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Understanding SEO and how much to spend can feel daunting. By its very nature, SEO is harder to ascribe a clear return on investment when compared to the likes of paid channels that have clear and definable metrics.
What influences SEO costs
SEO is not a static product. Its needs change according to a multitude of factors, including industry, sector, geography, competitive activity, authority and more. Understanding the challenges that come with each of these in relation to your business is a major first step in identifying where your costs come in.
Industry competitiveness- Similar to PPC, the more competition you have in your online sector, the more investment is going to be needed to consistently appear near the top. Competition always moves forward as well, so just because you have breached the surface now does not mean that you should slow down. Competitors are always incentivised to reach the all-important top spots, and once lost, it can be hard to regain from a company that is taking SEO seriously.
Geography- There are different obstacles that come with ranking locally vs ranking nationally, and the needs of your business can adjust the needle wildly in either direction depending on this reality. An eCommerce business selling and distributing overseas will be competing with some of the largest brands in the country, or even the world, and they will either need activities to scale up proportionally or need to focus on sub sectors where they can see easier wins. Comparatively, a local business to business services firm can focus on regional terms within their field of specialism, taking advantage of their competition being a smaller list, which makes competitor activity easier to track and respond to.
Website size & condition- A larger website will generally cast the net much wider than a small one, with more services and features likely to rank in a broader range of terms and appearing on more Google and Bing searches. This is not to say that simply adding more services pages to your website is a surefire strategy. Each page requires targeting and maintenance, and substantial websites can expect to spend significantly more on ensuring that all of their pages are up to speed and have their internal linking systems built appropriately.
What to expect at different price points
While each agency will segment the work differently, it’s common practice for them to be split into around three tiers, with further tasks accommodated as the packages scale up.
At the lower end, you should be expecting to spend around £500 a month. This will include some basic technical checks, some on-page optimisation, and regular reporting so that any pressing matters are flagged and can be addressed. This tier’s focus will be on maintenance and patching issues rather than building any forward momentum, and is best for sectors with low levels of competitor activity, instead relying on their user base’s specific search terms to identify them.
As a mid-tier package, you can expect to pay around £1,500 a month, with adjustments in either direction depending on the scope and level of competition for your website. At this level, you can expect regular technical audits and fixes to be carried out, a detailed plan of keyword mapping, content to be produced across the month and a plan to be implemented for link building. At this level, you should expect your domain authority to be targeted, with a view towards climbing the search engine ladder and enhancing your website’s visibility.
For a fully dedicated service, the sky is the limit on how much you can expect to pay, but you should expect to be spending £3,000 as a minimum. At this tier, you would be working with a fully dedicated SEO strategist, handling daily ongoing technical development, advanced analytics, a pipeline of content production and a PR strategy based around building domain authority. If your sector is nationally competitive or you have steep growth targets, this tier is where you should be looking.
Regional pricing benchmarks
Once you have an understanding of the requirements for your site, it is important to consider how the regions operated in will affect the overall price of your SEO work. As a general rule, freelancers will cost around 30% less than a dedicated agency, while a London based organisation’s prices will typically be about 50% higher than one elsewhere in the country.
If you are looking to simply maintain organic presence within your region and keep costs down, you should expect to pay around £400-£600 per month with a local freelancer or agency. If you are an SME growing your organisation across the country, £1,200-£2,000 becomes the estimated cost band, and if you are a national brand, you can expect prices within the region of £3,000-£4,000, although this can continue to climb as the scope of the project expands.
SEO pricing models explained
Work is usually quoted for within three pricing systems: Retainer, project and hourly.
Retainer work is the most common, and involves your SEO representatives committing to certain tasks across the month on a regular basis. They will cost up the work based on anticipated hours and specialist requirements and will give you an even distribution of work across the length of the contract. This system is best for organisations serious about long term growth, and is often the foundation for a mutual relationship with specialists in the field.
Project based work involves dedicated periods of intensive work. Using this as a strategy for managing your SEO will give you peaks and troughs in your expenses, but each project will come with clearly defined deliverables. This is best deployed for technical audits, migrations and isolated fixes.
Hourly based work is very flexible, with your SEO team charging only for time that has been spent working on your online brand presence. It is excellent for ad-hoc work or internal team support, but if there is an expectation of work being regular, you are likely to get a better result and return on your investment if you commit to a retainer.
In house vs agency vs freelancer
Getting the strongest return on investment should always be near the top of every business owner’s priorities, and there are many variables that come with working with agencies, freelancers or employing someone in house. Below is a guide to help you understand the advantages or drawbacks to each option, along with approximate costs.
In-house:
Estimated fees: Salary: ~£35,000 (Up to £55,000 for London), tools: ~£500 per month for Semrush, Ahrefs and other peripherals, and training & management overheads. True cost: ~£5,000 per month.
Pros: Gives you as the business owner ultimate control over how their time is spent.
Cons: Management costs can be significant.
Agency:
Estimated fees: Between £500 and £4,000, depending on scale and requirements of project. For a mid-tier package for an SME looking to expand, expect around £1,500.
Pros: Dedicated team of specialists to deliver consistent work according to your plan.
Cons: Team sits outside of your day-to-day visibility.
Freelance:
Estimated fees: Between £400 and £3,000, depending on the scale and requirements of the project. For a mid-tier package for an SME looking to expand, expect around £1,200.
