Ask five SEO agencies what they charge and you will get five formats, not just five prices. One quotes a monthly package. One wants a retainer. One gives you an hourly rate, one offers to be paid on results, and one will not name a figure until after a discovery call. That makes SEO pricing hard to compare, and it is the first thing to untangle. This guide covers what drives the cost of SEO in the UK, how each pricing model works, what cheap packages leave out, and how to judge any quote by its cost per lead rather than its monthly fee. We also show our own published rate as a worked example.
Key takeaways
- SEO is sold as packages, retainers or hours, and each buys something different.
- Price follows seniority and the hours actually spent on your site.
- Cheap fixed packages usually sell a task list, not outcomes.
- Published pricing lets you compare like with like.
- Judge SEO spend by cost per lead, not by monthly fee.
How much does SEO cost in the UK?
There is no single UK price for SEO, because agencies sell it in different units. The fair way to compare quotes is to convert each one into hours and seniority. As a published reference point, senior-led SEO at Lobo Digital costs £62.50 an hour plus VAT, which works out at £937.50 to £4,062.50 plus VAT a month.
We have not quoted a UK market average here. We could not find a recent, dated survey of UK SEO agency prices that we were confident enough to cite, and an average built on guesswork is worse than none.
What we can show is how cost scales with the work, using the package sizes on our senior-led SEO services page. Every figure below is plus VAT.
15 hours a month: £937.50
This is roughly two working days. It suits a smaller site in one local market, where the job is fixing what holds pages back and improving the few pages that already bring in enquiries.
25 hours a month: £1,562.50
This leaves room for regular content alongside technical and on-page work. It suits a business competing regionally or across a few service lines.
40 hours a month: £2,500
This suits national competition, several services or locations, or a site that needs significant fixing before it can grow.
65 hours a month: £4,062.50
This suits a larger site, a heavy content programme, or SEO running alongside AI search optimisation and other channels.
One-off projects, such as a technical audit or a site migration, are quoted separately because their scope is fixed.
What drives the price of SEO?
Four things drive the price of SEO: how competitive your search terms are, the state of your website, the scope of the work and the seniority of the person doing it. Together they decide how many hours your site needs each month and what each of those hours is worth.
Competition
Ranking a commercial cleaning firm across London takes more work than ranking a locksmith in a market town. More competitors means more content, more authority and more time before results show.
The state of your site
A site with slow pages, broken links or no heading structure needs fixing before new content can perform. That front-loads the hours.
Scope
Scope covers local or national, one service or ten, and SEO alone or SEO plus AI search optimisation. AI search optimisation, also called GEO or AEO, is the work of getting your business cited in AI answers from tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews. Wider scope means more hours.
Seniority
A junior hour and a senior hour cost different amounts and buy different things. A senior marketer spends fewer hours on work that will not move enquiries. Ask who will actually work on your account, because that person sets the real value of any rate.
What are the main SEO pricing models?
UK SEO is sold through four main pricing models: fixed packages, monthly retainers, hourly billing and performance-based deals. Each buys something different. A package buys a task list, a retainer buys ongoing capacity, hours buy visible time, and a performance deal buys a result that has to be defined very carefully.
| Model | What you buy | Transparency | Risk | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed package | A monthly task list | High on tasks only | Paying for unneeded tasks | Small local sites |
| Monthly retainer | Ongoing capacity | Ask for the hours | Fee drifts from work | Long-term growth |
| Hours package | Set hours a month | High if hours reported | Low if hours reported | Owners who want to see effort |
| Performance | Pay for agreed results | Depends on wording | Easy targets chosen | Rare, tight goals |
Not sure what your SEO fee is actually buying? Our free audit compares what you pay for with what is on your site, and shows where the hours should go next.
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Fixed packages
A fixed package lists deliverables: so many blog posts, so many links, one monthly report. It is easy to buy. The risk is that the list is the same for every client, so you pay for tasks whether your site needs them or not.
Monthly retainers
A retainer is a fixed monthly fee for ongoing work. A good retainer states the hours behind the fee and what they will be spent on. Without that, you cannot tell whether the fee tracks the work.
Hourly billing
Hourly billing, or monthly hours packages like ours, makes the unit of value visible. You know how much senior time you are buying and can check it against the report.
Performance-based deals
Performance deals tie payment to results such as rankings or leads. They sound safe, but the chosen targets can be the easy ones, and no one can promise a position on Google. Google says as much in its own guidance on whether you need an SEO.
What do cheap SEO packages leave out?
Cheap SEO packages usually leave out the four things that produce leads: strategy, proper content, technical fixes and reporting on enquiries. They keep the price low by selling a standard task list, so the work happens whether or not it moves your pipeline. The report looks busy, but it rarely shows what the fee earned.
Strategy
Strategy decides which searches bring buyers rather than browsers. Without it, effort goes on terms nobody converts on.
Content
Content means pages written for your buyers, by someone who understands your sector. Thin content written to a word count rarely ranks for commercial terms.
Technical fixes
Many packages report problems without fixing them, because fixing takes hours the price does not cover.
