The short answer. Digital Legates offers technical SEO, local SEO, e-commerce SEO (Shopify, WooCommerce), international / multi-region SEO, and AI search optimisation (AEO/GEO) across India. Retainers start around ₹40,000 per month for a small-brand foundation and scale to ₹3,00,000+ for competitive e-commerce or multi-region programmes. Meaningful ranking lift typically shows in months 4–6, revenue impact from month 8. Delivered by a senior team led personally by founder Shubhanshu Mohan.
Below: what we deliver, how we work, what it costs, and who we've done it for. If you'd rather skip ahead — the deliverables list, the honest pricing ranges, and the FAQ are the fastest routes.
Three buyer profiles
we see the most.
If you don't recognise yourself in one of these three, we'll still take the call — we'll just be honest early about whether SEO is the right first move for your business.
The founder-led SMB with a real product and no SEO plan.
You're doing ₹2–25 Cr in revenue, most of it from referrals or offline channels. You've realised your buyers now Google before they call — and you're invisible. You want a senior team to build the channel from scratch, not a ₹15,000-a-month freelancer running a checklist you can't verify.
The e-commerce brand tired of paying Meta CAC forever.
You're on Shopify or WooCommerce, you've scaled to ₹5 Cr+ on paid, and every 3% Meta CPM increase eats another point of margin. Organic is the escape hatch — but only if it's done properly. Technical SEO, collection-page architecture, product schema, review markup, blog for topical authority.
The professional service ready to own the local pack.
You're a CA, doctor, lawyer, clinic, dentist, developer, or agency operating from Patna, Delhi, Mumbai, or Bangalore. The prize is 30–60 qualified phone calls a month from local search — Google Business Profile, local pack, reviews, GBP posts, geo-targeted service pages. Measured in inquiries, not vanity rankings.
Eight SEO
sub-disciplines.
SEO is a stack, not a service. Here's every layer we own in-house, and what shows up in your monthly report against each.
Technical
SEO.
The foundation layer. Everything else compounds off this. If your technical setup is broken, no amount of content or link-building will move the needle — you're pouring water into a bucket with holes.
What's in scope
- Crawl analysis (Screaming Frog + Ahrefs)
- Log-file analysis for crawl budget
- Core Web Vitals — LCP, INP, CLS
- Indexation review in Search Console
- Schema & structured-data audit
- XML sitemap + robots.txt hygiene
- Canonical & hreflang review
- JavaScript rendering & SSR audit
What ships
A prioritised audit deck (P0/P1/P2 severity, effort in hours), a Notion or Sheet action tracker your dev team can work from, and a monthly re-crawl to confirm fixes stuck.
Local
SEO.
Google Business Profile plus the local-pack game. For businesses whose buyers search "near me" or by city. Measured in phone calls, direction requests, and website clicks from GBP — not vanity keyword rankings.
What's in scope
- Google Business Profile setup & optimisation
- Category, service, and attribute selection
- GBP posts, offers, and Q&A
- Local citation building & NAP audit
- Review solicitation workflow (email + SMS)
- Location landing pages with local schema
- Google Maps ranking & local pack tracking
- Local backlinks (Chamber, associations, press)
What ships
A monthly local report — GBP insights, local pack positions for your top 10 keywords, review count and star trend, click-to-call and direction-request volume, and a to-do list for the next month.
E-commerce
SEO.
Shopify, WooCommerce, and headless stacks. This is where we did the work for Indian Golf Shop — building the technical and content backbone that lets an India-only D2C brand rank against global equipment sites.
What's in scope
- Collection-page architecture & internal linking
- Product schema (Product, Offer, Review, Brand)
- Faceted-navigation & parameter handling
- Variant & canonical management
- Shopify Liquid speed optimisation
- Blog architecture for topical authority
- Buyer-guide content (comparison, how-to, sizing)
- International expansion via Shopify Markets
What ships
A commerce-specific technical audit, a collection- and product-page copywriting programme, and a blog editorial calendar tied to the top-of-funnel and buyer-intent keywords your category earns organically.
Content
& briefs.
Ranking is downstream of topical authority. That means shipping content in clusters — pillar page plus 8–15 supporting articles per topic — and internally linking them so Google understands you as the expert on the topic, not a random blog with one article on it.
