Shopify SEO pricing breaks into three tiers depending on your store size and competition level. Small stores with under 500 products in low-competition niches typically pay $500–$1,500/month for ongoing SEO that covers product optimization, basic link building, and content creation. Mid-sized stores competing in moderately competitive verticals (apparel, home goods, supplements) usually invest $2,000–$5,000/month for more aggressive content strategies, technical optimization, and consistent outreach. High-volume stores or those in brutal niches like electronics or fitness can expect $5,000–$10,000+/month for comprehensive campaigns that include custom development, advanced schema, and sustained link acquisition. One-time costs matter too. A proper Shopify SEO audit identifying technical issues, theme problems, and indexation gaps runs $1,500–$5,000 depending on catalog size. If your theme needs custom liquid work to fix canonical issues, improve crawl efficiency, or add proper schema markup, budget another $2,000–$8,000 for development. These upfront investments often deliver better ROI than months of content work on a broken foundation. DIY is viable if you have time. Shopify's native SEO features handle basics well—editable title tags, meta descriptions, automatic sitemaps, canonical tags. Apps like SEO Manager or Plug in SEO cost $20–$300/month and automate some optimization tasks. You'll still need to write product descriptions, build links, and create content yourself, which is hundreds of hours annually for a growing catalog. Geography affects pricing slightly. Toronto and Vancouver agencies often charge 10–20% more than Ottawa or Montreal shops for identical work, though remote work has flattened this. At Ottawa SEO, we typically scope Shopify projects at $1,800–$4,500/month depending on catalog complexity and how much link building the niche demands. Stores that ignore SEO and rely purely on paid ads usually see 40–60% higher customer acquisition costs long-term, which makes even aggressive SEO investment pencil out within 6–12 months for most verticals.