AutoSEO costs USD 149 per month and domain, FullSEO USD 500 — the difference is not the feature list but who decides. A walk through both tiers, the add-ons, and the cost item missing from most quote comparisons.
In budget talks the first question is rarely about features. It is: what does this cost over a year, and how much work still lands on our desk? Automation gets misread here. It does not mean nobody does anything; it means people decide instead of collecting.
The campaign area of the new Semalt Panel offers two tiers and two bookable placement packages. Four prices to know before anyone talks about expectations:
The factor of 3.4 between the tiers demands a deliberate decision, but not on money alone. The sections below place both tiers in context, look at the add-ons critically, and close with a fully disclosed twelve-month example.
Two tiers, one and the same data foundation
Both tiers run in the same area of the panel, draw on the same connected Google Search Console and the same live SERP data, build backlinks and deliver AI-assisted suggestions. The difference is not the number of features but the point at which a person may step in.
Many price comparisons assume the more expensive tier delivers more data. It does not.
- The same analytics. Search Console reporting, rank tracking and competitor views in full — no privilege of the higher tier.
- The same approval workflow. The keyword pool with its three decisions — approve, reject, defer — belongs to both tiers.
- The same assistant. Stream, the project-bound assistant, answers from real campaign data and takes keyword and URL lists in batches.
- The steering differs. Manual keyword selection, targeted backlink placement and an approval step before on-site changes exist only in FullSEO.
AutoSEO — what USD 149 a month covers
The cheaper tier is built so a campaign keeps running even when nobody opens the panel for a fortnight — for businesses without SEO staff.
AutoSEO — the full campaign cycle without manual labour
For businesses wanting steady growth but with nobody to sort keywords every week.
- Keywords are found and prioritised automatically. The time saved lies in the ordering: producing four hundred terms is trivial, putting them into a sensible working sequence is not.
- Backlinks accumulate continuously, without individual selection. New links appear in the project stream with metrics on the linking site — traceable, but not selectable in advance.
- The AI prepares on-site changes. Titles, meta descriptions, heading structure and internal linking, derived from your pages and the search data.
- The analytics are included in full. Search Console, rank tracking and competitor views come at no extra cost.
- The live chat knows the project. Questions are answered from actual campaign data, not from general SEO knowledge.
On many Austrian rate cards, USD 1,788 a year buys twelve to eighteen hours of consulting. Save ninety minutes of research a month and the base fee is covered on paper — provided the freed-up time goes somewhere useful. The four to eight weeks to first movement describe when something shows in the data, not amortisation.
FullSEO — what the extra USD 351 actually buys
The higher tier contains everything in AutoSEO plus three points of intervention and a team of SEO specialists, developers and writers. At those points you may step in — nobody has to.
FullSEO — automation plus human steering
For projects where commercial relevance and machine-calculated relevance pull apart.
- Manual keyword selection with automatic fallback. You choose the terms. If the selection stays empty, the automation takes over — a week of leave does not halt the campaign.
- Targeted backlink placement by Domain Rating. Instead of leaving the link profile to the automation, you set the strength distribution of the linking sites.
- A human review mode for site changes. Changes take effect only after a person approves them. In regulated industries that is not a convenience but a precondition.
- A team, not merely an interface. FullSEO includes SEO specialists, developers and writers — the share of the price that is not software.
- Switchable rather than fixed. You move between automatic and manual operation without setting the campaign up again.
The premium does not buy "more SEO" but control over the detail — worth USD 351 a month only if somebody exercises it. A FullSEO campaign whose approval queue nobody opens is a more expensive AutoSEO campaign.
The mode switch is the underrated part. FullSEO is not "the manual variant"; it creates a rhythm. Automatic at first, because nobody yet knows which terms move in your market. Manual once the findings allow a deliberate selection. Sharpened before seasonal peaks, automatic again in quiet months. It happens because the switch is cheap. Both tiers and both add-ons sit in the My SEO section of the platform.
The keyword pool and the approval workflow
The core of both tiers is the keyword pool. It draws on three sources, each answering a different question — which is why the suggestions avoid the usual tool arbitrariness.
Google Search Console
Terms for which the website already receives impressions — demonstrated demand, often paired with weak visibility.
- The most realistic candidates
- Google already associates the site with them
Live SERP data
Terms from the actual search result environment, including those competitors rank for and your domain does not.
- Shows the gaps in your own space
- Invisible without an outside view
Your own seed keywords
In-house knowledge: product names, industry jargon, the wording customers use in enquiries and calls.
