AXENOR
In Cyprus, GEO is usually priced inside SEO, not beside it. Four agencies that publish their prices put a small-business SEO retainer between 500 and 1,800 euro a month. Only one lists GEO as its own line, at 500 to 2,000 euro a month on top. The work overlaps by design: the same audit, the same pages, the same technical fixes. What GEO adds is page restructuring, entity and mention work, and reporting on AI visibility.
The question reaches our Search Console in almost those words: someone asked Google to break down how GEO pricing compares to SEO pricing. It is a fair thing to ask. One agency sells the two under a single name, another bills them as separate lines, and a buyer holding both proposals cannot tell whether they describe the same work. This article puts the published Cyprus prices side by side and shows what each line should buy.
What do Cyprus agencies charge for SEO and for GEO?
SEO retainers for a small business run from 500 to 1,800 euro a month, and GEO is either included or added at 500 to 2,000. On 20 September 2026 we read the pricing pages of four Cyprus agencies that publish their rates. We do not name them, because the point is the range, not the agency:
| What is being bought | Published range | Agencies of the four that list it |
|---|---|---|
| Automated or entry packages | 99 to 500 euro a month | Two list it, two warn against it |
| The floor for hands-on work | 500 to 600 euro a month | Three |
| Small business, one location | 500 to 1,200 euro a month | Four |
| Established SME, two languages, competitive terms | 900 to 1,800 euro a month | Three |
| Several locations or languages, competitive sectors | 1,500 to 4,500 euro a month | Three |
| Regulated sectors such as forex and gaming | 4,500 to 10,000 euro a month and up | One |
| One-off audit | 600 to 2,500 euro | Two |
| GEO as a separate line | 500 to 2,000 euro a month on top of SEO | One |
Two things stand out. The four ranges agree with each other more closely than you would expect from firms competing for the same clients, so the market has a settled idea of what a month of work costs. And three of the four do not price GEO at all: it is either inside the retainer or not offered.
Is GEO more expensive than SEO?
Not as a rule. Where GEO is inside the retainer, the price follows the SEO bands above. Where it is billed separately, the one published price adds 500 to 2,000 euro a month. Either way it buys the same kind of work, and what differs is how much writing and outreach the fee covers. The honest comparison is between proposals that include the same work, whatever each calls it.
What are you paying for in SEO?
Hours of skilled work, spread across parts a buyer should be able to name. At Axenor Consulting an engagement runs across seven:
- Technical SEO: speed, indexing and site structure, so engines can read every page
- On-page SEO: titles, headings, internal links and copy matched to what buyers search
- Content strategy: a publishing plan built from measured demand
- Local SEO: Google Business Profile, reviews and local listings kept accurate
- AI search: the GEO and AEO layer, covered below
- Authority and link building: mentions and links earned from sites that matter in your market
- Analytics and reporting: positions, traffic and enquiries, reported from your own accounts
The price moves with three things: the number of pages and languages on the site, how contested the sector is, and how much has to be written each month. A single-location clinic and a bilingual corporate-services firm targeting overseas founders are different jobs, which is why the published ranges run from 500 to 4,500 euro.
What does GEO add to the invoice?
Four kinds of work that sit on top of the SEO foundation:
- Restructuring pages so they can be quoted. A direct answer at the top, headings phrased as buyers' questions, lists and tables, a takeaways block, dated sources. Semrush found in February 2026 that pages cited by AI systems were 32.83% more likely to carry clear summaries and takeaways.
- Entity work. Organization markup, the same name, address and phone number on every listing, professional-body and chamber directories, and a Wikidata entry where the firm qualifies. The reasons are in our guide to entity SEO.
- Mention work. Getting the business named where engines read: sector press, association pages, partner sites, LinkedIn. Ahrefs found in May 2025 that brand mentions correlate with AI visibility three times more strongly than backlinks.
- Measurement. AI-feature impressions from Search Console, Copilot citations from Bing Webmaster Tools, and a fixed list of buyer questions put to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini each month.
Why these are the levers is in how AI engines choose which pages to cite. Keeping cited pages current is a recurring cost as well: our 13-week refresh cycle explains why.
Why is GEO sold inside SEO instead of separately?
