How much does SEO cost in the UK? It depends on how competitive your market is and how much work your site needs, and most SEO is paid for monthly rather than as a one-off. Our own SEO starts from £500 a month. Below, we explain how SEO is priced, what a month with us includes, and what changes the price.
1. How SEO pricing works
There’s no official price list for SEO. Most of it is sold in one of three ways.
Monthly SEO
Most SEO is sold as a monthly plan, because the work builds over time: fixing what’s holding the site back, improving pages, adding content and earning links.
One-off audits
An audit tells you what’s wrong and what to fix first. It’s useful on its own if you have someone to do the work, but it doesn’t do the work for you.
Hourly and day rates
Freelancers and consultants often charge by the hour or day, which suits ad hoc advice or a fixed piece of work.
2. What SEO costs with us
From £500 a month
Our SEO starts from £500 a month, and it runs month to month: there’s no long contract, and you give us 14 days’ notice if you want to stop.
What a month includes
Our base plan includes, every month:
- three of your key pages improved
- a new article or page
- four Google Business Profile posts
- work on links from relevant sites
Behind that sits the technical work that keeps your site healthy, and a short report each month shows what moved and what’s next. We adjust the scope to suit each business.
3. What changes the price
How competitive your market is
If lots of businesses are going after the same searches, it takes more work to get ahead of them.
How many services or locations you have
Each service and each place you want to show up for needs its own pages and attention.
Where your site starts from
A site with technical problems, thin pages or very few links needs more work before the rest can pay off.
How much content and how many links each month
More new pages, more articles and more link work each month means a bigger plan.
4. What local SEO costs
If your customers are local, local SEO is part of the same monthly plan rather than an extra. A local month covers your Google Business Profile, posts and replies to reviews, keeping your listings consistent, the pages on your site that back up your profile, and a monthly report. Our local SEO page explains how it works.
5. How long before you see results
Results usually begin to show within three to six months, depending on how competitive your market is and where your site starts from. Technical fixes can show sooner, while content and links build up over time. Our guide to how long SEO takes goes into what to look for along the way.
6. What to watch out for when SEO is priced very low
- Guarantees of first place: nobody controls Google’s results, so nobody can promise you the top spot.
- Bought links: Google treats buying links to boost rankings as spam, so they can do more harm than good.
- No clear monthly work: ask what you’ll get each month and how it’ll be reported.
If you’re comparing agencies, our guide to choosing an SEO agency has the questions worth asking.
If you’re also budgeting for a new site, our guide to what a website costs in the UK covers that side.
To see what’s included and ask for a quote, have a look at how our monthly SEO works.
You can email us at hello@thesocialbay.co.uk, fill in our start a project form, or call or message us on 07441 918230.
Frequently asked questions about SEO costs
Is £500 a month enough for SEO?
It can be, for a small or local business in a market that isn’t too crowded. It’s where our plans start, and we’ll tell you before anything starts if we think your market needs more.
Is SEO a monthly cost or a one-off?
Usually monthly. A one-off audit or fix can help, but rankings build up over months of steady work, and they need looking after once you have them.
Do I have to sign a long contract?
Not with us. Our SEO runs month to month, with 14 days’ notice if you want to stop. We’d suggest giving it at least six months, because SEO takes time to build, and your monthly reports let you judge for yourself how it’s going.
Can anyone guarantee first place on Google?
No. Google decides its own results, so be wary of anyone who promises a particular position. What a good agency can promise is the work, and clear reporting on what it’s doing for you.
