How much should we be paying for SEO services (A comprehensive guide for the U.K)
Author: Ryan Walsh
Date: 20/08/2025
Quite literally, you will be spoilt for choice when it comes to finding a search engine optimisation business here in the U.K. The country is jam-packed with agencies with all kinds of wild and wonderful names.
There’s so much choice that when you start searching around on Google for a local company because of remarketing, you will be bombarded with options.
This article aims to illustrate a simple principle- one that we hope helps you find the perfect SEO agency for your business.
Despite the numerous businesses available, it’s possible to narrow down the list of potential agencies into a more manageable set of prospects based on just a few key decisions.
These may sound like super simple considerations, but they are, and so many businesses get led down the rabbit hole and end up choosing an agency that’s not the right fit for them.
We will discuss the key factors that you should consider, including the size and capability of the business. However, it’s also essential to consider the intangible aspects, such as whether you can work with the company on a long-term basis.
What size business do you need?
Just like you stood at the ice cream parlour, and you were asked which size scoop you needed, large, medium, or small ice cream? Well, this is a similar concept to apply when selecting how much SEO you need each month.
How much of a dollop of SEO does your business need per month?
Choose a large scoop, a large dollop of SEO from an agency, and you may quickly run out of budget before the ball gets rolling.
Choose a small scoop, play it safe, and save some money for a rainy day.
Well, with this option, you might end up hiring a freelancer who’s out of their depth with the amount of work they need to complete each month.
It’s therefore a balancing act.
So, which size company do you need? Let’s explore.
What’s an SEO agency?
Agencies vary in size, yet an “SEO agency” typically means they have a large team of staff that should be working on different aspects of the client’s work.
Generally speaking, agencies are the most expensive option, but in theory, they should have the best SEO minds in the business in that area (in theory, we can’t emphasise that enough)
In a good agency, they should have:
– Link building experts
– Local SEO gurus
– Copywriters with the gift of the gab
– On-page, a UX team members that can make shoppers stick to your website like super glue
Agencies often have specialists whose job is set in just one particular area of search engine optimisation.
For example, this could be a link specialist who is an expert at building links for large e-commerce stores.
Therefore, the expertise, skill set, and discipline of that individual should be superior to hiring a freelancer who is juggling multiple projects simultaneously. A freelancer can often get overwhelmed if the workload is too high, after all, there’s only so many hours in the day.
However, a word to the wise, we here at Walsh & Partners have been in this game for a long time, so let us dispense some words of advice to you.
Just because you pay a ton for the biggest agency in town, it doesn’t guarantee that the best talent will be working on your website.
It’s commonplace, sometimes even the norm, for an agency to retain its top SEO talent for the large projects they are working on.
Some businesses are therefore left paying agency prices and are left with a junior account manager who may have just switched careers!
This essentially means they’re left with someone “learning the ropes”. Yet you’re paying agency prices, which is, well, not ideal, and that’s putting it politely. If you’re paying agency prices, ensure you’re getting the best minds working on your site.
Be wary of businesses hiring staff where “no SEO experience is needed”, then months later, you’re greeted with the prospect of them managing or working on your account. It’s kind of like saying you’re going to hire trainee electricians, then let them complete rewires on their own; the prospect of the place burning down to the ground is exponentially much higher!
So, unless you want your website’s rankings taking a nose-dive, don’t let trainees lose on your website’s SEO.
There’s no substitute for experience, so don’t settle for less than the best SEO talent you can source.
Freelancers
The term “freelancers” often evokes thoughts of low-cost, subpar search engine optimisation tasks being completed on the cheap.
It makes you think of a rather tired and sleepy office worker switching on their laptop at half seven on a Monday to complete some work for their “side hustle”.
In some cases, well, this might be true.
In other cases, you might have a freelancer that’s the best in the business, doesn’t want to be chained and padlocked to a desk at a large agency, has broken free, started their own business, and is, well, could be the best thing since sliced bread.
This way, you could have a top SEO mind at freelancer prices, that’s what we call winner, winner, chicken dinner.
So, there are freelancers and then there are freelancers
In-house teams
Now, before you throw this idea out of the window completely, there’s an option of employing staff in-house to complete your SEO tasks.
However, there are some downsides to this from our experience.
First of all, there’s the cost; hiring staff to sit and complete SEO tasks, perhaps on a full-time basis, is costly.
The question then becomes how to motivate staff to avoid laziness. Poking them with a stick every time they take a nap won’t work; there are employment laws to protect them.
So, when you have a team in-house, they are often protected by employment contracts; therefore, they may not be as motivated to improve the SEO as an agency would. That’s because some agencies can be dropped with a few days’ notice; this is what keeps them motivated to keep bringing you into the business.
On that note, another top tip: choose an agency that you can cancel at any time. This keeps the agency on its toes.
How do SEO businesses charge for their services?
On an hourly basis
Paying for SEO services on an hourly basis has its pros and cons.
Paying hourly can give you the flexibility to allocate more funds when needed, then scale back when you want to redirect your marketing budget to other areas.
However, it can also be restrictive; some consultants and agencies like to know how much is coming in, say, in the next three months.
This guarantee or commitment enables planning, allowing work to be concentrated on content marketing one month, links the next, and on-page SEO the following month.
Monthly budgets that fluctuate like a roller coaster can leave agencies or freelancers constantly “fire-fighting” – allocating budget to areas of most need, and completing the work in the present.
However, without any planning, it can be hard to fend off competitors whose SEO strategies are well thought out in advance.
Fixed price retainers
A fixed price monthly retainer is usually the preference for most SEO agencies and clients alike.
The reason this option works for both the client and the agency on a recurring monthly basis is straightforward: the level of investment you should be making is determined by the amount the direct competitors are spending on their SEO / marketing.