- The most frequently neglected source
- Often supplies the highest-converting terms
The individual approval
Every candidate receives exactly one of three decisions. Nothing slips into the campaign unnoticed.
- Approve, reject or defer
- Logged and auditable later
The third state is decisive. Without it, every review collapses into a yes or no in which everything uncertain gets rejected — and the uncertain terms are usually the interesting ones.
- Approve. The term fits, a suitable page exists, and the service behind it can be delivered. It moves into production.
- Reject. The term does not fit the business, the region or the audience. A Viennese tax firm without private clients does not want high-volume terms carrying the wrong demand.
- Defer. Plausible on the merits, but the page, budget or capacity is missing. A term deferred in March is a prepared candidate in June, not a fresh idea.
That names the real service automation provides. The machine does not choose the keywords; it collects, de-duplicates and pre-sorts, and puts the person where judgement counts. How that shows up in position trends is what the analytics area at Semalt displays.
The two add-on packages and their slot tiers
On top of the base fee, two placement packages are bookable in fixed tiers. Both are optional, and for both, tier zero is a valid choice.
Wikipedia placements
Few, expensive slots in an environment with strict editorial rules — scarcity rather than volume.
- Four tiers with a clear ceiling. Bookable are 0, 1, 5 or 10 slots; the largest comes to USD 100.
- The unit price measures scarcity. An encyclopaedic environment is bound by editorial rules and survives scrutiny only where a genuine citation function is served.
- Persistence is the figure that counts. A lasting link is hard to replace; one removed after three weeks is worthless — and the client shares that risk.
PBN placements
Many, cheap slots from domain networks — the package that demands the most careful judgement.
- Four tiers up to 500 slots. Bookable are 0, 20, 100 or 500, so at most USD 500 a month — as much as an entire FullSEO licence.
- The price measures quantity, not value. Ten Wikipedia slots cost the same as a hundred PBN slots. That factor of ten is the most honest statement about the difference.
- Private blog networks are domain networks built for link acquisition. Cheap and quick to scale, and at odds with search engine guidelines on link spam. That is not a footnote but the central property of the add-on.
The economics of the two packages differ fundamentally. The PBN slots call for a plain word, because five hundred placements for five hundred dollars looks like an extraordinary ratio.
For brands with a long horizon the ratio is especially unfavourable: a Viennese specialist retailer stakes substance built over years for USD 500 a month, while the same money in editorial content carries no devaluation risk. To test the add-on anyway, treat it as an experiment — smallest tier, separate domain, defined observation window, never a domain your revenue depends on.
AutoSEO and FullSEO side by side
The comparison shows how few rows genuinely differ — and that the decisive one describes no feature, but a way of working.
| Feature | AutoSEO — USD 149 / month and domain | FullSEO — from USD 500 / month and domain |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword discovery | Automatic, with prioritisation | Plus manual selection with an automatic fallback |
| Backlink building | Automatic, network of 230,000+ websites | Plus manual targeting by Domain Rating |
| On-site changes | AI suggestions | Plus human review before anything goes live |
| Support | Platform and AI assistant | Plus specialists, developers and writers |
| Analytics and approval workflow | Full scope | Full scope |
| Wikipedia and PBN add-ons | Bookable in the same tiers | Bookable in the same tiers |
| Automatic/manual mode switch | Not available | Available any time, no re-setup |
| Base fee over twelve months per domain | USD 1,788 | USD 6,000 |
In practice the second-to-last row matters most: everything above it is features, the switch describes how they get used. The last row quantifies only the cost that appears on an invoice.
A worked example over twelve months
| Item | Option A — AutoSEO | Option B — FullSEO | Assumption |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base fee, twelve months | USD 1,788 | USD 6,000 | USD 149 / USD 500 per month and domain |
| Wikipedia slots | USD 0 | USD 50 | Tier 0 versus 5 slots at USD 10 |
| PBN slots | USD 0 | USD 0 | Tier 0, for the reasons given above |
| Internal working time | 36 hours = EUR 2,340 | 72 hours = EUR 4,680 | 3 and 6 hours per month at EUR 65 |
| Content production | 6 pages = EUR 1,500 | 12 pages = EUR 3,000 | EUR 250 per page |
| Total licence cost | USD 1,788 | USD 6,050 | excluding exchange rate and tax effects |
| Total internal and external cost | EUR 3,840 | EUR 7,680 | the part that appears on no invoice |
Two observations stand out. First, internal time plus content exceeds the licence fee in both options: comparing software costs alone compares the smaller half. Second, the step from A to B doubles the staffing effort.
