How Much Does an SEO Agency Charge in the UK?
Almost nobody in this trade answers this in public. We publish ours, which are stated below alongside what each rate includes, so you can compare us against anybody else before making contact rather than afterwards.
Why Nobody Answers This
Search this question and you will find a great many pages that discuss pricing at length without stating a figure. There are two reasons for that. One is defensible and one is not.
The legitimate reason. The work genuinely varies.
What one business needs and what another needs are different enough that a single number would mislead. A firm competing in one town and a firm competing nationally are buying different quantities of work. Quoting one figure for both would be inaccurate.
The other reason. Published prices invite comparison.
A figure on a page can be compared with somebody else's figure, out of context, by somebody who has not yet been told why the work costs what it does. Keeping the number back until a conversation preserves the chance to explain first.
Why that second reason does not survive scrutiny. It is a sales preference.
Every trade that publishes prices manages to explain its value anyway. The argument amounts to wanting to control the order in which you receive information, which is reasonable for the seller and unhelpful for you.
What silence costs you. Time.
Without a figure you cannot tell whether a firm is in your range until several conversations have happened. That wastes your time and theirs, which is the odd part: the practice does not serve the seller particularly well either.
What this page does instead. Both.
Bands described by what the money buys, so the variation is explained. Our own figures stated plainly, so you have something concrete to work from.
The Ranges, And What Each One Buys
Monthly fees in this trade span a very wide range. What separates the bands is how many hours of whose time the fee represents, which is worth understanding before comparing anything.
The very low end. Below the cost of skilled time.
A fee smaller than a few hours of an experienced person's time cannot be buying a few hours of an experienced person's time. What it buys instead is automated output, offshore volume production or a very small amount of junior attention.
The lower band. A focused amount of real work.
Enough for somebody competent to do a defined, narrow piece of work each month. For a local business with one location and a modest site, that can be entirely sufficient, which is the point of our own local rate below.
The middle band. More hours, more breadth.
Enough to cover several workstreams at once rather than one, with somebody more senior making the decisions. This is where most businesses competing seriously in a region sit.
The upper band. Substantial time and seniority.
Large content programmes, technical work at scale and experienced people directing it. Appropriate for competitive national markets and considerable overspending for a local business.
Why the bands overlap so much in practice. Different shapes of firm.
A sole trader with no premises and a firm with an office can charge similar amounts for very different quantities of actual work, because their overheads differ. The fee is not a measure of how much work you receive.
What does not change across the bands. The knowledge.
The differences are hours and seniority. There is no secret method at the top of the market, no privileged access and nothing available to an expensive agency that a competent cheaper one cannot obtain.
Our Own Prices
We publish these so a business can compare us before speaking to us. Nothing here requires a conversation to find out. You are welcome to take these figures to somebody else and ask what they would include for the same money.
Local, £350 a month. Fixed.
One monthly rate covering everything in the local service, aimed at a business competing in one town or a defined area. It is a fixed figure rather than a starting point. It does not rise with the number of pages or locations within that area.
National, £1,550 a month. For competing beyond one area.
Substantially more time and senior attention, appropriate where the market is national or highly competitive. We will say plainly if a lower tier would serve you better, because selling this to a business that needs the local rate benefits nobody twice.
Which one you need. Decided by the market rather than by ambition.
A business serving one town does not need the national rate however much it would like to grow. The question is where your customers actually search from rather than where you would like them to.
What both include. The same commitments.
No setup charge, no tie-in protecting us rather than the work, your ownership of the website, then an update every three weeks. Those are the same whichever rate applies. Block seven covers what should never be charged for.
What is not on this page. A project price.
Defined pieces of work are quoted individually because their scope varies entirely. Quoting a figure for an unknown scope would be the thing block one criticises.
Why Very Cheap Is Expensive
Below a certain point the arithmetic makes it impossible for a fee to buy skilled attention. This is not a claim about anybody's character, it is a statement about what money can purchase.
The arithmetic. Work it out yourself.
Consider what a competent person's time costs per hour in any trade, then divide the monthly fee by it. Where that produces an implausibly small number of hours, something other than skilled time is being supplied.
What is actually being supplied. Volume.
Automated output, templated pages produced identically for many clients, else bulk activity that requires no judgement. None of it is necessarily malicious and none of it was decided by anybody looking at your business.
Why it can cost more than it saves. Removal is skilled work.
Some of what cheap arrangements produce has to be undone. Undoing is charged at normal rates by somebody experienced. You pay twice. The second payment is larger.
The cost nobody counts. The wrong conclusion.
A business that tries the cheapest option, sees nothing and decides this whole trade is a waste has purchased a false answer to an important question. That is more expensive than any fee.
Where the line actually falls. Not a fixed figure.
