing a monthly retainer before knowing the current state. If you don't know whether the problem is thin content or a structural indexing failure, you have no basis for judging what the monthly fee is buying.

  1. Six-month retainer signed with no audit — then month three reveals the real issue was rendering
  2. Publishing volume as the only lever, while the company page still has no organization schema
  3. Reports that are ranking screenshots with no link between changes made and results observed
  4. No owner for implementation — the consultant delivers docs, the dev backlog slips, a quarter passes
  5. Unclear ownership — no clause saying the schema, configs, and documentation stay with you when the contract ends

When comparing quotes, ask first whether the money changes your code or only produces a document.

How does SAENRU price it?

SAENRU publishes the same three-block structure as open pricing, so you can start small and expand only when it makes sense: audit → build → operate.

  • Measured audit report: KRW 190,000 (5 business days), covering both search visibility and AI-answer presence
  • Build package: from KRW 3,600,000, implementing what the audit surfaced
  • Monthly operations: from KRW 1,470,000 for monitoring and ongoing optimization
  • The audit fee is fully credited against a build contract. All prices exclude VAT

The SAENRU site itself is a worked example: raw HTML with embedded JSON-LD and llms.txt. Showing what we applied to our own pages tends to be faster than explaining it. Scope and deliverables are listed on our SEO·AEO·GEO consulting page, and if the three acronyms still blur together, our full SEO·AEO·GEO breakdown has a comparison table.

In short, the right question is never “how much,” but “how much, including what.” Whether it is a small audit or a large project, what you hold at the end determines the real unit price.

FAQ

Should I start with an audit before committing to a retainer?
Yes — without knowing your current indexing, rendering, and structured data status, there is no basis for judging what a monthly fee is achieving. An audit tells you whether you need structural work or simply more content. SAENRU offers a measured audit report for KRW 190,000 (5 business days, VAT excluded), fully credited if you proceed to a build contract.
What should I check first on a consulting quote?
Whether implementation engineering is included or billed separately. If it is excluded, you may receive recommendations while the live site stays unchanged. Also confirm template count, repository or CMS access, and who owns the deliverables after the contract ends.
Does adding AEO and GEO to the scope raise the price much?
It typically does, because both the measurement surface and the work expand. Beyond rankings, covering AI-answer citations adds structured data work, content formatting, and citation monitoring. SAENRU's SEO·AEO·GEO guide compares the three areas and suggests which to prioritize by situation.

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