A third figure is missing on purpose: the return. It depends on competitive density, starting visibility and conversion rate, and cannot be predicted credibly. Only the cost side is predictable, and it belongs on the table in full before anyone talks about expectations. Booking FullSEO without the extra hours means paying the premium and never collecting it: the most common costing mistake here.
A realistic time horizon, and the tier that fits
Automated campaigns invite daily checking. That is counterproductive, because the metrics respond at different speeds. A workable staging looks like this:
- Weeks 1 to 4 — activity. Are keywords found and approved, backlinks arriving, suggestions implemented? Here you measure the process, not the effect.
- Months 2 to 3 — early indicators. Impressions for newly worked terms, movement forward from beyond position 30, first changes in click-through rate. Click counts are still noisy.
- Months 4 to 6 — effect. Organic clicks, entries into the top ten, visibility for commercially important terms rather than easy ones.
- Months 7 to 12 — business figures. Enquiries, orders, revenue from organic traffic. Only here can you judge whether the USD 1,788 or USD 6,000 were well spent.
Anyone stopping after eight weeks because "nothing is happening" has observed correctly and concluded wrongly. If six months bring no movement in impressions or positions, the problem is rarely the tool but the substance of the pages, or a competitive situation this budget cannot win. That diagnosis, made early, saves more than any tier optimisation.
That leaves which tier suits which business. Four typical profiles, each with the reason that tips the balance:
Local service business
Physiotherapy practice, plumber, wine shop: manageable keyword space, local competition, nobody with weekly time for selection.
- Recommendation: AutoSEO
- Twenty minutes a month for approvals
- Add-ons: tier zero for both
Growing online shop
Several hundred items, seasonality, clear margin differences. Machine prioritisation is structurally blind to which range actually earns money.
- Recommendation: FullSEO
- Manual selection turns margins into priorities
- Human review protects category copy
Agency with a client portfolio
Twelve accounts on AutoSEO cost USD 1,788 a month, the same twelve on FullSEO USD 6,000. In practice a mixed set-up almost always emerges.
- Small retainers on AutoSEO
- Strategy budgets on FullSEO
- Collection work disappears across accounts
Company with country markets
An .at, a .de and a .ch domain mean three base fees. The same tier everywhere is rarely sensible; gradation by market importance is.
- Core market on FullSEO
- Secondary markets on AutoSEO
- Switch modes before seasonal peaks
Across all four profiles the choice reduces to three questions. Is there a named person who will spend four to six hours a month on approvals? Do the high-volume terms differ from those that bring in money? Must site changes stay offline until approved, for legal reasons? Two yeses point to FullSEO, two noes to AutoSEO. Either way, check the technical foundation of your website, because no campaign compensates for a site that is not served cleanly.
Frequently asked questions
Can I move from AutoSEO to FullSEO without losing the campaign?
Both tiers work in the same campaign area with the same keyword pool. Within FullSEO you can also switch between automatic and manual operation at any time without a re-setup. Plan the move for a quiet period even so.
Is FullSEO worth it if nobody has time for the manual interventions?
On the numbers, no. The USD 351 premium buys three intervention points and the support of specialists. Stay in automatic mode permanently and you pay for steering nobody operates. AutoSEO is then the honest choice, and the saved budget works harder in content.
Are the add-ons mandatory for a campaign to work?
No. Both tiers work in full at tier zero. Wikipedia slots are an expensive, scarce special case with a high bar for citation value; PBN slots a volume product with considerable risk to your own domain. If unsure, book neither and decide later.
What happens to deferred keywords?
They stay in the pool, neither going into production nor getting lost. The state exists for terms that fit on the merits but lack the page, budget or capacity. That list is the best basis for the next content planning round — vetted candidates, not raw ideas.
How many domains does an agency set-up need before it pays off?
Since billing is per domain, the licence holds no volume effect. The economy of scale appears in working time: collecting, documenting and reporting fall away across all accounts, and billable time shifts towards advice. From roughly five or six domains, time records show it.
The decision is not a question of price but of capacity. AutoSEO buys a running process; FullSEO adds the right and the duty to intervene. On the add-ons, the conservative position is the reasonable one: Wikipedia slots at most as a small test, PBN slots at zero in doubt. A costing is complete only once internal time, valued in money, sits in the same table as the licence fee.
To compare the tiers on your own domain, set up the campaign configuration and keyword pool straight from the Semalt dashboard and check against your Search Console data how many suggested terms deserve approval. That number says more about the right tier than any feature comparison.