It moves with what a competent person's time costs, so it is not a threshold anybody can publish. The arithmetic above is the test rather than any number we could give you.
What to do with a small budget. Buy less, not worse.
Narrow the scope rather than lowering the standard. Our small business budget page covers what is genuinely achievable at the lower end.
What Actually Drives The Price
Four things determine what a sensible quote for your business looks like. A quote produced without knowing them is a guess, however confidently it is presented.
How competitive your market is. The largest factor.
Competing against a handful of local firms and competing against national companies with their own marketing departments require entirely different amounts of work for the same visibility.
The state of your site. The starting position.
A recent site on a sound platform needs far less remedial work than one that has accumulated problems for a decade. Somebody who has not looked cannot know which you have.
How much content is needed. Usually the biggest line.
A site already answering most of what customers ask needs a fraction of what a thin one does. This is where the majority of any budget goes, so it drives the total more than anything else.
Local or national. A different scale of task.
Competing in one town costs a fraction of competing nationally, which is precisely why our two published rates differ as much as they do.
What follows. The first-call quote problem.
All four are invisible without examining your site and asking about your business. A fixed figure offered before that was decided by a price list rather than by your situation.
Hourly, Monthly, Project And Performance
Four ways this gets charged. Three are straightforward and the fourth sounds fairest while creating the worst incentives.
Hourly. Uncommon and transparent.
You pay for time used. Straightforward in structure and awkward in practice, because neither party wants a conversation about whether something took four hours or six.
Monthly. The norm.
A recurring fee for continuing work, which suits work that does not finish. What should be inside it is covered in what should an SEO retainer include.
Project. For defined pieces of work.
A scope, a price and an end. Appropriate for a fix, a migration or an audit, priced individually because the scope varies.
Performance. Attractive and problematic.
Paying only for results sounds like the fairest arrangement available. It creates an incentive to pursue whatever is easiest to move rather than what matters to your business, then to avoid necessary work with no short-term payoff.
Why that incentive matters more than it sounds. You cannot see it operating.
The work that gets quietly skipped under performance pricing is the unglamorous maintenance nobody would notice missing until much later. That is a structural problem rather than a question of anybody's integrity.
What Should Not Be Charged
Two things that should not appear on an invoice. We do not charge for either and we state them as things a business should expect from anybody.
A setup fee. Charging for starting.
An additional one-off amount at the beginning, over and above the agreed fee. The early work is part of the engagement rather than a separate purchase. A firm charging for it is charging you for its own onboarding.
Anything for access to your own data. Including reports.
Your analytics, your search reporting and your business profile belong to you. Charging for access to them, else presenting reporting as a separate service line, is charging you for the right to see your own information.
Why these two specifically. They are the common ones.
Both are widespread, both are frequently accepted without question and both are easy to spot once you know to look. A quote containing either is worth querying rather than automatically refusing.
What is reasonable to charge for. Genuine additional work.
Something outside the agreed scope, requested by you, quoted separately and agreed in advance. That is ordinary and it is different from a fee for administration.
Where the rest sits. The contract page.
These are two of four commitments. The full set is on what is a typical SEO agency contract.
Comparing Quotes Properly
Two quotes are rarely for the same work, so the cheaper number tells you almost nothing until you have established what each one actually contains.
What to establish first. Time and scope.
Roughly how much time each represents and which workstreams are included. A quote covering content, technical work and local listings is a different purchase from one covering content alone at the same price.
The question that normalises them. What is excluded.
Ask each firm what is not included. Exclusions are where the real scope lives. A quote listing none has simply not stated them rather than having none.
What makes the cheaper one cheaper. Usually visible once you ask.
Fewer hours, more junior people, a narrower scope or work done elsewhere. Any of those may be perfectly acceptable. You should know which applies rather than assuming a better deal.
What to ignore while comparing. The document.
Presentation quality tells you about a firm's design capability rather than about the work. A plain quote describing more work beats a handsome one describing less.
The comparison nobody makes. Against doing nothing.
Two quotes get compared against each other and rarely against the option of spending the money elsewhere in the business. That third comparison is frequently the most useful one available.
Whether to buy at all. The prior question.
Before comparing anything, establish whether the arithmetic supports the spend for your business, which is covered in is it worth paying an SEO company. The full series is on the hiring an SEO agency guide.
Take these
figures to
somebody else.
Ask what they would include for the same money, then ask what they exclude. We publish our rates so the comparison can happen before you speak to anybody, including us. We will tell you if the lower rate suits your market better.
What both rates include:
Local £350 a month fixed. National £1,550 a month. Published rather than quoted on request.
Every guide.
One practice.
What an agency is, whether to buy at all, which model suits you, how to vet one, what things cost, what should be in a contract and how to work with them afterwards.