What's in scope
- Keyword research & intent classification
- Topical cluster mapping
- Editorial calendar (monthly, 6-month, annual)
- Content briefs — target keyword, SERP intent, competitor gap, outline, internal links
- Writing (in-house), editing, and fact-check
- On-page optimisation of existing pages
- Cannibalisation audits & consolidation
- Content refreshes (evergreen posts > 12 months)
What ships
Between 4 and 20 pieces of new content a month depending on retainer size, plus refreshes of 2–5 legacy pieces, plus a monthly report showing which pieces ranked, which stalled, and what we're doing next month to move them.
Digital PR
& links.
Whitehat only — full stop. Digital PR pitches to Indian and international publications, unlinked-mention reclamation, guest editorial on relevant publications, HARO / Qwoted / SourceBottle pitching. No PBNs, no comment spam, no directory blasts.
What's in scope
- Digital PR pitching to Tier 1 & Tier 2 publications
- Statement / expert-quote sourcing for journalists
- Data-story creation for link acquisition
- Guest-editorial placement on relevant sites
- Unlinked-mention reclamation
- Broken-link building on high-DA sites
- Digital press release when there's real news
- Link-profile audits & disavow work
What ships
A monthly links report — every link acquired, referring domain DR, anchor text, and whether the campaign that earned it was PR, guest editorial, or reclamation. Realistic expectation for an active retainer: 4–12 quality referring domains a month.
International
SEO.
For Indian brands selling to the US, UK, Australia, or SEA — and for global brands expanding into India. Hreflang, ccTLD vs subfolder decisions, currency and unit handling, market-specific keyword research, and the cultural editing pass most agencies skip.
What's in scope
- hreflang architecture (subfolder / subdomain / ccTLD)
- Market-specific keyword research per region
- Language and cultural adaptation of copy
- Local hosting & CDN routing decisions
- Country-specific schema and organisation markup
- International backlinks — press & guest posts
- Currency, unit, and address formatting
- Region-appropriate imagery and case studies
What ships
An international expansion roadmap with market prioritisation, technical architecture recommendation, keyword and content plan per region, and a launch sequence sequenced to avoid a duplicate-content trap when you go live.
AI search
optimisation.
Where the leverage is in 2026. Buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Bing Copilot for recommendations before they open the blue links. If your brand isn't cited inside those answers, you're invisible to the fastest-growing search surface of the decade.
What's in scope
- Answer-engine optimisation (AEO) content
- Generative-engine optimisation (GEO) audit
- Entity & sameAs schema alignment
- Citation-worthy source pages (data, opinion, review)
- FAQPage & QAPage schema deployment
- llms.txt file & AI crawler policy
- Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google AIO visibility tracking
- Wikipedia entity establishment when eligible
What ships
A monthly AI-visibility report — how often your brand appears in AI answers for tracked queries, which competitors appear alongside you, and what content or schema changes moved the needle in the last cycle.
Speed
& UX.
Google measures your site the way real users experience it — 75th-percentile LCP, INP, and CLS on Chrome UX data. Anything above 2.5 seconds LCP or 200ms INP is now a ranking headwind. We fix it, permanently, at the code and infrastructure level.
What's in scope
- Real-user (CrUX) & lab (Lighthouse) measurement
- LCP optimisation — image, font, critical CSS
- INP optimisation — JavaScript main-thread audit
- CLS elimination — layout reservation, font swap
- CDN & caching architecture
- Image format migration (AVIF, WebP)
- Third-party script audit & deferral
- Ongoing monthly monitoring
What ships
Every site we touch targets sub-1.5s LCP, sub-100ms INP, and a passing CrUX score across mobile and desktop. Faster sites rank better, convert better, and cost less to run — the three-in-one win.
How we actually work.
Four-phase engagement. Every retainer, without exception.
Discovery & audit (Weeks 1–3).
Full technical audit, content audit, backlink profile audit, competitor teardown for your top 5 competitors, keyword and topic research, and a written roadmap prioritising fixes and opportunities. Delivered as a working document, not a pitch deck.
Foundation sprint (Months 1–3).
Fix P0 and P1 technical issues, ship the first content cluster (pillar + 8 supporting), rebuild collection or category pages if e-commerce, deploy schema, publish location pages if local. This is the month range where nothing looks like it's moving yet — but it is.
Compounding phase (Months 4–8).
Content velocity increases to 8–15 pieces a month, digital PR programme kicks in, links start landing, rankings start climbing on lower-competition terms. Monthly reporting shows real movement. This is where SEO stops feeling like an expense and starts feeling like an asset.
Ongoing partnership (Month 9+).
