Pricing and choosing
SEO services: what is actually inside the offer, line by line
Ilyes Massoudi7 min readThe short answer
SEO services in the Gulf usually consist of eight line items: an initial audit, technical fixes, keyword research, optimisation of existing pages, new content, external links, local SEO through the Google Business Profile, and a monthly report. A typical monthly proposal names all eight and actually funds two or three. To compare two proposals, ask for the real hours per item, who does each, and the written output you receive. The one item you should never buy monthly is the diagnosis; it is fixed-price work that comes before the contract.
Why two proposals are so hard to compare
Ask three companies in Dubai or Riyadh for search engine optimisation services and you receive three near-identical lists: comprehensive audit, technical optimisation, keyword research, content, links, reporting. Prices for the same list run from 1,500 to 15,000 dirhams or riyals a month.
The reason is that the list describes what could be done, not what will be done. The difference between proposals lives in hours, people and outputs, none of which is written in the proposal. The eight items below are what each phrase actually means, and what to ask to find out whether it is funded.
Item 1: the initial audit
What it should be: a full crawl, the indexing report, Arabic and English keywords with per-country volumes, competitors, the enquiry path, then a plan ranked by impact. What it usually is: automated tool output in a PDF on day one of the contract.
Ask: is the audit available as standalone fixed-price work? A company that refuses to sell it separately uses it as bait for the contract, not as a diagnosis. Details in what an SEO audit includes.
Item 2: technical fixes
What it should be: a defined list from the plan, executed in the first two months: indexing, speed, structure, hreflang, redirects. This item ends. It does not justify a permanent monthly fee.
Ask: who implements the changes on the site, your team or my developer? Many companies write recommendations, leave implementation to you, and then count the item as delivered.
Item 3: keyword research
What it should be: a list of intents in their three Arabic forms, with volumes per country, mapped to specific pages. What it usually is: a file of a hundred keywords translated from an English list.
Ask: show me one Arabic query from a previous client in its dialect, standard and Latin-letter forms. The full method is in Arabic keyword research.
Item 4: optimising existing pages
What it should be: rewriting titles, descriptions, headings and copy on your current pages to match the intents found, page by page. This is the cheapest item with the fastest effect, because it works on pages Google already knows.
Ask: how many pages a month, and who writes the Arabic? If the answer is “a tool”, the Arabic version will read as translation.
Item 5: new content
What it should be: pages that close the demand gaps the research exposed, written in Arabic for the market rather than translated. What it usually is: “four articles a month” with generic titles nobody searches, counted as tasks in the report.
Ask: what is the target query for each article, its volume in my country, and why this one rather than another? An article with no target query is activity, not investment.
Item 6: external links
What it should be: mentions and links from real sites in your market: local press, sector directories, partners, professional bodies. Slow and honest.
What it usually is in cheap proposals: “10 links a month” from a network of sites the company owns or rents. This item, specifically, is what damages a domain. Ask for link sources by name, and if you hear “our private network”, end the call.
Item 7: local SEO
What it should be: a complete, verified Google Business Profile in the right category, in Arabic and English, with a system for collecting and answering reviews. For businesses that depend on the map, this is the most important item on the whole list.
Ask: who owns the profile? It must be in your name, not the company’s.
Item 8: the monthly report
What it should be: one page that connects what was done to what changed in enquiries, and says what did not work and why. What it usually is: screenshots from a rank tracker with an upward chart that never mentions enquiries.
Ask: show me an anonymised report for a current client. How to read it is in how to read an SEO report.
The comparison table worth filling in
Instead of comparing prices, fill in this table for each proposal:
| Item | Hours per month | Who executes (by name) | Written output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audit | |||
| Technical fixes | |||
| Keyword research | |||
| Page optimisation | |||
| New content | |||
| External links | |||
| Local SEO | |||
| Report |
A proposal that cannot fill the hours column does not know what it is selling. One that fills it with large numbers at a low price is lying in one of the two columns.
What I offer, and what I do not
I do not sell monthly SEO services. I sell item one alone, complete: the Digital Presence Audit, fixed price, four business days, ending in a plan ranked by impact in which every item names who executes it. You carry it out with your team, your developer, or any company from the list above, and every proposal you receive afterwards becomes a proposal to execute a specific plan whose order you already know. That sequence saves months of paying in the wrong direction.