Salary benchmarks for 24 markets
What SEO pays country by country and city by city, on one comparable scale.
SEO Job Offer Comparison Tool
Compare up to three offers on what they actually deliver: base plus bonus, annualised equity, employer contributions and benefits, minus commuting — then normalised to a value per working day so different holiday allowances stop distorting the comparison.
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Offer 1
Total grant ÷ vesting years. Discount private-company equity heavily.
Offer 2
Total grant ÷ vesting years. Discount private-company equity heavily.
Offer 3
Total grant ÷ vesting years. Discount private-company equity heavily.
Why base salary is the wrong comparison
Two offers with the same base salary can differ by twenty percent in what they actually deliver. Bonus targets, employer retirement contributions, healthcare value, holiday allowance and commuting cost all move real compensation, and none of them appear in the number candidates fixate on.
The per-working-day figure is the most useful line in the output. An offer with 28 days of holiday and one with 20 are not comparable on annual salary — the first is paying the same money for eight fewer days of your life.
How to value the equity line honestly
Equity is the component candidates most often overvalue. A few rules that hold up:
- Public company RSUs. Annualise the grant over the vesting period and count it close to face value, discounted for share-price risk.
- Late-stage private RSUs. Discount heavily — 40 to 60 percent is not unreasonable — and check whether there is a liquidity path at all.
- Early-stage options. Treat as a lottery ticket. Enter zero, then look at the resulting comparison. If the offer only wins with the options counted at face value, you are being paid in optimism.
- Always ask about the vesting schedule, the cliff, the strike price, the current preferred valuation, and what happens to unvested equity if you leave.
Our guide to SEO manager salary and benefits covers how packages are typically structured at each level.
What the calculator cannot price
Three things routinely matter more than the total and cannot be entered into any tool:
- The manager. The single largest determinant of whether the next two years advance your career or stall it.
- Scope you do not already have. A role that gives you a channel, a budget, a team or a harder technical problem is worth taking at flat pay, because it moves the whole band you can access afterwards.
- Whether the company believes in organic search. An SEO role inside a company that will not fund engineering time for it is a frustrating job at any salary.
Before the offer stage, benchmark the band with the salary calculator and read the negotiation guide.
Frequently asked questions
How do I compare two SEO job offers properly?
Convert both to true total compensation — base, bonus, annualised equity, employer retirement contribution and benefits, minus commuting cost — then divide by working days after holiday. That per-day figure is the only apples-to-apples comparison when packages are structured differently. This calculator does both steps.
How much is a day of holiday worth?
Roughly your true total compensation divided by 260. On a $100,000 package that is about $385 a day, so the difference between 20 and 28 days of holiday is worth around $3,000 a year — usually more than the base salary difference candidates agonise over.
Should I take a lower offer for a better title?
Only if the title comes with scope. A director title without budget or reports does not survive the next interview, because the questions expose it immediately. Scope you can evidence raises your next offer; a title alone does not.
Is it worth negotiating a small difference?
Almost always, because base salary compounds: every future raise and every future offer is anchored to it. A $5,000 increase now is worth far more than $5,000 over a career. The realistic downside of a well-researched, politely made ask is close to zero.
Sources and further reading
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists — official occupational wage and projected-growth data for the SOC code most SEO roles fall under
- Payscale — SEO Specialist salary research — self-reported pay by experience band, available per country
- Glassdoor — SEO Specialist pay trends — employee-reported base pay and percentile ranges
- ZipRecruiter — SEO salary data — job-ad derived ranges, including metro-level breakdowns
Figures on this page are aggregated market estimates compiled from the sources above and are intended for orientation, not as an offer, guarantee or valuation. See our salary data methodology.