When I speak with company directors and business owners considering how to improve their brand’s visibility, their first question is almost always the same: how much will it cost, and what will they get for their money?
SEO services in Serbia cost several hundred euros a month, while businesses in the United States pay several times that amount for comparable services. Adapting content for AI systems adds to the expense, but a higher price does not guarantee better results. Whether the investment pays off depends on what the company is actually missing, how much it earns from each new client, and whether optimization brings in new business.
Companies considering search engine optimization (SEO), answer engine optimization (AEO), and generative engine optimization (GEO) generally want to know how much the project will cost and whether ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity will recommend them more often. Before starting, however, it is necessary to check whether the website functions properly, whether its services are clearly explained, whether information about the company is consistent across sources, and how the business already appears in Google search results and AI-generated answers.
It also matters how customers currently find the company, how much it spends to acquire a new client, and how much profit it makes on each contract. The same monthly expense cannot be justified equally for a local salon and an IT company whose contracts may be worth tens of thousands of euros.
What Does the Price of Optimization Include?
Very different services are often sold under the same label. For €500, a company might receive a technical website audit and a few changes. A €5,000 proposal might include market research, specialist content, public relations, and sales performance tracking. Comparing two proposals on price alone is therefore insufficient.
In the United States, monthly SEO services typically cost between $1,500 and $2,000, while more demanding projects can exceed $10,000. In the United Kingdom, SEO campaigns targeting a national market cost between €2,500 and €8,000 a month; in Germany, between €2,000 and €7,000; and in France, between €1,800 and €6,000. In Central and Eastern Europe, prices range from €500 to €4,000. These are indicative figures, rather than official market averages, because the scope of services and pricing models vary considerably.
In Serbia, basic optimization for a small local business costs between €250 and €500 a month, while companies serving the national market pay between €500 and €1,200. More complex online stores, B2B companies, and exporters may spend between €1,000 and €3,000, sometimes more. Since the Serbian market has not been covered by independent research, these figures should not be treated as average prices either.
A Serbian IT company seeking clients in the United States cannot set its budget based on the price of local SEO in Serbia. It competes with businesses that spend considerably more, but it also operates in a market where a single contract can be worth many times its total optimization costs.
What GEO Really Costs
AEO and GEO prices are even harder to compare because the market has yet to establish a clear definition of what these services include. One proposal may cover revisions to a few articles. Another may include an analysis of AI-generated answers, the sources those systems use, inconsistencies in company information, and the creation of specialist content suited to generative search.
In the United States, monthly GEO packages cost around $5,800, while more extensive projects range from $7,500 to over $25,000. In Serbia, an initial assessment and a limited set of changes cost several hundred euros, while more demanding projects can exceed €1,000 a month. These prices cannot be compared directly, however, because services sold under the same label differ in both scope and level of expertise.
Before investing in GEO, companies should first check whether search engines can find their important pages, whether their services are clearly described, and whether company information is consistent across digital sources. Only then does it make sense to examine what ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity say about the business, which sources they use, and which competitors they recommend.
If those basics are missing, GEO amounts to ordinary content editing under a new name. Effective optimization for generative systems begins when content and information are organized so that models can reliably understand, verify, and use them as sources for their answers.
How SEO Can Indirectly Affect Advertising Costs
A higher ranking in organic search results will not automatically lower the cost of Google ads. Ad costs and placement depend on the advertiser’s bid, the expected click-through rate, the ad’s relevance to the user’s query, landing page quality, and competition.
Website optimization can nevertheless help a company get more value from its advertising budget. If technical improvements and content revisions make landing pages faster, easier to navigate, and clearer, a larger share of visitors may contact the company or make a purchase.
Suppose a company spends €10,000 a month on ads and pays an average of €2 per click. That brings 5,000 visitors to its website. If 2% contact the company, it receives 100 inquiries at an average cost of €100 each. If website improvements raise that rate to 3%, the same 5,000 visits produce 150 inquiries, reducing the cost per inquiry to €66.67. The budget and cost per click remain unchanged, but the company gains 50 additional potential clients for the same amount of money.
This calculation is an illustration, not a forecast. It shows why traffic and search rankings alone are insufficient measures of success. If visitors cannot find a clear explanation of the service, evidence of expertise, and a straightforward way to make an inquiry, more traffic will not, by itself, bring in more business.
Did the Customer Come from Google or AI?
If the same company spends €2,000 on SEO and another €1,000 on adapting its content for generative systems, in addition to its €10,000 advertising budget, its total spending rises to €13,000. If ads produce 100 inquiries, organic search generates another 35, and mentions in AI-generated answers followed by searches for the brand produce another 15, the average cost per inquiry falls from €100 to €86.67.
In practice, I often encounter the difficulty of determining which channel actually brought in a customer. Someone may first discover a company through a ChatGPT answer, then search for its name on Google several days later and send a message. Analytics software may attribute that inquiry to the search engine, even though the initial introduction came from AI.
The number of mentions in answers from models such as ChatGPT or Perplexity does not, on its own, demonstrate a return on investment. When managing campaigns, I therefore track growth in searches for the brand, direct website traffic, new inquiries, and completed sales or signed contracts. I also recommend that clients regularly ask customers where they first heard about the company, since digital analytics alone often cannot establish this reliably.
Who Benefits Most from Investing in AEO and GEO?
The return depends directly on the company’s margins and the profit it earns from each sale or contract. In the calculations I work through with clients, we start with a straightforward relationship: if SEO, AEO, and GEO together cost €3,000 a month, and each new client generates €1,000 in gross profit, at least three new deals a month are needed just to cover optimization costs. If one in five qualified leads becomes a signed contract, the campaign must generate at least 15 such inquiries each month.
The implications differ by industry. For a law firm, private clinic, B2B software company, or industrial equipment manufacturer, one or two new clients may justify several months of spending. By contrast, a retailer earning €5 per item would need 600 additional orders a month to cover the same amount. That is why I tell smaller local businesses directly that accurate Google Maps information, verified reviews, and a clearly presented offering are often more useful than expensive GEO packages.
When a company stops spending on Google ads, the traffic those ads generated stops as well. A technically sound website, authoritative sources, and high-quality content, however, can continue to generate organic visibility and recommendations for months after the initial investment.
Before hiring a specialist, the question should therefore be how much new business that visibility must generate to make the investment worthwhile. Without a clear financial calculation, optimization remains an expense. It becomes a business investment only when the revenue from new business exceeds its cost.
Source: Biznis & Finansije Photo: ChatGPT
