How much does SEO cost in the UK?
Published ranges, what each budget actually buys, and the point below which SEO stops being possible.
Most UK small businesses pay £500 to £2,000 a month for SEO. Freelancers typically charge £400 to £1,000 a month, independent agencies £1,000 to £3,000, and larger agencies £3,000 and up. One-off audits run £500 to £3,000 and hourly rates sit between £50 and £150. Below about £400 a month there are not enough paid hours to do the work properly, so treat cheaper packages with suspicion.
UK SEO prices in 2026
Prices vary more by supplier type than by the work involved. These are the ranges we see quoted across the UK market for small and medium businesses.
| Supplier | Monthly retainer | What you usually get |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | £400 to £1,000 | One person, 5 to 15 hours a month, strong on one discipline |
| Small agency | £1,000 to £3,000 | A small team, content plus technical plus reporting |
| Mid to large agency | £3,000 to £10,000 | Specialists per discipline, account management, digital PR |
| Cheap package seller | £99 to £350 | Automated reports, template content, little human time |
| Included with a site subscription | £300 to £2,500 | Website, hosting and monthly SEO as one product |
Other common pricing shapes: hourly consultancy at £50 to £150, a one-off technical or content audit at £500 to £3,000, and project work such as a migration or a content build at £2,000 to £15,000. Performance-based deals exist but usually price the risk back into the fee.
What each budget actually buys
SEO is mostly skilled hours. Working backwards from an hourly cost tells you more than any package name.
£300 to £600 a month
Roughly four to eight hours. Enough for local SEO on a small site: Google Business Profile work, on-page fixes, a page or a guide a month, technical monitoring. Realistic for a single-location service business in a normal local market. Not enough for competitive national terms.
£600 to £1,500 a month
Eight to twenty hours. Adds a genuine content programme, multi-area or multi-service expansion, internal linking work, conversion improvements and some link earning. This is where most ambitious local and regional businesses should be.
£1,500 to £3,000 a month
Twenty to forty hours across more than one specialist. Serious content volume, digital PR, technical depth on larger sites, competitor displacement work. Appropriate for competitive categories, multi-branch operations and ecommerce.
£3,000 and above
Team-scale delivery. Justified when the site is large, the margins are high, or the category is genuinely national and contested. Most local businesses do not need this and should be careful about being sold it.
What drives the price up
- Competition. Legal, finance and trades in big cities cost more to move.
- Site size. A twelve page site is a different job from a 2,000 page shop.
- Geography. One town, a region, or the whole UK are three different budgets.
- Technical debt. Slow or badly structured sites burn budget before any gains.
- Content need. Writing is the largest line item in most honest proposals.
- Links and PR. Optional in local, close to unavoidable nationally.
How to tell a good proposal from a bad one
Good signs:
- A clear picture of where the hours go each month.
- Specific keywords with real search volumes attached, not a generic list.
- Reporting that leads with enquiries and calls rather than rankings alone.
- An honest timeline, measured in months rather than weeks.
- Willingness to say what they will not do.
Warning signs:
- Guaranteed number one rankings. Nobody can guarantee this.
- A twelve month lock-in with no exit.
- Vague deliverables such as "ongoing optimisation" with no detail.
- Link packages sold by volume.
- Reports full of impressions and rankings for terms nobody searches.
- A price under £300 a month for anything described as full service.
Working out what it is worth to you
Take your average job value and your close rate on enquiries. If a job is worth £1,200 and you win one in three enquiries, each enquiry is worth £400. A £300 monthly fee needs less than one extra enquiry a month to break even, and SEO enquiries compound because the pages keep working.
Run the same sum before agreeing a £2,500 retainer. If your average job is £300, the retainer needs a volume of new work that may not exist in your local market. Budget should follow the arithmetic, not the ambition of the proposal.
What we charge, for comparison
We do not sell SEO as a standalone retainer. It is part of the subscription, because a site that was not built for search costs more to optimise afterwards.
| Plan | Monthly | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Local | £300 | One location, local search, monthly optimisation pass |
| Regional | £1,500 | Multi-town expansion, deeper content, owned site |
| National | from £2,500 | National strategy, digital PR, taken on selectively |
The part most cost guides skip
A retainer on a slow, badly structured website spends its first three months fixing the website. If you are about to commission SEO on a site you already dislike, price the rebuild into the decision, or read our guide onpaying monthly versus buying outrightfirst.
UK SEO cost at a glance
Monthly ranges by supplier type, with the hours each budget realistically buys.
| Budget | Hours a month | Realistic scope |
|---|---|---|
| UNDER £300 | 1 to 3 | Reports only, avoid |
| £300 TO £600 | 4 to 8 | Local SEO for a small site |
| £600 TO £1,500 | 8 to 20 | Content programme and multi-area growth |
| £1,500 TO £3,000 | 20 to 40 | Competitive categories, PR, ecommerce |
| £3,000 PLUS | 40 plus | National, large sites, specialist teams |
| ONE-OFF AUDIT | n/a | £500 to £3,000, useful only if acted on |
| HOURLY | n/a | £50 to £150 depending on seniority |
SEO cost questions
How much does SEO cost per month in the UK?+
Most UK small businesses pay between £500 and £2,000 a month for an ongoing SEO retainer. Freelancers typically sit at £400 to £1,000, independent agencies at £1,000 to £3,000, and larger agencies at £3,000 upwards. Included-SEO subscriptions such as ours bundle the work with the website, from £300 a month.
Is cheap SEO worth it?+
Below roughly £400 a month the arithmetic stops working. Real SEO needs several hours of skilled time each month, and at £200 a month there are not enough hours in the budget to do anything but send a report. Cheap packages usually mean automated audits, spun content and low quality links, which at best does nothing and at worst needs undoing.
How long before SEO pays for itself?+
For a local service business, expect early movement on low competition terms within two to three months, meaningful enquiry volume from month four to six, and a settled position by month nine to twelve. Competitive national terms take longer. Payback depends on your job value: one won job a month covers most local retainers.
Should I pay for SEO monthly or as a one-off project?+
A one-off audit or technical fix makes sense when you have someone in-house to act on it. Everything else about SEO is continuous, because competitors keep publishing and search keeps changing. A one-off project with no follow-up tends to decay within a year.
What should be included in an SEO retainer?+
Technical maintenance, on-page optimisation, new or improved content, local signals such as Google Business Profile work, digital PR or link earning where relevant, and reporting that shows enquiries rather than only rankings. If a proposal cannot tell you roughly how many hours go where, that is the warning sign.
Why is your SEO cheaper than an agency retainer?+
Because the website and the SEO are the same product rather than two suppliers billing separately, and because we run lean with no account management layer. The trade-off is scope: we do not manage paid ads, we batch changes into a monthly pass, and we take on National clients selectively.