Reporting by lead
Rankings and traffic charts are easy to report. Enquiries, cost per lead and revenue are what matter to the business.
Marcus Lobow, our founder, has seen what this costs. A small cleaning company paid an agency £2,000 a month, plus £500 for site speed and £1,000 for a blog, over three to four years. The pages had no heading structure at all, not even an H1, one of the basics Google covers in its SEO starter guide.
Marcus wrote a plain report comparing what was being paid for with what was on the site. The owner cancelled the agency the same day.
As Marcus puts it: “I learned SEO on the job because the agency being paid to do it was not delivering. It worked, and it cost me years. You should not have to repeat that to get the same result.”
What does senior-led SEO cost?
Senior-led SEO at Lobo Digital costs £62.50 an hour plus VAT, sold in packages of 15, 25, 40 or 65 hours a month. That is £937.50, £1,562.50, £2,500 or £4,062.50 plus VAT, on a minimum three-month term, with project work quoted separately. We publish it so you can compare like with like.
A published rate turns every other quote into something you can check. Divide any monthly fee by £62.50 and you can see roughly how many senior hours it would buy here. Then ask the other provider how many hours sit inside their fee, and whose they are.
As Marcus puts it, “If you cannot see what an hour of our time costs, you cannot judge whether we are worth it. So we show you.”
Every hour is senior. The person you brief is the person who does the work, with no handover to a junior after the sale. AI tools take on production grind, such as data pulls and first drafts of briefs. A senior marketer reviews everything and makes every call.
How do you know if SEO is worth the money?
SEO is worth the money when its cost per lead beats your other channels and those leads convert at a profit. To get cost per lead, divide the monthly fee by the qualified enquiries SEO produces. Then compare that with what a customer is worth over a year. The fee on its own tells you very little.
Here is a hypothetical example. Imagine a 20-person cleaning firm in Leeds on a 25-hour package at £1,562.50 plus VAT a month. Once the work matures, organic search brings in 10 qualified enquiries a month, so each lead costs £156.25.
If one in five becomes a contract worth £12,000 a year, that is two new contracts a month, adding £24,000 of annual revenue for £1,562.50 of fees. Your numbers will differ. The method is the point.
Now picture a cheaper package that produces no qualified enquiries. Its cost per lead is not low. Every pound is spent with nothing to divide it by.
A mature organic channel can carry real weight. In commercial cleaning, an organic channel was built from nothing to over £1M in annual revenue, now producing 30 to 50 leads a month (SEO, local SEO, content). These results were achieved by Marcus Lobow, some in-house as a senior marketer and some through Lobo Digital.
SEO also takes months to build, so set a review point before you start and agree what enquiry numbers would justify continuing.
What contract terms should you check?
Check three things before you sign an SEO contract: the minimum term, the notice period and who owns the work. A short minimum term keeps the agency earning your business. Clear notice lets you leave cleanly. Ownership makes sure the content, accounts and data stay with you if you do.
Minimum term
Ours is three months. Some agencies ask for 12. A longer term can be fair if the plan genuinely needs it, but ask what happens if the agreed enquiry numbers do not appear.
Notice period
Know how much notice ends the contract after the minimum term, and how that notice must be given.
Ownership
Content, page changes and any links built should be yours. The accounts should be yours too: Google Search Console, Google Analytics and your Google Business Profile belong in your name, with the agency added as a user.
This section is general information, not legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
How much does SEO cost per month in the UK?
It depends on how many hours your site needs and who does them. At Lobo Digital, senior-led SEO costs £937.50 to £4,062.50 plus VAT a month, for 15 to 65 hours at £62.50 an hour. Whatever you are quoted, ask how many hours the fee covers and whose hours they are, so you can compare quotes like for like.
Is cheap SEO worth it?
Cheap SEO is worth it only if it produces leads at a lower cost than your alternatives. Most low-priced packages keep costs down by selling a fixed task list with little strategy, content or technical fixing, and by reporting rankings rather than enquiries. Judge any package by its cost per lead, not by its monthly fee.
What is a fair hourly rate for SEO?
A fair hourly rate is one where you know who is doing the work and what an hour produces. A low rate for junior time can cost more overall if the work needs redoing or never reaches enquiries. Our rate is £62.50 an hour plus VAT for senior time, published so you can check any other quote against it.
Why do SEO agencies not publish prices?
Many agencies do not publish prices because scope genuinely varies: a ten-page local site and a national ecommerce site need very different amounts of work. That is a fair reason. We publish an hourly rate and package sizes anyway, because a rate lets you compare like with like before any sales call, and the scope can still be agreed afterwards.
How long is a typical SEO contract?
There is no standard length. Some agencies ask for 12 months, others for three or none. Our minimum term is three months, after which you can stay or leave. Whatever the length, check the notice period and make sure the content, links and accounts stay yours if you go.
Senior SEO, priced in the open
Your SEO should be done by someone who has done it before, inside businesses like yours. At Lobo Digital, it is done by a senior marketer with 10+ years in B2B, seven of them in-house, and the person you brief is the person who does the work. Our free audit shows what your site needs, how many hours that takes and what it would cost at our published rate.
