Pricing
What Answer Engine Optimization Costs
Answer engine optimization is priced badly across the category, and it is worth understanding why before comparing quotes.
The work is new enough that there is no settled market rate, and it is often sold as an add-on to an existing content retainer, which hides what is actually being done. Two suppliers can quote the same figure for very different work: one measuring citations and restructuring commercial pages, the other publishing four more blog posts a month and calling it AEO.
This page sets out the shapes these engagements take and what to ask so the comparison is real.
The three shapes this work takes
A fixed-scope visibility audit. A baseline of what assistants say about you, a competitor comparison, a diagnosis and a fix list. Defined start, defined end, a document you keep. This is where most engagements begin and a meaningful share end there by design.
A restructuring project. A defined set of commercial pages rewritten for extraction, with schema and entity work. Priced against the page count, which is knowable in advance, so this is normally a fixed quote.
A monthly programme. Continuing measurement, restructuring and corroboration. Suited to businesses in contested categories where the position has to be defended as well as won.
What decides the number
Page count is the main driver on restructuring work, and it is the number to establish first. Not how many pages the site has, but how many carry commercial intent and are therefore worth the work. On most sites that is a small fraction of the total.
Question-set size drives the measurement cost, and it scales with how many distinct things your buyers are deciding between.
Corroboration is the least predictable component, because it depends on what already exists. A business with an established presence in trade directories needs far less than one starting from nothing.
Questions worth asking any AEO supplier
Five, and the answers separate the real offers from the repackaged ones.
- How will you measure whether this worked, and what does the baseline look like?
- Which surfaces are you measuring, and how often?
- How many runs per question, given that model output varies?
- What proportion of the work is restructuring existing pages against publishing new ones?
- What happens if the audit concludes the fixes are small?
A supplier without a clear answer to the first is selling content. A supplier whose answer to the fourth is mostly new pages is selling a blog.
Where the money is usually best spent first
On most sites, not on the thing that was enquired about.
The first spend that pays is normally fixing whatever is structurally broken: pages that return the wrong status code, missing commercial pages, or analytics that cannot attribute an enquiry. Those are cheap relative to a content programme and they change what everything else is worth.
The audit exists to identify that ordering, which is why it is the recommended starting point even when a business arrives certain it wants a retainer.
Related
Talk about your situation
The first conversation is short and mostly questions. Get in touch and tell me what you are trying to fix.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How much does answer engine optimization cost?
It varies with the number of commercial pages, the size of the question set and how much corroboration already exists, which is why no figure is published here. The engagement shapes above set out what you would be buying, and a scoped quote follows one conversation about your situation.
Is AEO cheaper than SEO?
The restructuring component is often cheaper, because it works on pages that already exist rather than producing new ones. The measurement component is an addition that classic SEO does not carry. For most businesses the sensible arrangement is one programme covering both, since the same page has to satisfy a ranking system and an extraction model.
Should I pay for AEO as an add-on to my current retainer?
Only if you can see what is actually being delivered under that line. AEO added to an existing content retainer frequently means the same content with different reporting. Ask for the baseline, the question set and the measurement cadence. If none exists, the line item is not AEO.
What does a visibility audit involve?
Twenty to forty buyer questions run across five assistants with every answer and citation recorded, a competitor comparison on the same set, a written diagnosis and a prioritised fix list. It is scoped as a standalone deliverable so continuing afterwards is a real choice rather than an assumption.