SEO Pricing: How much does SEO cost in the UK?
You’ve probably arrived here on your quest for accurate and up to date SEO cost in the UK. Look no further!
We know it’s a highly searched topic, and the answer isn’t always clear. Many of the search results are from International websites, or offer little or no explanation on pricing for a UK business. In this article we’ll take a look at SEO pricing in the UK for 2022, and what you can expect to pay.
Firstly, let’s take a look at the basics with some information on what SEO is, and how it can help your business.
What is SEO?
Let’s start at the beginning. If you’re looking at marketing your business online for the first time, you’ll want to know a little about SEO.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is the practice of making changes to a website and other sources on the web that link to it, for the purpose of improving ranking positions in organic search.
What is organic search? Organic search results are non-paid results, that are based on the relevance and authority of a website. You cannot pay Google to appear higher in these. Any paid or sponsored listings will always be marked clearly with ’Ad’. Usually appearing at the top or bottom of the Google results pages.
SEO can be done by a website owner to a certain extent, where making basic optimisations can help to increase visibility online. Often site owners opt for an SEO agency to provide a more professional and results-driven approach.
How can SEO help my Business?
As long as search engines have been around, people and businesses have wanted to improve their ranking positions.
Why? Generally speaking, the higher the position, the higher the traffic to the website. And generally, that’s what we want! Of course we want that traffic to convert to enquires and sales. But, getting the traffic and potential customers to the website is step one.
SEO should be a long term strategy to improve search positions. It’s not a quick fix, but regular SEO will help optimise your website and prove invaluable in time. Google and other search engines design their ranking algorithms to stop quick gains, keeping search results fair and favouring longer established, reputable websites and businesses.
The mention of a long term tactic or strategy often puts people off the idea. But, it’s worth it! Once you’ve achieved solid, high ranking positions for your main keywords, the traffic will flow from organic searches, with relatively little cost to preserve these positions.
The goal is to demonstrate to Google, and other search engines, that your website is useful, informative, easy to navigate and an authoritative source of information. In recent years, Google have used E-A-T to assess a website. What does this mean?
Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness
If you can demonstrate this to Google with the contents of your website, you’re going in the right direction!
SEO Pricing UK Structures
Is the world of SEO and digital marketing, there are usually 3 ways your can hire an SEO agency. It all depends on your project, your website and what your SEO goals are.
Per Hour SEO
It may be appropriate to hire an SEO agency or freelancer by the hour, depending on what level of SEO is needed for your website. If you are aware of the type and amount of SEO work needed on your website, and this could be a one-off optimisation, then paying per hour could be the way to go.
When looking at paying a professional per hour, our advice would be to establish what exactly is to be done and how many hours will be required to do the work. This sets out a milestones for what you are paying for, to ensure it is delivered.
Pay Monthly SEO
Pay monthly SEO is by far the most popular SEO pricing structure. A fixed amount each month for ongoing search engine optimisation work.
The rates, SEO work and cost can vary massively. Usually a reputable SEO agency will detail what is involved within each of their SEO packages, and how long you should expect to wait to see results for your website in organic search. This can also vary depending on your website, your chosen keywords or phrases, and the competition for each of these.
Per Project SEO
A less common solution to SEO, but can be more suitable for a larger, more bespoke optimisation project. As with per hour SEO, we’d always advise having a clear agreement of what will take place for the per project fixed price.
Latest SEO Cost in the UK
So, now you know what SEO is, how it can help your business, and the different SEO cost and pricing structures, let’s look at the latest expected SEO cost for the UK.
We’ve categorised this into four categories of pay monthly pricing, based on our own experience and knowledge of the UK SEO industry.
DIY SEO: £0
Completely free SEO. If you’re willing to do it yourself. And have a reasonable understanding of basic optimisation, and how to make changes to your website. If you are comfortable to begin your SEO journey by doing SEO yourself, take a look at our SEO Checklist for 2022 to get you started.
Budget SEO Cost: £50 – £500 per month
Who doesn’t want a low cost SEO solution? Depending on the agency, and low cost SEO Packages on offer, this spending range can be suitable for most small UK businesses. Especially those just starting out of operating to a local customer base. These low cost packages can also benefit smaller e-commerce websites that sell products online.
A note on low cost SEO: there is such a thing as genuine low cost SEO Services in the UK, but there are many, many people offering really cheap SEO. Do some research on the individual or agency before committing to an SEO service. Including a good look at reviews and customer feedback. SEO can be too cheap, and you’ll get little, if any, benefit for your website.
Mid Range SEO Cost: £500 – £5000 per month
Usually suited to established businesses with larger websites wishing to improve their online ranking or presence significantly, and for high competition search terms. With such an investment it’s always worth asking to see client case studies and proof of past results. This can help to determine a return on investment for your SEO costs.
High End SEO Cost: £5000+ per month
Most often for large e-commerce websites with hundreds or thousands of products. Monthly SEO is a necessity with such large websites. Keeping listings, images and navigation up to date, ensuring everything works at it should, while constantly auditing and optimising for competitive search terms.
SEO Cost & Pricing in the UK – Conclusion
SEO can be seen as expensive, but it should be seen as a tool to grow your business, and if done right, is a worthwhile investment. While carrying out SEO yourself can be cheaper, people are often faced with a steep learning curve, and find themselves having to invest a lot of time into learning the current ranking techniques and staying up to date with search engine trends. When working with an experienced SEO agency, the benefits are numerous, as the agency will undoubtedly invest time and money into the latest tools, software and training to better rank websites online.
Related FAQs
How much does local SEO cost?
Local SEO is much the same as national SEO and involves many of the same optimisation processes. The difference being, local SEO focuses on businesses that want to be found in their local area, such as tradesmen. Local SEO costs are generally lower but can vary among SEO agencies. As a guide, it’s reasonable to expect to pay between £100 and £1000 per month, depending on the SEO strategy required.
How much does an sEO audit cost?
Many SEO agencies, freelancers and consultants offer an SEO audit service as a starting point for businesses looking to improve their presence online. SEO agencies generally charge between £100 and £500 for an SEO audit, with some offering a free audit. See our free SEO audit service.
how much does sEO cost for a small business?
Much the same as local SEO, a small business looking to increase their website presence online for relevant search queries can expect to spend between £100 and £1000 per month. This does depend on the keywords or search terms, the competition and SEO strategy.
How we can help
Now we’ve given you an insight into SEO pricing in the UK, which we hope has been useful, we’ll tell you a little about us! We’re Studio 36 Digital, a small, family run SEO agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. We specialise in working with small and medium sized UK businesses to offer a cost-effective solution to ranking online.
Heading back to the Latest SEO Cost & Pricing above, we develop our SEO services and packages to be at the affordable end of the scale. We offer businesses the means too rank above their larger, more established competitors who generally have a significantly larger marketing budget.
As you’re here to find out about SEO cost and pricing in the UK, we can tell you that our SEO Packages start at £149 per month. And, we think that’s great value!
If you have any questions, or would like to see information and prices on our own SEO Packages, please get in touch.
