Ask five Nepali agencies what SEO costs and you get five shrugs. So here are published numbers — ours, valid until March 31, 2027, 13% VAT for domestic clients — and what each tier actually contains. For the service behind these prices, see SEO services in Nepal and the Complete SEO Guide.

The two retainers, side by side

Basic SEO — Rs. 25,000/month (Rs. 28,250 with VAT), minimum 3 months, plus Rs. 15,000 one-time setup:

SEO Retainer Pricing in Nepal: What Rs. 25,000 vs Rs. 50,000 a Month Buys
  • Keyword research, including the long-tail terms that bring targeted traffic
  • On-page optimisation: titles, descriptions, headers, content structure
  • Monthly SEO report: rankings, organic traffic growth, KPIs

Advanced SEO — Rs. 50,000/month (Rs. 56,500 with VAT), minimum 6 months, plus Rs. 15,000 one-time setup:

  • Everything in Basic
  • Competitor analysis: strengths, weaknesses, openings
  • Off-page SEO: quality backlinks from authoritative sites
  • Google Analytics setup: traffic, behaviour and conversion goals

Custom SEO — Rs. 1,200 / 1,800 / 2,500 per hour (simple / standard / complex): advanced technical SEO, local SEO, international SEO, mobile optimisation, content work, site speed and schema. Scoped per project with a written quote.

Which tier fits your stage?

  • New site, no foundations: Basic. There is no point buying links to pages with no keyword map and broken titles.
  • Foundations done, growth stalled: Advanced. At this stage rankings move on authority and measurement, not more title tweaks.
  • One specific problem: neither retainer. A migration, a penalty recovery, a technical audit or a schema rollout is project work — hourly, scoped, done.

What the minimums are really for

SEO compounds monthly: fixes ship, Google recrawls, content ages, links accrue. The 3-month Basic and 6-month Advanced minimums reflect that cycle, not lock-in creativity. If a provider offers month-to-month Advanced SEO with no setup fee, ask what reporting and link work is actually included — something has been cut.

Red flags when comparing quotes

  1. No setup fee and instant results promised — setup (audit, keyword map, Analytics goals) is real work; skipping it means skipping it.
  2. Rankings without traffic or conversion reporting — position 3 for a zero-volume keyword is a vanity metric. Insist on organic traffic and leads in the monthly report.
  3. Secret link sources — quality backlinks are named, relevant and permanent. Ask where links come from before signing.
  4. Cheaper than Rs. 20,000/month for full service — below that, the hours do not exist for research, implementation and reporting. You are buying a report template, not SEO.

What to do this week

  1. Check whether you have the basics: keyword map, clean titles, Analytics with conversion goals. Missing two or more → Basic.
  2. If basics exist, pull your competitor gap: who outranks you and on which pages. That gap sizes the Advanced decision.
  3. Request the written quote with hours shown — any honest provider, us included, shows expected hours × rate before work starts.

Related reading: SEO services in Nepal, Complete SEO Guide, Google Analytics in Nepal, and hire a digital marketing expert when you are ready to talk scope.