How Much Does SEO Cost in the UK?
UK SEO cost: Code23's £1,500 audit, free snapshot, how ongoing work is quoted after the audit, what you pay for, and buyer questions that protect you.
Code23’s Technical SEO & Content Audit is £1,500 + VAT fixed. The free SEO snapshot shows where you stand in 48 hours with no charge. Ongoing work after the audit is quoted once we know the gap; we do not publish retainer prices because the scope depends on what the audit finds. The audit fee is credited against your first month if you continue. Those are the published prices on our SEO page.
Typical UK agency retainers run from a few hundred pounds a month for local work to several thousand for competitive national campaigns. The range is wide because technical debt, content volume, link work and how competitive your terms are all move the floor. This piece publishes our audit numbers, explains what you are paying for, and lists the questions that protect buyers. For the definition, start with What is SEO?. For paid search beside organic, see SEO vs PPC.
The short answer
| Offer | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Free SEO snapshot | Free | Your top ten pages, the keywords you already rank for, the five biggest technical problems. One-page report in 48 hours. |
| Technical SEO & Content Audit | £1,500 + VAT fixed | Full crawl of every page, Search Console and GA4 review, keyword map with what to win first, content gap, technical fix list in priority order, local SEO check, written report you can read in ten minutes. Ten working days. Credited against the first month if you continue. |
Ongoing SEO after the audit is not a published menu of monthly figures. It is quoted from the fix list and keyword map before anything starts. Scope is written before work begins. Nothing changes until you approve the plan.
What you are paying for
SEO fees cover real work in five areas. Ask which of them are in the quote before you compare headline numbers.
Technical. Crawl access, indexation, redirects, canonicals, speed, mobile rendering and structured data. On a site we build or support, those fixes ship in the codebase. On a site we do not host, we still need access and a clear owner for implementation.
Content. Choosing the keywords worth winning, then writing or rewriting service pages, local pages and guides with a clear answer in the first screen. You are paying for pages that create enquiries, not a blog quota for its own sake.
Links and mentions. Earning relevant links and brand mentions that support the terms you chose. Cheap bulk packages are a red flag; thoughtful outreach costs time.
Local. Google Business Profile, local landing pages and consistent name, address and phone when nearby buyers matter. Reading, Berkshire and Oxford work sits here when the map pack is part of the job.
Reporting. Search Console, GA4 and a report you can read in five minutes: what moved, what shipped, what is next. If the report is only a ranking spreadsheet, you are under-served.
AEO (AI visibility inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews) is a related but separate line. If a quote mixes “AI SEO” with ordinary blog posts and no citation tracking, read AEO vs SEO before you sign.
Why the range is so wide
Five things set the floor for UK SEO pricing:
- How broken the site is. A clean WordPress build needs less technical time than a failed migration with lost redirects.
- How competitive the terms are. Local service terms in a small town cost less to contest than national head terms in a crowded category.
- How much content you need. One rewritten service page is a different job from twenty commercial guides.
- How much off-site work you need. Link and mention programmes take senior time; directories alone rarely move competitive terms.
- Who implements. Agencies that only send PDFs look cheaper until you pay a developer to ignore the PDF. Agencies that ship fixes price the implementation in.
That is why one firm hears a few hundred pounds a month and another hears several thousand. Compare scope, access and reporting, not only the monthly fee on pricing.
What an SEO audit should include and cost
An SEO audit should give you a clear picture of where the site stands in Google today, what to fix first, and whether ongoing work is worth paying for. Ours is the fixed-price Technical SEO & Content Audit at £1,500 + VAT.
A serious audit includes:
| Check | What you should see |
|---|---|
| Crawl | Every page fetched, with index and redirect problems listed in priority order |
| Search Console and GA4 | Twelve months of data reviewed, not a tool screenshot dump |
| Keyword map | Demand, competition and commercial fit, with what to win first |
| Content gap | What competitors cover that you do not, on terms that matter |
| Technical fix list | Ordered by impact on the money pages |
| Local check | Business Profile and NAP when local demand exists |
| Report | Written so you can act in ten minutes |
Tool-only “free audits” that dump thousands of rows are useful as a first pass. They are not the same as a human-read plan. Our free SEO snapshot sits between the two: top ten pages, keywords you already rank for, five biggest technical problems, one page, 48 hours.
