How much does SEO cost in the UK?
by Harry Watts
Most UK search engine optimisation (SEO) is sold as a monthly retainer, and published prices cluster around £800 a month: the middle of 45 published UK prices collected in June 2026 was £799, with half of them between about £410 and £1,500. Around that, freelancers typically charge £300 to £2,500 a month and agencies anything from £1,000 to £20,000 or more. What moves a quote within those bands is the amount of work it covers: on-page, off-page and technical.
So if you've had three quotes, say £300, £1,200 and £3,500 a month, all three can be normal market prices. The useful question isn't which is cheapest. It's what each one covers, what it leaves for you to pay separately, and whether the work it covers is the work your site needs. The rest of this article takes those in turn, with the figures sourced and dated.
UK SEO prices by type of provider
There is no large, independent, UK-only survey of SEO prices. The best UK evidence is Whito's UK SEO cost research, which collected 45 published monthly prices in June 2026 and re-read 38 of them in October (the middle had moved to £837.50). Its bands by provider type are planning figures rather than a sample, so the table sets them beside the agency pricing pages that rank for the same question.
| Provider | Monthly retainer | Day or hourly rate |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | £300–£2,500 | About £375–£415 a day |
| Independent consultant | £500–£2,000 | £100–£250 an hour |
| Small agency | £1,000–£3,000 | About £900–£1,125 a day plus VAT, from two published rate cards covering all digital work |
| Mid-size agency | £3,000–£7,000 | |
| Large agency | £7,000–£20,000+ |
Sources, read 5 November 2026: Whito's bands (Q1 2026) for every row, with Visionary Marketing and Whitehat SEO broadly agreeing on the freelancer and agency bands. The consultant band rests on Whito alone. Freelance day rates are YunoJuno's booking data (£374) and the ITJobsWatch contract median (£413, from two quoted rates in the six months to 5 November 2026); agency day rates come from two published UK rate cards, compiled by Whito, neither of them for SEO alone.
One-off SEO projects and what they cost
Not all SEO is a retainer. Some of it is a single job with a start and an end, priced as a project. These are the common ones, with the ranges published pages give for each:
| Project | Typical UK price | Source |
|---|---|---|
| SEO audit | £500–£3,000 | Whito; ProfileTree |
| Site migration (moving or rebuilding a site without losing rankings) | £1,000–£5,000, more on a large site | Whito; Whitehat SEO quotes up to £15,000 |
| Local SEO setup | £250–£800 | Whito only |
| An article | £100–£600 | Whitehat SEO; Visionary Marketing |
| A link earned through digital PR | About £610 on average | BuzzStream survey, via Whito |
The digital PR figure comes from BuzzStream's survey of about 70 practitioners, just over half of them in the UK, where the average cost per link among UK respondents was $818 (about £610, as Whito converts it). A small sample, but the only survey found. Migration is where published prices disagree most, because the work depends on how many pages are moving and how many of them already rank.
What moves the price: the amount of work
Whatever the provider, a quote should follow from how much there is to do, and the work comes in three kinds:
- Technical: whether search engines can crawl, index and load the site properly.
- On-page: the pages themselves, what each one targets, and the content on it.
- Off-page: what other sites say about you, in links, mentions, reviews and listings.
Where a quote includes a one-off fee for groundwork before the monthly work starts, that fee comes down to how SEO-ready your site already is. A site that already follows technical best practice needs less fixing before the real work starts, and if the foundations are sound I can move straight to content strategy and creation.
The technical foundations that decide how much groundwork a site needs:
- Crawlability and indexation: every page you want found can be crawled and indexed, with an XML sitemap submitted in Google Search Console.
- Title tags and meta descriptions written for each page's target query, with a single H1.
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals on mobile, with the site served over HTTPS.
- Site structure: no broken links or redirect chains, and a logical internal linking structure.
- Local signals: for a local business, a Google Business Profile whose name, address and phone number match the site.
The one I most often find missing in practice is title tags and meta descriptions that exist but are generic placeholders, with zero thought towards SEO.
That is why two quotes for the same site can be £300 and £3,500 a month and both be honest: they cover different amounts of work. Ask each provider what they found on the site and what the fee covers each month.
The fee, and the work it doesn't include
An SEO fee pays for someone's time and judgement. It often doesn't pay for everything that judgement asks for. Three costs regularly sit outside the fee. Whito's research notes that retainers typically exclude content production unless the quote says otherwise, and Visionary Marketing lists developer time and link acquisition as separate budget lines:
- Content: new pages and articles, produced by the provider, a copywriter or you.
- Developer time: technical fixes your website platform or developer has to make, which no SEO provider can make inside a site they can't edit.
- Links and digital PR: campaigns to earn coverage on other sites, often priced per campaign or per link.
