The question every agency owner eventually asks is some version of: "How much should I charge my clients for SEO?" The honest answer is: it depends on what you're paying for it, and whether you've thought through the margin math before you set prices.
This guide covers wholesale rates, the markup models that actually work, and the calculations you need to run before your next client pitch.
What White Label SEO Wholesale Rates Look Like
The wholesale cost of white label SEO — what you pay your provider — varies depending on scope and the provider's positioning. General ranges for Canada-based white label partners:
- Basic local SEO campaigns: $400–$700 per month
- Standard organic SEO (on-page + content): $700–$1,200 per month
- Full-service SEO (content + links + technical): $1,200–$2,500 per month
These are your costs before markup. Your client never sees these numbers.
The 2x–3x Reseller Rule
Most agencies resell white label SEO at 2x–3x the wholesale rate. If you pay $800 per month wholesale, you charge your client $1,600–$2,400 per month. This is the standard model, and it holds up for good reasons.
Your margin needs to cover more than just the difference. It covers your account management time — calls, emails, strategy reviews, report delivery. It covers your business overhead — rent, software, sales costs. It covers the risk premium for being the client-facing party. And it needs to leave real profit after all of that.
At 2x, you're covering costs and generating modest profit. At 3x, you're building a real business. Agencies that try to compete on price by running at 1.5x margins find themselves doing more work for less money as they scale.
The Three Pricing Models Agencies Use
Fixed monthly retainer
The most common structure. Client pays a set fee each month. You pay your white label provider a set wholesale rate. The difference is your margin. Clean, predictable, and easy to manage across multiple clients.
Tiered packages
Three price points — starter, growth, and premium — each with escalating deliverables. This is easier to sell because clients can self-select their budget level. Map each tier to a corresponding white label scope and your margin is built in from the start.
Performance-based
A portion of the fee is tied to results such as rankings or traffic growth. This is harder to manage and is not recommended when you're using white label delivery, because you carry the performance risk for work you don't directly control. If you do offer this model, the base retainer must be high enough to cover your costs before the performance element is triggered.
A Simple Profit Calculation
10 clients · $1,500/month client rate · $600/month wholesale average
That's $96,000 per year in net margin from 10 SEO clients, on relatively conservative pricing. Agencies at the higher end of the market run similar math at $2,500–$4,000 per client per month, with proportionally larger margins.
How to Avoid Margin Compression
Margin compression happens when your wholesale costs creep up and your client rates stay flat. Three ways to prevent it from eating your business:
- Lock in wholesale pricing contractually. Get your provider to commit to rates for 12 months. Any provider unwilling to do this is signaling that rates could change without warning.
- Review and raise client rates annually. Most clients will accept a modest 5–10% annual increase tied to results. If you never raise rates, inflation does it for you — on the wrong side of the equation.
- Don't discount to win clients. Lowering your price to close a deal sets a floor you'll struggle to raise later. A client who negotiated hard at the start will negotiate hard at every renewal.
The number most agencies miss: Your time managing client relationships has a real cost. If you're spending 4 hours per month per client and not accounting for that, you're not running a 60% margin business — you're running a much lower one. Build your time cost into every pricing decision.
For the full picture of how pricing connects to growth, see how white label compares to in-house from a cost standpoint and what scaling with white label actually looks like in numbers.