The four factors that set the price in a competitive market — and the four situations where we'd tell you to keep your money.
It's not a small town where you can rank with a decent website and some reviews. It's not Auckland either, where national budgets make everything expensive. It's a mature regional market with entrenched incumbents — and that specific combination sets the price.
By far the biggest factor. Displacing a firm with ten years of links is a project. Ranking in Darfield is not. The same service costs wildly different amounts depending on who you're fighting.
If your site is slow, thin and technically broken, that gets fixed first, and it costs money before anything improves.
Six services across Christchurch, Rolleston and Rangiora is genuinely more work than one page.
Wanting results fast usually means running Google Ads alongside SEO, which is a separate budget.
This is the step almost everybody skips. If a customer is worth $4,000 in profit and you close one in three enquiries, a $2,000/month investment is obviously sensible. If a customer is worth $60, it very likely isn't.
Work this out before you talk to any agency. It reframes the entire conversation — and it tells you when to walk away.
A term nobody searches, ranked so the invoice can keep going out. Nobody controls Google. Walk away.
More on our pricing approach →
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