So, for example, if you’re a solicitor, a dentist, or a medium-sized construction business locally, the competition will be high. The level of SEO spend will also need to be high to match or exceed the level of work that your direct competitors are making.
Too low and you won’t see the traction you need.
If it’s too high, you can run out of money before the agency gets you on page one.
Therefore, you need to set the monthly retainer in just the right place, so that the right level of work is implemented to keep you moving and ticking forwards at just the right pace.
Lump sum
A lump sum payment gives us mixed feelings; we would advise against it if possible.
Nothing is stopping an agency or freelancer from promising the earth and everything that is in it before a lump sum is paid.
Then, once paid, the excuses may start.
Instead, we think a monthly retainer is a better option in most cases; it allows the agency time to work on the project and then provide you with high-quality monthly reporting.
Performance-based SEO
Performance-based SEO sounds like the ticket to success for your business; however, we have to wave a flag of caution.
The reason is that it’s a walk in the park – an absolute piece of cake to get any business on the first page of Google for terms that no one is searching for.
These are called keywords with very little or no search volume. For example, if you sell ladders, the agency may optimise the website for “aluminium roof ladders that have a 25-year guarantee”.
Now, if a business gets you on the first page for this keyword, it’s unlikely to bring you in any sales, because it’s likely to have a low search volume.
Right now, you know which business type to hire; how much should you be forking out per month?
£100-600 per month
Businesses must be cautious about investing in SEO services that have no chance of making a significant impact.
And what do we mean by that?
Well, it’s perfectly possible to hire SEO agencies or, indeed, a lot of freelancers who will complete, say, a whole bunch of on-page optimisation work.
They may go into the CMS and make a few adjustments, such as changing meta titles, adding internal links, and adding alt text to a few products.
That’s all well and good, but for hyper-competitive to medium-competitive business sectors, this is unlikely even to move the needle.
It’s likely to be a drop in the ocean in terms of the actual work that is needed.
Instead, what is genuinely needed is quality-focused SEO implemented by an experienced consultant/agency.
For instance, building links can be a time-consuming process, so be cautious when spending small sums, such as between £100 and £600 per month, as this may not include essential SEO tasks like link building and creating evergreen content marketing.
£1k- £10k per month
At this price point, this is where the majority of Walsh & Partners clients sit.
Often, our clients will be up against stiff competition, businesses which have large and strong backlink profiles.
The backlink profiles are often a combination of websites which have a very high DA score.
Therefore, businesses operating in this niche require the best SEO consultants available.
Consequently, they come to agencies like ours because we can complete detailed link analysis, write top-quality content marketing, and improve on-page SEO, enabling you to compete with the best in the business.
Around this price point, you should be looking to work with an agency that has vast experience in handling multiple clients that operate in highly competitive business niches.
This kind of marketing budget will allow sustained effort to be applied to building links and writing content marketing at a frequency that
will enable you to compete with the direct competitors.
10k plus (International and National SEO)
For businesses which sell products nationally or internationally, they will need the best SEO minds they can find.
National companies can quite easily spend well in advance of £10,000 every single month.
Businesses with marketing budgets that utilise PPC Google Adwords campaigns and organic SEO can easily spend between £10,000 and £100,000 per month.
These could be large sofa retailers, national names that sell bikes for example, or perhaps a company that sells clothing online.
A word or two on Google E-EAT
Regardless of whether you work with a freelancer working in a spare bedroom or you’re working with a huge agency that occupies the top floor of a high-rise office block within a city centre location, you need to improve your business’s Google E-EAT score.
For those not in the know, Google E-EAT stands for experience, expertise, and trustworthiness.
This means that Google’s extremely clever algorithms want to know whether your business knows what it’s talking about.
For example, Google will ask:
Does the author have extensive experience in the subject matter which they are writing about?
What’s their level of expertise? Is it clear they are an expert?
How authoritative is the business? Are they mentioned a lot across the web?
How trustworthy is that business? Have they gathered a lot of business reviews?
Therefore, whether you’re hiring an agency or a freelancer, the work must communicate that you or the authors of the work are experts at what they are talking about.
Here’s why so many Cardiff businesses hire us:
Cater to most marketing budgets.
Walsh & Partners truly care about implementing the best quality SEO money can buy.
We also cater to a wide range of marketing budgets. For example, if you operate a business within the Cardiff area, we can work with companies that have between £1,000 and £10,000 per month to spend.
There’s no substitute for experience.
We offer the best SEO in the business here in Cardiff. Ryan Walsh has over 10 years of experience, which means we are more experienced than most local agencies.
Commercially minded and commercially aware
An often overlooked aspect of the marketing mix is whether the SEO agency is commercially aware.
We quickly mentioned that Google E-EAT is now a huge part of search engine optimisation.
For a business to rank on the first page, therefore, the content marketing needs to be written by an expert or at least be researched to a high level before writing.
This is where we have the edge; we are commercially aware, commercially minded, and hold a genuine interest in business generally.
This inquisitive nature will mean that we will want to understand the DNA that has helped form your business into what it is today.
This will be reflected in better quality SEO, which allows our clients to rank higher as we take the time to get to know their business.
Can take on other agencies with ease
We invite you to share quotes from other agencies with us. We often find that we can beat these quotes sometimes considerably.
We often don’t just match those other agencies’ quotes. If we believe we can make a genuine impact and enjoy working with you, we’re known to beat other agencies’ quotes by up to a third.
Come to the best, come to Walsh & Partners:
If you’re looking to hire a highly experienced SEO agency, then look no further than Walsh & Partners. To encourage businesses to choose us, we invite them to submit their current or prospective agency quotes. We often beat most large U.K. SEO agencies’ quotes by up to a third.
Call or get in touch with us today.