Retainer vs project vs hourly
Retainer means ongoing monthly work against an agreed scope: technical care, content, links, local and reporting. It fits when the audit shows a backlog that will take months, not a one-off patch.
Project means a fixed piece of work with a clear end: a migration redirect map, a set of service pages, a local pack rebuild. It fits when the gap is bounded.
Hourly means you buy time in slices. It can work for small advisory calls. It is a poor fit for crawl programmes and content calendars that need continuity.
We quote ongoing work after the audit so the shape matches the evidence. We do not publish a retainer menu, because a local plumber and a national ecommerce catalogue are not the same job.
Four questions to ask before you sign
1. How do you measure where we stand today before you change anything?
Ask for Search Console, rankings on an agreed list, and crawl health before the first content sprint. If work starts without that, walk away.
2. Do you ship technical fixes in our codebase, or only send a PDF?
Recommendations without implementation leave the same problems in place. Know who clicks merge.
3. How do you pick the keywords worth winning, and how does that link to enquiries?
You want commercial fit, not a vanity volume dump. Ask which pages should create calls, forms or sales.
4. What does the monthly report look like in five minutes, and what happens if nothing moves?
You want what changed, what shipped and what is next. Silence on “what if nothing moves” is a warning.
Those four match the selection criteria we publish on the SEO page. Use them on us too.
Red flags
Guaranteed rankings. Nobody honest can promise a fixed Google position. Treat “guaranteed page one” as a sales line, not a plan.
Secret methods. Real SEO uses crawl data, Search Console, clear pages and earned mentions. If they cannot explain the work in plain words, do not buy it.
No Search Console access. If the agency will not work inside your Search Console and GA4, you cannot keep the measurement when you leave.
Cheap link packages. Bulk links from irrelevant sites are a risk. Ask where links would come from and why they relate to your category.
Activity without a starting point. Reports full of tasks and empty of before-and-after leave you funding motion.
Retainer prices before diagnosis. A fixed monthly number quoted before anyone has seen the crawl is a package sale, not a plan. Our audit exists so the ongoing quote follows the gap.
FAQ
How much does SEO cost in the UK?
It depends on how competitive your searches are and how much of the work you hand over. Local work for one town can be a few hundred pounds a month because the competition is thin. A national campaign in a crowded market runs to several thousand a month because it needs more content, more links and more technical time to move at all. The honest range for a small or mid-sized UK business sits between those two, and the number should follow a look at your site, not a menu.
How much do SEO agencies cost?
Agencies charge in three shapes. A monthly retainer buys a set amount of work each month and suits businesses that want steady progress. A fixed-price project (an audit, a migration, a content batch) suits a specific job with a clear end. Hourly consultancy suits questions rather than delivery. Whatever the shape, ask what is included in the fee, who does the technical work on the site itself, and whether you keep your Search Console and GA4 access if you leave. Our own prices are in the table at the top of this guide.
How much do SEO audits cost?
Free audits from online tools cost nothing and produce a list of hundreds of issues with no order to them. A paid audit from a person costs somewhere between a few hundred pounds and a few thousand, and the difference is the judgement: which of those issues matter for your business, in what order, and what fixing them is worth. A good paid audit ends with a fix list you could hand to any developer, and credits its fee against the work if you continue.
Is cheap SEO worth it?
Usually not. At two or three hundred pounds a month the work is either automated (link packages, spun content) or so thin it cannot move a competitive term. Both can get a site penalised. If the budget is that tight, spend it on one fixed piece of technical work you can see, or on a free snapshot to learn where you stand, rather than on a monthly fee that buys activity.
How long before SEO pays for itself?
Three to six months is the usual lag before rankings and enquiries move, longer in competitive markets. The way to judge an agency before then is whether they showed you where you stood at the start, what they changed each month, and what those changes did in Search Console. If a report cannot answer those three questions, the fee is buying motion, not progress.
Next reads: What is SEO?, SEO vs PPC, AEO vs SEO, and the live offer on SEO. For studio-wide bands, see pricing.
Search engine optimisation
See what an SEO audit gives you for £1,500
Every page crawled, Search Console and GA4 reviewed, a keyword map, a content gap and a prioritised fix list. Fixed price, ten working days, credited against your first month if you continue.
