Choosing an SEO writing company on published evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to compare SEO writing companies

1. Ask who does the research, and see it. The difference between a good SEO page and a bad one is usually decided before a word is written: which query, what the searcher wants, and what the existing results fail to answer. Ask to see the brief behind a sample, not just the sample.
2. Check the subject matter input. Ask whether the writer interviews anyone at your company, reads your product, or works only from what is already ranking. Working only from the existing results produces a page that repeats the market rather than adding to it, which is the most common reason a well-written page never ranks.
3. Agree the production and quality standard in writing. Google says it rewards high quality content however it is produced, while its spam policies name scaled content abuse, meaning many pages made without adding value for users. Get the company's method and quality bar written into the agreement so the standard is a term, not an assumption.
4. Price the revision loop, not just the draft. A cheap draft that takes three internal rounds to make publishable costs more than an expensive one that ships. Ask how many revisions are included, what counts as a revision, and what the turnaround is on each round.

How SEO writing is priced

Three models dominate. Per word is common at the cheaper end and rewards length rather than usefulness, which is precisely the wrong incentive for search. Per piece is clearer, provided the piece is defined by what it must cover rather than by a word count. Monthly retainers cover an agreed volume plus the strategy, briefing and iteration around it, and are usually the better value once volume is steady, because the expensive part of good SEO writing is the thinking that precedes the draft.

The index records which companies publish a price at all, what that price covers, and the date the page was read, so a per-word rate and a retainer can be compared as different products rather than argued about as different numbers. Expect specialist categories, including technical, medical, legal and financial writing, to carry a premium that reflects the scarcity of writers who can be trusted in them.

What separates writing that ranks from writing that reads well

Google's guidance on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content asks whether a page demonstrates first-hand expertise and depth of knowledge, whether it provides substantial value compared with other pages in results, and whether a reader would feel they need to search again after reading it. Those are the questions a good writing company internalises. Fluent prose that restates the top results answers none of them.

The failure mode at the cheap end is volume as strategy: many pages, thin coverage, and a keyword in every heading. Google's spam policies name scaled content abuse explicitly, and sites that violate the policies may rank lower or not appear at all. The safer and usually cheaper position is fewer pages that fully answer the question, maintained over time rather than abandoned after publication.

Questions people actually ask

What should SEO writing cost?

Per-word rates span more than an order of magnitude, and retainers vary with volume and category. The index shows the median monthly figure across verified agencies that publish a price, each linked to the source page and date. Compare on cost per publishable page, including your own review time.

Is per-word or per-project pricing better?

Per project, defined by what the page must cover, is usually better, because per-word pricing rewards length rather than usefulness. If you do buy per word, agree the brief and the coverage separately so length is a consequence rather than a target.

Does Google penalise AI-assisted writing?

Google's stated position is that it rewards high quality, original, helpful content regardless of how it is produced, while its spam policies name scaled content abuse, meaning pages generated primarily to manipulate rankings without adding value. The method is not the test; the usefulness is.

How many pages should we commission per month?

Fewer than most proposals suggest. A small number of pages that completely answer a real question outperform a larger number that partially answer several, and they are far cheaper to keep current. Start with the questions your sales team answers most often.

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