Question answered
How much does SEO cost in the UK?
Answered by Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 4 September 2026 · 4 min read
SEO in the UK is priced four ways: a monthly retainer, an hourly or day rate, a fixed project fee, or a percentage of something, and the honest measure of any of them is how many hours of a competent person the fee buys. A small or mid-sized business is usually on a retainer that buys eight to fifteen hours a month, front-loaded into the first month, and the range in the market is wide because some of it is a person's time and some of it is software output sold as a person's time.
What moves the cost, and what should not
Two things move the cost honestly: how many areas, services or product lines need their own pages and evidence, and how much new content a month. One town and one service line is the bottom of any price list; several towns or a catalogue is the top. Two pages a month cost more than one because a person writes each after a call with the business.
Three things should not move it: turnover, staff count, and how competitive the market is. Competition changes the timescale, not the monthly figure, and a company that charges more for a harder market while promising the same timescale is charging for the promise. A price that needs a discovery call before it can be stated is a price that depends on what the company thinks you can pay.
The four pricing models
| Model | Suits | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly retainer | Most businesses; predictable, judged over months | Fees that do not list what the month contains; long minimums |
| Hourly or day rate | Audits, migrations, one-off fixes | No incentive to be efficient |
| Project fee | Work with a clear end: a set of pages, a rebuild | SEO itself does not end |
| Percentage or performance | Almost nobody | Incentives to chase easy searches or spend more of your money |
How to decide your own budget
Start from what a new customer is worth, the share of enquiries that become customers, and how many extra customers a month would matter. That gives the number of enquiries the work has to produce and the most it is worth paying to get them. Then check whether the searches exist in your area at all, which a free audit does before anyone quotes. The price list comes after both, and ours is on the pricing page rather than here, because a page about cost should not end in a sales pitch.
Whatever the fee, judge it at month six against the numbers named in the proposal: impressions rising for the named searches by month four, traceable enquiries by month six. A fee that produces those is cheap; a fee that produces a long report and nothing traceable is expensive at any level.
Follow-up questions
Is cheap SEO a false economy?
A fee far below the cost of a competent person's time is buying software output or offshore text by the kilo, and it usually costs more later in clean-up. A fee with a clear list of what it buys is judged on the list, not the number.
Is there a set-up fee?
Some companies charge one. The honest version is an audit before you pay anything, with month one priced into the retainer; a set-up fee on top of a retainer is paying twice for the first month.
Does VAT apply?
It depends on whether the company is VAT-registered; the quote should say. Prices on a website are usually shown without VAT.