How Much Does SEO Cost For A Mortgage Broker?
This article is by Australia's #1 Mortgage Broker SEO Agency, we've helped brokers generate over $500M in new leads through Google and AI-search. We can help you too, simply book a call here.
You've probably had a few SEO agencies reach out. The quotes are all over the place, the proposals are full of jargon, and nobody seems keen to give you a straight answer on price. That's frustrating, especially when you're running a brokerage and every dollar needs to earn its keep.
The cost of SEO for a mortgage broker depends on what your site needs, how competitive your market is and what's actually included. A solo broker in a regional town has a different starting point from a growing firm in a capital city.
At Copyburst, we work with brokers across Australia on mortgage broker SEO, Google Business Profiles and AI search, and pricing is one of the first things we talk through on every strategy call. In this article, we'll cover what you can expect to pay, what separates good value from a poor deal and how to know when it's working.
Key takeaways
- Price alone tells you nothing: what's included determines whether it's worth paying.
- Cheap SEO often costs more when you factor in the work needed to fix it later.
- You should own your logins, your data and your results before you sign anything.
What does mortgage broker SEO actually cost?
Mortgage broker SEO in Australia typically runs somewhere between $800 and $3,000 per month for an ongoing retainer, with the range driven by market competitiveness, the scope of work and the agency's depth of experience. One-off audits or setup projects sit lower, but ongoing work is where the results come from. Google says plainly that "no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google," so any quote that promises specific positions is worth treating with scepticism. What you're paying for is consistent, qualified work over time, not a guarantee.
What does a typical SEO retainer include for a broker?
The scope varies more than the price, and that's the real issue with comparing quotes. A $1,000 retainer that covers four things and a $1,000 retainer that covers one thing are not the same deal.
A retainer built around what brokers actually need typically covers some combination of these:
- Service and location pages: pages built around what your clients search for, like refinancing, first home loans, investment loans or self-employed finance, each written to rank and convert.
- Google Business Profile management: keeping your profile accurate, complete and active so you're visible in the Map Pack when someone searches for a broker in your area.
- Technical site work: making sure Google and AI tools can find and read your pages, and that your site loads quickly on a phone.
- AI search visibility: structuring your content so ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Copilot describe you accurately when someone asks for a broker recommendation.
- Reporting: a monthly summary that connects work done to rankings, traffic and enquiries, not just a traffic chart.
A good retainer moves through this work systematically. The first few months usually focus on the foundations: fixing what's broken, building the pages that matter most and getting your profile right. That's also why Maile Ohye, in a 2017 Google Search Central video, said SEOs generally need four months to a year to implement improvements and see potential benefit. The work compounds; it doesn't switch on overnight.
| Expert tip Pull up a recent SEO proposal and read down the list of deliverables. For each item, ask: "Does this put me in front of a client searching for a broker in my area?" If more than a third of the list can't answer that question, the scope probably isn't built around your business. Copyburst builds every retainer around what brokers' clients actually search for. |
How does the price change depending on your situation?
A few things drive your cost up or down more than anything else. Understanding them helps you assess a quote honestly.
The table below shows the main variables and what they mean for scope and price:
| Your situation | What it means for scope | What you can do first |
|---|---|---|
| Solo broker, regional or suburban area | Fewer competitors, tighter scope, lower cost to rank | Google Business Profile and a handful of core service pages |
| Solo broker, major capital city | Higher competition, more established sites to beat | Audit existing pages, find gaps, improve before adding more |
| Growing firm adding brokers | More loan types, areas and team members to cover | Practitioner profiles, expanded service pages, location coverage |
| New site or recent rebuild | No history for Google to work from; foundations are the priority | Build the right pages from the start; set up tracking from day one |
| Existing site with poor SEO | Audit first; often faster to improve what's there than start fresh | Find the pages already getting some traffic and make them the priority |
The market backdrop matters too. Brokers arranged a record 81.6% of new residential home loans in the June 2026 quarter (MFAA, data compiled by Cotality), which means more brokers are competing for every enquiry. In a softer 2026 market, the broker who shows up first in Google and the Map Pack has a real advantage over the one who relies entirely on referrals.
“The broker sites I review most often aren't paying too little for SEO. They're paying for the wrong things. Keyword reports and traffic graphs look impressive; they're just not what fills a pipeline.”
Adam Maynard · Founder, Copyburst · Chat to Adam →
| Mortgage broker SEO Need help with choosing the right SEO partner? We help mortgage brokers get found first in Google, Google Maps and AI search.
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What separates a good SEO spend from a bad one?
Say you're a broker who has just received two quotes: $900 a month and $2,200 a month. The cheaper one is a general digital agency that handles restaurants, lawyers and mortgage brokers all on the same team. The pricier one focuses specifically on brokers. Here's what to check before deciding:
- Check who owns the logins. You should hold access to your own website, analytics, Google Business Profile and any reporting tools. If the agency owns them, you lose everything when you leave.
- Ask what the monthly report shows. A good report connects the work done to rankings, traffic and enquiries. A weak one shows pageviews and calls it a result.
- Check whether the work is built for your business. Generic content, copied service page templates and keyword lists that include searches your clients never make are signs the work isn't broker-specific.
- Look at the contract terms. Google's own guidance warns against agencies that "guarantee rankings" or claim a "special relationship" with Google. A minimum contract length is normal; a long lock-in with vague deliverables is a red flag.