Pros: Lower cost than agency while working in similar patterns.
Cons: Far more prone to capacity issues or encountering obstacles that can’t be surmounted alone.
Marketing allocation by industry
When trying to understand how much of your budget should be spent on SEO, it’s important to identify your sector. Different professions have different requirements, and the expectation for your online outreach should be adjusted accordingly.
Local Services: 20-40%
Professional Services: 30-50%
eCommerce: 20-30%
B2B: 40-60%
It’s important to note that this percentage should be reflective of the entire marketing spend, including internal resource, ad spend, social media, subscriptions and more.
How do I measure ROI against other channels?
SEO’s return on investment isn’t as easy to calculate as the likes of PPC or Paid Social, both of which have incredibly detailed metrics that allow you to identify clear strengths, weaknesses, wins and losses across all spend. Instead, SEO provides the foundation for other channels to operate from, and should be assessed in terms of a website’s overall performance.
If you are looking to provide a clear ROI for your SEO spend, the best way to retrieve metrics is to compare value yielded from your website for those that have landed on your site either organically, directly, or via unspecified means. The proliferation of ad-blockers often means that those navigating to a website via organic listings are often being filtered into direct traffic or those from unspecified sources.
Once you have the overall value your site has generated without paid advertising, compare that against your SEO spend to date, and you will generate an ROI that can be held up against paid channels.
Timeline for progress
SEO is not an instant fix, but a process that is undertaken to reinforce the foundations of your online presence. Everything that is undertaken will take time to be crawled by Google, Bing and other search engines, and the improvements made are cumulative, with the result being more important than the sum of its parts. With that in mind, below is an approximate timeline on what to expect as you begin the process of implementing SEO into your marketing strategy:
0-3 months: Foundational work and correction of errors on the website
3-6 months: First steps into pushing specific keywords
6-12 months: Progress in targeted areas, and expansion of strategy
It is worth remembering that SEO underpins other digital marketing, and is not a campaign to be aligned with seasonal events like PPC.
Tool & Software Costs
SEO specialists utilise a range of tools to give them visibility of a website’s performance, both in terms of internal standards and how it holds up against competitors. Such tools come with a considerable price tag, but these costs are borne by agencies or freelancers if you are outsourcing.
The most common tools are Semrush and Ahrefs, subscriptions for which begin at around £500 a month, but scale up considerably when more advanced features and insights are included.
What to watch out for within an SEO quote
While it can be daunting to receive an SEO proposal, it is important to pay careful attention in case there are any points of contention. There are several red flags that might indicate that the company is promising beyond their capabilities or taking advantage of their client’s lack of awareness.
Guaranteed rankings: Any proposal that guarantees a position within a certain time frame should be pushed back upon. There are so many factors entirely out of an agency’s control that it is never possible to guarantee positions, especially with a particular window.
Reporting: All digital marketing services should include regular reporting so that you can identify what is and isn’t working for your business. An organisation that doesn’t offer such a service is likely obfuscating the work that is being undertaken, which is a point for concern.
Vague deliverables: Services should be clearly written out so that you have a clear expectation over what to receive. Anything that you receive that you aren’t completely clear on should be pushed back on so that you have absolute clarity.
Prices out of line with expectations: Prices that are anomalous are always worth querying, and this works in both directions. If an agency is quoting you a price substantially lower than their competition, it is possible that they are overpromising on what they can deliver for their time, or that there are hidden costs in the quote.
Evaluating Value
Your SEO representative should be providing you with clear KPIs, giving you an indication of anticipated traffic, conversions and revenue with which to measure success against. It’s important that these are discussed regularly, so that expectations on both sides can be realigned as the equation inevitably changes. SEO isn’t an exact science, but it is still crucial that targets are implemented so that everyone is clear where the priorities lie.
When SEO might not be worth it
If your priority is to start bringing leads in immediately, SEO might not be the service you should be paying the most attention to. PPC, paid media advertising and social media are all much more responsive methods of enhancing your digital outreach and can be turned up or down at much shorter notice. Businesses need to view SEO as a long term investment, and those that cannot justify an ongoing expense are better off considering other avenues.
If your business model changes frequently or isn’t very specific, then it will be a major obstacle to gain traction on search engines. Ranking highly for one term only for the business to move in another direction will frequently derail the work that has been undertaken, which will have a detrimental effect on the overall ROI.
So how much should you expect to spend?
There is no single “correct” figure for SEO spend, but there is a correct level of investment relative to your goals, competition and timeframe. SEO works best when it is treated as a long-term asset rather than a short-term tactic, with spend aligned to the reality of your market rather than an arbitrary monthly budget.
For some businesses, a small monthly investment focused on maintenance and local visibility will be enough. For others, meaningful growth will only come with sustained, investment. The key is ensuring that whatever level you commit to is realistic, transparent, and supported by clear goals that tie back to your commercial objectives.
Done properly, SEO becomes one of the most cost-effective and resilient channels in your marketing mix, supporting every other digital activity and continuing to deliver value long after the work has been done. Contact us now for a free website audit.
Kieran is a Paid Media Executive at Main Ambition, and has spent the last decade working in digital marketing across a range of industries, growing revenue, lowering costs and improving return on ad spend for B2B and B2C alike. He watches cricket and writes books, both of which seem to make him grumpy, but he insists that they're good fun if you try hard enough.