Content velocity holds, technical monitoring catches regressions before they hurt, links continue, and quarterly strategy reviews adjust the roadmap for what's changed in your business, your market, and Google. Most clients stay in this phase for 2+ years.
Real brands, real rankings.
A sample of the Indian brands whose SEO we've owned. Full case studies on the Work page.
Events arm of India's largest Hindi media network. Owned the organic footprint for marquee conclaves and event verticals with a Pan-India audience.
India's specialist golf retailer. Collection architecture, product schema, and category content built to rank against global golf equipment sites.
Sustainability venture. Organic visibility built from zero — technical, content, and category structure designed for a category that barely existed in Indian search two years ago.
Sustainability brand serving India and international markets. Multi-region SEO with hreflang architecture, market-specific content, and links landing on both sides.
Ranged, published,
no theatre.
Exact pricing depends on scope, competitiveness of your niche, and content velocity. Here's where the conversation usually lands.
Local + foundation.
₹40,000–₹80,000 / month. One market, one language, GBP + local pack focus, 4 pieces of content a month, technical monitoring, monthly reporting. For Patna, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, or city-specific service businesses.
Competitive Pan-India.
₹80,000–₹1,50,000 / month. Full technical, 8–12 pieces of content a month, active link-building programme, schema and AEO/GEO layer, monthly strategy call. For brands competing nationally in a real category.
E-commerce or multi-region.
₹1,50,000–₹3,00,000+ / month. Everything in (B), plus Shopify / commerce technical, product schema at catalog scale, review markup, buyer-guide content programme, and hreflang if international. For D2C brands or multi-market operators.
Project SEO — one-off audits, migrations, or roadmap builds — is quoted separately. Honest ranges: ₹1,00,000–₹3,00,000 for a comprehensive technical + content audit; ₹1,50,000–₹4,00,000 for a site-migration SEO project; ₹75,000–₹2,00,000 for an AEO/GEO visibility audit.
SEO questions without the spin.
How much does SEO cost in India?
Serious retainers range from ₹40,000–₹80,000 for a small-brand foundation, ₹80,000–₹1,50,000 for competitive Pan-India, and ₹1,50,000–₹3,00,000+ for e-commerce or multi-region. Anything below ₹25,000 per month is almost always a directory-listing service in disguise.
How long does SEO take to work?
Local: 60–90 days. Competitive national: foundation in 3 months, ranking lift months 4–6, revenue compounding from month 8. Anyone promising 30-day results is either selling a very small niche or misrepresenting what SEO is.
Do you guarantee first-page rankings?
No. Google does not sell rankings and does not accept guarantees. What we do commit to: a technical audit that documents every issue, a content plan tied to real search demand, monthly reporting on rankings and traffic, and prioritised recommendations. Guarantees exist in this industry — but only for keywords no one is actually searching for.
What's included in a technical SEO audit?
Crawl analysis (Screaming Frog + Ahrefs), log-file review, Core Web Vitals on real-user data, schema audit, sitemap and robots review, indexation review, internal-link mapping, canonical and hreflang review, mobile UX review, and a prioritised roadmap with P0/P1/P2 severity and estimated effort.
Can you help my Shopify store rank?
Yes — Shopify SEO is a repeatable playbook. Collection pages, product schema, review markup, sitemap hygiene, canonical handling for variants, Liquid page speed, blog architecture, and Shopify Markets when international. It's what we did for Indian Golf Shop.
What is AEO/GEO — and does my business need it?
AEO (answer-engine optimisation) and GEO (generative-engine optimisation) are the practices of getting cited inside AI answers — Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot. If your buyers ask AI for recommendations before Googling, then yes. It overlaps with traditional SEO but adds FAQPage schema, entity clarity, and citation-worthy source pages.
Do you build backlinks — and are they safe?
Yes, and yes. Digital PR, guest editorial, unlinked-mention reclamation. No PBNs, no comment spam, no directory blasts. Every link is one we'd be comfortable with a manual review of. Slower — but nothing gets reversed by a penalty six months later.
How is Digital Legates different from other SEO agencies in India?
Founder-led — Shubhanshu Mohan reviews audit and strategy on every account. Named Indian case studies (Jagran, Indian Golf Shop, CLAG, EnviroWay, CA Ankur) instead of unverifiable logos. Published ranges — instead of the "depends on scope" that most agencies use to avoid pricing until they have you on a call.
Ready to brief us on an SEO programme?
30-minute discovery call. Bring a URL and the problem you're trying to solve — we'll bring a written audit outline within 5 working days.