How much does SEO cost for a UK business?

What SEO costs depends on which of six jobs you're buying, and until you know which of them you need, a quote tells you nothing. So start with a simple test. Can you say which of your important pages are indexed, which searches you show up for, and what's holding the site back? If you can't answer all three, your first job is a one-off audit that finds out and fixes the worst of it. If you can, because a recent audit or your own Search Console has told you, skip the audit and pay for the fixes. Our SEO audit and first fixes is a fixed £2,500 and takes about four weeks. Larger or more complicated sites sit higher in our published band of £2,500 to £8,000, and any ongoing work afterwards is optional, month to month, with no minimum term.

Those are our prices, not a market average. We haven't found a reliable source for a market average, so we don't quote one.

What you're actually paying for

"SEO" covers several different kinds of work, and two quotes are only worth comparing once you know which of them each one includes.

A cheap quote usually covers the first row or two, and an expensive one may cover all six, so compare prices only once you know which rows each quote is for.

How SEO is usually priced

• A one-off audit and fixes. You pay a fixed price for finding what's holding the site back and fixing the most important things. You know the cost up front, and you have something concrete at the end. It's the right first purchase when you can't yet answer the three questions at the top of this page.
• A monthly retainer, meaning a fixed fee every month for ongoing content, links and reporting. It makes sense once the foundations are right and there's a written plan for what each month produces. Bought before anyone knows what's holding the site back, it pays for work nobody has worked out yet.
• An hourly or day rate, which means paying for time, usually for advice or for specific jobs. It's flexible, but you carry the risk if the work runs long.
• Doing it yourself. The tools are free, so the only cost is your time, and there's a full section on that further down.

What makes SEO cost more, or less

The size and state of the site. Ten pages on a modern platform are quicker to fix than a few hundred built up over years, because the older site has old pages, redirects and duplicates to untangle.

How competitive the searches are. A local service in a market town is a different job from ranking nationally against companies with big content teams.

Local or national. Local SEO leans on your Google Business Profile, reviews and listings, all of which are on our local SEO checklist. National SEO leans on content and links, and both take longer and cost more.

How much content is needed. If the pages people need don't exist yet, someone has to write them, and that's often the biggest cost in ongoing SEO.

Who makes the changes. An SEO who can edit the site directly works faster than one writing instructions for a developer who's busy with something else.

What cheap SEO tends to leave out

Low monthly packages are common, and some are fine for what they are. Always ask what a package includes, though, because the gaps tend to be the same ones:

• No technical fixes, only a report. An automated audit tells you what's wrong, but someone still has to go and fix it. A proper one does more, so know what an SEO audit should include before you pay for one.
• Content nobody reads. Short, generic articles published to a schedule rarely rank, and they rarely bring enquiries. Google's guidance on helpful, people-first content asks whether content provides original information, research or analysis.
• Links that could hurt you. Google's spam policies treat both buying or selling links for ranking purposes and using automated services to create links as link spam.
• Rankings for phrases nobody searches for. A ranking only matters if that search brings you customers.
• No connection to enquiries. If the report never mentions enquiries or sales, you can't tell whether any of it is working.

What a year of SEO should look like

Knowing roughly what happens when is how you tell whether the work is on track. Here's the usual pattern for the site of a small or medium business:

That's a pattern, not a promise. A small local site with few competitors can move faster, and a national site in a crowded market moves more slowly. What matters is that you can see each stage happen.

Different businesses, different bills

Local service businesses get most of their SEO value from the Google Business Profile, reviews, listings and a website that says clearly what they do and where. That work has an end to it, so a single location can usually be done well inside a fixed project.

Online shops have more pages and large retailers to compete with, and more technical problems too, such as product variations, out-of-stock pages and filters that create duplicate pages. So they sit higher in any price range.

Business-to-business services often have few searches but valuable customers. The work is about being found, and believed, for the specific problems their buyers research before getting in touch.

In-house, or bought in

We'd split it. Someone in the business keeps the Google Business Profile up to date, asks for reviews and writes the occasional piece, while outside help handles the technical audit, the plan and the harder content. The site of a small or medium business rarely needs a full-time person just for SEO. It may well need a marketer who understands SEO, with specialist help for the technical parts.

Warning signs in a proposal

Google's own guide to hiring an SEO is short and worth reading first. It says nobody can guarantee a number one ranking on Google, and it warns against anyone claiming a special relationship with Google or advertising priority submission to it. We'd add four more:

• a long minimum term sold before anyone has looked at your site, with no break clause and nothing agreed about what should change;
• vague deliverables, such as "on-going optimisation", with nothing to point to at the end of the month;
• secrecy about what was done, or where the links came from;
• your Search Console, analytics or website logins held by the supplier rather than by you.

A long term isn't a warning sign on its own, and twelve-month SEO contracts do make sense in some situations.

Doing it yourself

A small or medium business can do a lot of its own SEO, as long as someone has the time. The core tools are free:

• Google Search Console shows which searches you appear for, which of your pages are on Google's list and what's broken.
• Google Business Profile controls how you appear in local results and on Maps.
• Bing Webmaster Tools does for Bing what Search Console does for Google.
• PageSpeed Insights tests how quickly your pages load, on phones and on computers.
• Keyword Planner, inside a Google Ads account, shows how often searches are made.

Skip the paid SEO tools at first. The real cost of doing it yourself is your time: learning, writing, changing things and keeping it up for months. Put an honest price on that time, even though you never pay it in cash.

When it pays for itself

Anyone who gives you a confident timeframe is guessing. Technical fixes can show within weeks, while new pages and links build over months, and how long SEO takes sets out which is which. Before you spend anything, do the sum that shows whether SEO is worth it for your business.

Agree a measure and a date before you start. Then check Search Console for the searches that matter, your analytics for visitors from unpaid search who get in touch, and every new customer for how they found you.

Comparing SEO quotes

Before you compare prices, put every quote through four checks that matter for SEO:

• I know which of the six kinds of work it includes, and which it leaves out.
• Technical problems will be fixed, not just reported.
• Any content will be written for my customers, and I'll see it before it's published.
• It explains how links will be earned, and says that none will be bought.

Then put it through the six checks every quote should pass, which include who owns your website, Search Console and analytics, a measure and a date agreed in advance, and a minimum term you understand. Any quote that guarantees you a ranking fails on that alone, whatever else it offers.

If you're weighing SEO against other channels, what marketing costs in the UK and how much a marketing consultant costs put it in context.