AI SEO is new enough that pricing is all over the place. Some agencies charge £200 for an 'AI SEO audit' that's a repurposed technical SEO checklist. Others charge £10,000/month for a retainer that amounts to writing blog posts. Knowing what you should actually pay — and what you should get for it — requires understanding what AI SEO genuinely involves. This guide gives you the forensic breakdown.
What Determines AI SEO Cost
AI SEO pricing is driven by four factors: the depth of the audit, the complexity of your technical setup, the competitive intensity of your AI search landscape, and whether you need ongoing implementation or a one-time assessment.
Audit depth. — A genuine [AI SEO audit](/blog/ai-seo-audit-guide) tests your visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews; audits your robots.txt for blocked AI crawlers; assesses your structured data; analyses your entity recognition signals; and maps competitor citations. This takes 15-30 hours of forensic work and should cost between £997 and £3,000.
Technical implementation. — Deploying llms.txt, implementing comprehensive Schema.org markup, restructuring content for AI extractability, and building entity signals requires specialist development time. Expect £500-£2,000 for implementation following an audit.
Ongoing retainer. — Monthly AI SEO work — citation tracking, content optimisation, authority building, and reporting — typically costs £1,500-£4,000/month depending on the scope of platforms covered and the competitive intensity of your category.
Enterprise pricing. — Large organisations with multiple brands, international presence, or complex technical infrastructure should expect £4,000-£10,000+/month for a full AI SEO programme.
AI SEO Pricing Tiers — What You Actually Get
✓£200-500: Basic AI SEO report — usually a keyword list and a few manual ChatGPT tests. No technical audit, no structured data review, no entity analysis. Worth exactly what you pay for it.
✓£500-997: Lightweight audit — covers the basics but misses deeper technical signals. Suitable for very small businesses who want a starting point, not a definitive assessment.
✓£997-3,000: Professional forensic audit — covers all AI platforms, full technical review, entity analysis, competitor citation mapping, and a prioritised roadmap. This is the level at which actionable, evidence-based recommendations are possible.
✓£1,500-4,000/month retainer — ongoing implementation, monthly citation tracking across all platforms, content optimisation, and authority building. The level at which compounding AI visibility is achievable.
✓£4,000-10,000+/month enterprise — multi-brand, international, or complex programmes. Includes dedicated reporting infrastructure and senior strategic oversight.
Red Flags That Signal Poor Value
No mention of robots. — Any AI SEO provider who doesn't immediately check whether GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot are blocked is not doing real AI SEO. This is the single most common — and easily fixable — cause of AI invisibility.
No structured data work. — If an AI SEO audit doesn't include Schema.org markup assessment and implementation, it is not a real AI SEO audit. Structured data is foundational to how AI models extract and verify information about your business.
Traffic as the primary metric. — AI SEO is about citations, entity recognition, and brand authority — not traffic. An agency reporting on traffic as the primary AI SEO metric either doesn't understand the channel or is hiding behind vanity numbers.
No competitor citation analysis. — Understanding which competitors are being cited and why is fundamental to any AI SEO strategy. Without it, you're optimising blind.
What Panovista Marketing Charges and Why
Ian Ayliffe (First-Class Honours in Computer Forensics & Security from Leeds Beckett, Guest Lecturer at Imperial College London) prices the Panovista AI Visibility Audit at £997. This reflects 15+ hours of forensic work producing a 30-page report with competitor citation mapping and a 12-month implementation roadmap. The ongoing implementation retainer starts at £1,500/month — representing direct access to Ian, not junior staff working from a template.
💡 Tip:Before commissioning any AI SEO provider, ask them: 'Which AI crawlers are you going to test my robots.txt for?' and 'What structured data types will you implement?' If they can't answer both questions immediately and specifically, find someone who can.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Is AI SEO more expensive than traditional SEO?
A: Comparable at the professional level, but the market is less commoditised. Traditional SEO has a floor price because there are thousands of providers. AI SEO has fewer genuine specialists, which means fewer race-to-the-bottom providers — but also more imposters charging professional rates for basic work.
Q: Should I do AI SEO instead of or in addition to traditional SEO?
A: In addition to. Traditional SEO builds the domain authority and content quality that AI models draw from. AI SEO adds the specific signals that convert that authority into citations. Doing AI SEO without traditional SEO foundations is building on sand. Learn more about [AI SEO vs traditional SEO](/blog/ai-seo-vs-traditional-seo).
Q: Can I do AI SEO myself to save costs?
A: Some elements — checking your robots.txt, deploying a basic llms.txt, implementing FAQ schema — are implementable with guidance. Our [AI SEO checklist](/ai-seo-checklist) is a free starting point. But a professional forensic audit will identify issues that are invisible without specialist diagnostic tools and methodology.
Want to know exactly what your AI SEO investment should cover? Book a free 30-minute call with Ian — we'll assess your current AI visibility and give you a clear picture of what a forensic programme would cost for your specific situation.