How much does AEO cost?
AEO costs vary widely — from a few hundred dollars a month for a solo consultant doing content and schema fixes, to several thousand a month for a full strategy covering technical audits, content restructuring, and ongoing citation tracking. There's no fixed industry rate yet because AEO is new and few agencies specialize in it properly. Expect to pay for expertise and time, not a mysterious algorithm hack — most of the real work is structural and content-based.
Why There's No Standard Price Yet
AEO is young enough that pricing hasn't settled into predictable tiers the way SEO retainers have. Most agencies calling themselves 'AEO specialists' are SEO shops that added the term to their service list without changing their process. That inflates prices without adding real value.
Actual cost depends on the size of the site, how much content needs restructuring, how bad the technical foundation is, and whether you need ongoing citation monitoring or a one-time audit and fix.
What Drives the Price Up
Sites with large content libraries cost more because restructuring hundreds of pages for direct-answer format is real labor, not a quick script. Sites with messy or inconsistent business data across the web also cost more to fix, since that cleanup touches directories, review platforms, and third-party listings, not just your own site.
Ongoing tracking adds cost too — manually testing AI tools and monitoring citations takes recurring time, since there's no automated reporting tool that does this reliably yet.
What a Reasonable Engagement Looks Like
A focused AEO engagement usually starts with an audit — how you currently show up in AI answers, what's broken technically, where your content misses the direct-answer format — followed by a prioritized fix list rather than a blanket rewrite of everything.
Be skeptical of anyone quoting a flat monthly retainer without first auditing your current AI visibility. AEO pricing should be tied to actual scope of work, the same as any serious SEO engagement.
My working checklist
- Get an audit of current AI visibility before agreeing to a retainer
- Ask what specifically the fee covers — content, technical, or both
- Expect higher cost for larger sites needing content restructuring
- Treat ongoing citation tracking as a separate line item, not a freebie
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