Because it cannot work without it. Google's page on AI features states that "there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary". OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites that block its search crawler "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers". An engine cannot cite a page it cannot read, and our September 2026 check found one Cyprus hotel in 20 blocking every crawler except Google's.
The audit, the pages and the technical fixes are shared. The split looks like this:
| Shared with SEO | Specific to GEO |
|---|---|
| Technical audit and fixes | Direct answers and question headings on existing pages |
| Keyword and question research | Entity records and consistent listings |
| New pages and articles | Mentions in sector press and directories |
| Links and local profile | AI visibility reporting |
A proposal that sells GEO with no SEO underneath it is selling the top floor of a building with no ground floor. A proposal that sells SEO with no GEO layer in 2026 leaves out the part of search where shortlists now form. How the two disciplines differ is set out in our guide to GEO vs SEO.
What should a monthly GEO and SEO retainer contain?
Things you can check without taking anyone's word for them:
- A written audit before any monthly work starts, with findings ranked by what pays back first
- A monthly list of the changes made, each with the URL it was made on
- The pages published or refreshed that month
- The links and mentions earned, each with its URL
- A report drawn from your own Search Console, including impressions inside Google's AI features
- Accounts that stay yours: Search Console, Analytics, Google Business Profile and the website itself
What should you refuse to pay for?
- Guaranteed rankings. Google's guidance on hiring an SEO (updated June 2026) is blunt: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google."
- Bought links. Google's spam policies list "buying or selling links for ranking purposes" as link spam. The hiring guidance adds a warning about SEOs that talk about link schemes or submitting your site to thousands of search engines.
- An llms.txt file as a line item. It takes 20 minutes to write, and Google's guide to its generative AI features says of such files that "Google Search itself doesn't use them". Our llms.txt guide covers the engines where one can help.
- "AI submission" services. There is nowhere to submit a site to ChatGPT. Engines find pages through their own crawlers and search indexes.
- Reports you cannot verify. If the numbers come from the agency's dashboard and not from your own accounts, you cannot tell what moved.
How do you check the work was done?
Open it yourself. Ask for last month's change list and open three of the URLs on it. View the page source for the markup you were told was added. Compare the month with the one before in your own Search Console. Ask which question the newest article answers, then search for it. A good agency expects these checks and makes them easy. That is how we run SEO and AI search: nothing is reported that you cannot open and see.
Key takeaways
- Published small-business SEO retainers in Cyprus run from 500 to 1,800 euro a month. Audits run from 600 to 2,500 euro.
- Three of four agencies that publish prices do not price GEO separately. One charges 500 to 2,000 euro a month on top of SEO.
- GEO shares its audit, pages and technical work with SEO. What it adds is restructuring, entity and mention work, and AI visibility reporting.
- Refuse guaranteed rankings, bought links and any report you cannot check in your own accounts.
Frequently asked questions
Should GEO be a separate line on an SEO invoice? It can be, as long as the line names the work: which pages were restructured, which listings were corrected, which mentions were earned and what the AI visibility report shows. A separate GEO fee with no named deliverables is paying twice for the same audit. The one published Cyprus price for GEO as its own line is 500 to 2,000 euro a month.
Can I buy GEO without SEO? You can buy it, and it will underperform. Google states that its AI features need no special optimisation beyond ordinary SEO, and ChatGPT search leaves out sites that block OpenAI's crawler. If the site has technical faults or thin pages, the GEO layer has nothing to stand on.
What does an SEO audit cost in Cyprus? The two agencies that publish an audit price put it between 600 and 2,500 euro. The difference is depth: a short document with priority fixes at the low end, and a full technical, content and competitor review at the high end. An audit should come before any monthly retainer.
Is a 300 euro a month SEO package worth buying? Rarely. Three of the four agencies we read put the floor for hands-on work at 500 to 600 euro a month, and two warn that packages below it rely on automated audits and directory submissions. At the published hourly rate of 70 to 150 euro, 300 euro buys two to four hours.
How do I compare two GEO and SEO proposals? Put them side by side on five points: whether an audit comes first, what is delivered each month and how you verify it, who writes the content, how links and mentions are earned, and who owns the accounts. Price only means something once those five match.
