How much does SEO cost in the UK?

It’s usually the first question people ask us about SEO, and the honest answer is that it depends. That can sound like a way of avoiding the question, so this article explains exactly what it depends on.

We don’t publish a price list for SEO because two businesses asking for “SEO” can need completely different amounts of work. A joiner who wants to be found in one town and a manufacturer selling across the UK are both buying SEO, but one needs a fraction of the work the other does. Once you know what drives the cost, any quote you’re given becomes much easier to judge.

How many keywords you want to rank for

This is the biggest factor. Every search you want to turn up for needs a page on your site that answers it properly, and that page needs looking after.

A plumber who wants to rank for “plumber Hull” and a handful of related searches needs a small amount of focused work. A business that wants to rank for forty different services across six towns needs dozens of pages, each written for what people are searching for, plus the work to get each one ranking and keep it there.

More keywords means more pages, more content and more to track each month. It’s the main reason one SEO quote can be several times another.

How hard those keywords are to rank for

Some searches are far more competitive than others. Tools such as Semrush give every keyword a difficulty score, based on how strong the websites already on the first page are. The higher the score, the more it takes to get in among them.

Broad, high-volume searches tend to be the hardest. “What is SEO” scores in the 80s out of 100, because huge, long-established websites already own the results. A more specific search, like a service plus a town, often scores much lower and can be won with focused work.

Harder keywords need more content, more links from other websites and more time. That’s why we look at difficulty before recommending which keywords to go after. A realistic target you can win this year is usually worth more than a famous keyword you won’t rank for.

How far you want to reach

Ranking in one town is a different job from ranking across a county or the whole country. Local searches lean heavily on your Google Business Profile, reviews and local pages. National searches put you up against every business in your field, which usually means more content and more authority to compete.

What state your website is in now

If the site is slow, badly structured or has technical problems that stop Google reading it properly, those need fixing before anything else will work. Good content won’t rank on a site Google struggles to crawl.

We saw this with Morton Magic, a close-up magician in Lincolnshire. During lockdown his hosting failed and the site went down, and rankings he’d held for years disappeared. Before any rankings could be rebuilt, the site had to be repaired and moved somewhere reliable so Google could index it again. That groundwork was part of the cost, and it would have been for anyone in his position.

A site in good shape needs less of this. A site with years of problems needs more.

How much content needs writing

Some businesses already have good pages that need tightening up. Others need service pages, location pages and supporting articles written from scratch. Content takes time to research and write well, so the gap between what you have and what you need makes a real difference to the cost.

Who you’re competing with

If the businesses above you have been investing in SEO for years, catching them up takes longer than overtaking competitors who have barely touched it. Looking at who ranks now, and how strong their sites are, tells you a lot about the size of the job.

One-off work or ongoing

Some SEO is a one-off: a technical audit, fixing what it finds and setting the site up properly. Most businesses that want to keep ranking choose ongoing work, because search changes, competitors keep moving and new content keeps you visible. A one-off job and a monthly arrangement are priced differently, and it’s worth being clear which you’re being quoted for.

What to be wary of

A few things should make you cautious when you’re comparing quotes:

• Guaranteed first-page rankings. Nobody controls Google’s results, so nobody can guarantee them.
• Very cheap packages that promise lots of links. Low-quality links can do more harm than good, and cleaning up after them costs money.
• Long contracts you can’t get out of. If the work is going well, you won’t need a contract to keep you there.
• Reports full of numbers that don’t mention enquiries. Rankings and traffic matter because of the work they bring in.

How we work out a price

We start by looking at the searches that would bring you work, how difficult each one is, how your site is set up now and who you’re up against. From that we can tell you which keywords are worth going after first and how much work it will take, before you commit to anything.

There’s no long contract. If you’d like us to look at your site and tell you what it would take, get in touch or read more about how we do SEO. If you’re local, here’s how we handle SEO in Hull.