None of these is a reason to distrust a quote. A quote that doesn't say which of them it includes is. Before comparing three quotes on price, put each one in the same shape: what's in the fee, what's extra, and who does the extras.
Retainer, project, hourly or pay on results
The pricing model matters as much as the number, because each one rewards something different. The largest survey of how often each is used is global rather than British: Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers (updated August 2024), and many offer more than one model.
Monthly retainer, offered by 78.2% of those providers. A fixed fee for ongoing work. It suits SEO because results build gradually, but it rewards continuity rather than output, so ask for a plan of what gets done each month, agreed before the work starts.
Project, offered by 48.9%. A fixed price for a defined job, such as an audit or a migration. It rewards finishing the job; what happens to the recommendations afterwards is up to you.
Hourly or day rate, offered by 34.8%. You pay for time. Good for advice and for a business with its own people to do the work, and you carry the risk if the time runs over.
Pay on results, where you pay when agreed keywords reach agreed positions. No reliable figure says how common it is. It sounds safe, but it rewards choosing keywords that are easy to rank for rather than the ones that bring customers, and Google's own guidance is blunt about the promise underneath it: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google."
Does it pay? The arithmetic
None of the pages ranking for this question works out whether the fee can pay back from your own margins, and that is the question that decides it. The method is the one in the Google Ads cost article, with one difference: SEO charges you for months before it brings anything in.
1. What's a customer worth? A paying customer, averaged across all of them, in profit. Say an average job brings in £900 at 40% margin: a customer is worth £360.
2. How many new customers does the fee need? At £1,000 a month, £1,000 ÷ £360 is about 2.8, so three new customers a month from organic search. Only new ones count: people searching for your business by name would have found you anyway.
3. How many visits is that? If 5% of visitors convert and half of those become customers, that's 40 visits per customer, so 120 extra visits a month from searches that aren't your name. Swap in your own rates the moment you have them.
4. Is there that much search to win? Check the monthly searches for the terms you'd target. If you already run Google Ads, start from its search terms report.
Now run it at a year. Google's 2017 video on how to hire an SEO says that in most cases an SEO needs "four months to a year" to implement improvements and then see potential benefit. At £1,000 a month, that is up to £12,000 paid before the benefit shows. If the business can carry that, the sum above tells you whether it's worth it. If it can't, SEO at that scope isn't right for it right now: a smaller scope, or paid search first while organic builds, is the way back to it. The guide to getting your business on Google sets the routes side by side.
The warning signs are in the promises, not the price
A low monthly fee isn't a warning sign in itself. What SEO should cost depends on the amount of work: on-page, off-page and technical. Judge a quote by what it covers.
The signs worth worrying about are in what a provider promises, not what they charge:
- A guaranteed ranking. Google says that if someone guarantees their changes will put you first in search results, "find someone else".
- Bought links. Google's spam policies list "exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links" as link spam, unless the link is marked as paid with a
rel="sponsored"orrel="nofollow"attribute. - No agreed list of what gets done. A monthly fee with no monthly plan can't be judged on anything.
- Reports that show only rankings. A position on a search nobody makes isn't worth paying for. Ask for visits and conversions from organic search, with searches for your own name left out.
Whoever does the work, Google is clear about where responsibility sits: "you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire".
Quick answers
What does SEO cost a month?
The middle of 45 published UK prices collected in June 2026 was £799 a month. Freelancers typically charge £300 to £2,500 a month, small agencies £1,000 to £3,000, mid-size agencies £3,000 to £7,000 and large agencies £7,000 to £20,000 or more. The amount of on-page, off-page and technical work decides where a quote sits.
What does an SEO audit cost?
Usually £500 to £3,000 as a one-off project, depending on the size of the site and how deep the audit goes. Google's own guidance says an audit should give you realistic estimates of improvement and an estimate of the work involved, so ask what you'll receive before comparing prices.
Is a low quote a bad sign?
Not in itself. What SEO should cost depends on the amount of work: on-page, off-page and technical. The warning signs are a guaranteed ranking, links bought to lift rankings, and no agreed plan of what gets done each month.
Does the fee include content and links?
Often not. Retainers typically exclude content production unless the quote says otherwise, and developer time and digital PR are commonly priced separately. Ask each provider what's in the fee, what's extra and who does the extras.
Freelancer or agency?
Decide by the work, not the label. Where a site mainly needs technical fixes and a steady content plan, one experienced freelancer or consultant can cover it. Either way, ask for the monthly plan up front.
Comparing the quotes you have
How I work on SEO is on the SEO service page. A free intro call, thirty minutes and no charge, is enough to go through the quotes with you, what each one covers and leaves out, and what to ask each provider before you choose.