SEO · 28 August 2026
What SEO should cost in Sri Lanka, and how to tell when a quote is wrong
Most agencies here won't publish a number, which makes it hard to judge a quote. Here is how to work out whether the one you have been given makes sense.
Almost nobody in this market publishes SEO pricing, which leaves business owners with no way to judge whether a quote is reasonable. You cannot fix that by comparing numbers, because the numbers are not public. You can fix it by understanding what drives them.
What actually determines the price
Three things, roughly in order of weight.
Competition in your sector. Ranking a wedding photographer in Kurunegala and ranking a tour operator against international OTAs are not the same job, and they should not cost the same. The gap between them is measured in months of work.
How much has to be built. A site with a clean structure and a dozen service pages needs optimisation. A site with one page covering seven services needs those pages written first. That is content production, not SEO, and it is the bulk of the cost on many engagements.
Whether links are part of the scope. Earning relevant links is slow, manual outreach. It is the single most expensive line item in any honest SEO proposal, and its absence is the main reason a cheap quote is cheap.
Why very low quotes fail
Work out how many hours a quote buys at any reasonable rate. If the answer is two or three a month, ask what specifically will be done in those hours.
What tends to fill them is automated directory submissions and spun content, because those are the only things that can be produced at that price. Both are liabilities. Cleaning up a toxic backlink profile costs more than earning good links would have, and it takes longer.
Cheap is not always wrong. But it should come with a narrower scope that is stated plainly, not with the same promises at a fraction of the price.
Questions worth asking whoever quotes you
- Who does the work each month, and can I contact them directly?
- Will Search Console and Analytics be under my own account, with me as owner?
- Where will links come from, specifically?
- What happens if rankings have not moved by month four?
- What is the minimum contract?
Vague answers to the third and fifth questions are the ones to worry about. A specialist who cannot name the kind of sites they will approach for links usually means directories. A long minimum term usually means the agency expects clients to want to leave.
Get the audit first
Any figure quoted before someone has looked at your site is a guess. The useful sequence is an audit, then a scope, then a price — in that order, and the audit should be free.
Written by Buddhika Kasun Karunathilaka, WireCabin (PVT) LTD. SEO services · More posts