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Compensation expectations and reality for an experienced SEO
Posted by on February 3, 2026 at 2:57 pmHello everyone, i wanted to gauge people opinion on this topic. I am from Europe and work for a company in Canada. Contractor, no benefits no nothing. Just monthly pay. I have around 10 years of experience and i would say i do pretty senior like tasks on my job. On top of that i do all the analytics for our clients. This includes GA4, GTM, looker studio, BigQuery ….
What would one expect to be payed for this experience and work. I also do client facing work. I checked average pays for Canada and i can honestly say that Junior SEO is payed 3 times more than me. At least! And somehow i managed to calculate the agency/pay split. And it comes out that i am payed around 10% of what i actually earn the company. Is this normal, am i wrong for thinking i should be compensated better?In several interviews, once i said what my pay is, the owner/hiring manager actually laughed.
Please share honest opinions, i am not here to start a ruckus, just wondering how to put myself in a better position.
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1 Reply
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I’d say the pay difference between Canada and the US is like 50%-30%. And the US and West EU is like 66% vs 33% and East EU like 10%-25%
It depeends who you talk to though>? Did you talk to full SEO agencies or agencies who “do SEO too”?
Like there’s an SEO agency on the CA-US border – they’re a “top ranker” (as best I can get to naming them) – that barely pay a livable wage from what I’ve heard – like maybe $45-50k.
Just to help you out u/Hemunac – the way I read your post – and I would assume any top tier Agency SEO leader (like someone who’s technical would too) – is that the way you wrote your experience leaks a lack of confidence or a lack of breadth. You put more emphasis on analytics tools and 0% on any SEO skills – that says to me you’re strictly a Technical SEO.
No shade – but Technical SEO needs to be done by Web Devs – whoever built the site, will get tech support tickets raised by the SEO team. The fact that you didn’t list architecture, content, keyword research – raised a massive red flag for me.
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A more typical agency pay split would result in you getting 1/3 of what the agency brings in.
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My salary in SEO over the last 4 years has been:
38k -> 42k -> 50k -> 75k -> 105k – $132k
So, really low starting point, but I still have upside as a sr. manager and beyond.
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I’m gonna avoid the conversations here about skill set and take it at face value you’re a middle/sr. SEO with 10yrs exp.
You should be able to likely negotiate 30-45usd/hr as a contractor. I’m assuming you’re a contractor for the Canadian company. You could maybe negotiate higher if you can show some very serious skill sets, but we find we don’t contract higher than that outside of North America.
Similar NA contractors charge about 45-75/hr and then very sr. SEOs in the 100-150hr range.
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You are earning about $10 an hour if you get $22k per year and work 40 hours per week. Cashiers at Tim Hortons earn about $17 an hour.
Senior in-house SEO roles should be getting $130-$150k.
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Actually SEO is not attrative job like social media or paid. People have different perception about SEO guy’s. Even in my company they consider SEO is like garbage (words of my senior. in hindi “SEO toh kachra he”). but from this garbage company earns approx 15L-20L. and with the lots of work it is not possible to work proper on projects. so i asked for one resource and from last 4 month i am waiting for resource.
in india, SEO person with exp of 5 years get 60k per month (depending on the company).
and if you have 10 years experience with good track of providing result, you can ask upto 1.3L-1.5L per month.
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