The broker who pays more and gets the right work done will almost always come out ahead of the one who pays less for a service that doesn't move their business forward.
| Expert tip Ask your next enquiry how they found you, and ask the same of your last ten clients. If most say referrals, that's useful to know, but check whether those referrals are also looking you up in Google before they call. The gap between where your clients come from and where they verify you is where SEO earns its keep. |
Is it worth paying for SEO at all, or is Google Ads a better option?
A borrower sitting at home at 9pm, deciding whether to refinance before their fixed rate rolls off, types "refinance broker near me" into Google. The organic result and the Map Pack listing are both free to appear in, once you've earned them. The Google Ads position above them costs every time that borrower clicks.
SEO builds visibility you keep as long as you maintain the work. Ads deliver visibility only while you're paying, and stop the moment the budget runs out. That doesn't make Ads wrong. For a new brokerage with no search presence, Ads can generate enquiries while SEO builds. But treating Ads as a permanent substitute for ranking organically means you'll always be buying the same traffic rather than earning it.
“When a broker asks us where to start, we tell them to get the Google Business Profile right first. It's where most local searches land, it costs nothing to run and it's the fastest way to show up in front of borrowers searching in your area right now.”
Adam Maynard · Founder, Copyburst · Chat to Adam →
How do you know if the SEO spend is actually working?
The right things to track are rankings for the searches your clients make, traffic to your key service pages and, most importantly, the enquiries those pages produce. Traffic going up while enquiries stay flat usually means the wrong people are landing on your site, or the pages aren't doing their job once someone arrives.
A few useful checks you can do yourself:
- Search for yourself: type "mortgage broker" and your suburb into Google on a phone you've never used to visit your own site. Check where you appear in both the Map Pack and the regular results.
- Check your profile: open your Google Business Profile and look at the calls, website clicks and direction requests in the Performance view. These are real signals from real borrowers.
- Ask the question: add "How did you find us?" to your enquiry form. The answers will quickly tell you whether your SEO investment is sending people your way.
The local Map Pack (the three businesses Google shows with the map) is often where the first decision happens. Google says "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking," so your review count and your website's strength both feed into it. A good SEO retainer works on both.
| Expert tip Read through your last ten Google reviews the way a first home buyer would, someone who doesn't know you and is choosing between three brokers. Do the reviews explain what you actually helped with? Do they sound real and specific? That's what builds confidence in a searcher, and it's something worth thinking about before you spend another dollar on SEO. |
What's the catch with cheap SEO for mortgage brokers?
The problem with low-cost SEO isn't always that the agency does nothing. It's that the work done often creates problems you'll pay to fix later: pages that copy the same template across every location and get treated as spam, content written to hit a word count rather than answer a question, or a Business Profile stuffed with keywords in the name field that risks suspension. Google's spam policies flag "scaled content abuse," which means mass-producing pages that add little value, as something its systems are designed to catch.
There's also the ownership question. Some agencies build your site on their own platform, manage your Business Profile under their login and hold the reporting data. When you leave, you start from scratch.
We'd put it this way: cheap SEO that needs to be undone and redone usually costs more in total than doing it right the first time. That's the real number to keep in mind when comparing quotes.
| Mortgage broker SEO Need help with choosing the right SEO partner? We help mortgage brokers get found first in Google, Google Maps and AI search.
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What else do brokers ask about SEO pricing?
What happens if I stop paying for SEO?
Rankings don't disappear overnight, but they do erode. Competitors keep working while you don't, and over time they move ahead of you. The pages and profile work you've done stay, but without ongoing effort your position gradually slips. It's worth treating SEO as a recurring cost, like rent on your office.
Should I pay for an SEO audit before signing a retainer?
A proper audit can be worth it, especially if you've had SEO done before and want to know what you're starting with. The key is that the audit leads to a clear priority list, not just a long report. A reputable agency will often discuss your site's main issues in a strategy call before you commit.
Is it worth doing SEO if almost all my clients come from referrals?
Referrals are valuable, but referred clients often look you up online before they call. A weak Google presence or a profile with few reviews can cost you a referral that was already warm. SEO also opens a second lead channel so your pipeline isn't entirely dependent on existing relationships.
How does Copyburst price its SEO work for mortgage brokers?
We scope each retainer around the broker's actual situation: their market, their existing site, the loan types they want to grow and where they're starting from. We talk through this on a free strategy call and present a scope before anything is signed. You own all your logins and data throughout.
Can Copyburst rebuild my website as part of the SEO work?
Yes. We build broker websites as part of an SEO plan so the structure, pages and content are built to rank from the start rather than retrofitted later. If your current site is holding back your SEO, a rebuild is often the right first step, and we handle both together.
Your next steps
Start by writing down what you want SEO to do for your brokerage: more refinance enquiries, more first home buyer leads, visibility in a new area. That list makes it much easier to evaluate a proposal on its merits. Then check who owns your logins, ask for a clear scope and hold any agency to reporting that connects their work to your enquiries. To see what this would look like for your brokerage, book a free strategy call.
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Sources and further reading
This article provides general information about SEO, AI search and digital marketing for mortgage and finance brokers. It is not credit assistance, financial, legal or tax advice, and does not take into account your business circumstances. Search, ranking and lead outcomes vary and are not guaranteed. Figures are sourced from the organisations named and were current at the time of writing.