Affordable SEO in the UK: What Cheap Actually Gets You

"Affordable" is one of the most searched words in SEO, and one of the least honest. Every provider uses it, from the cheapest packages to agencies charging four figures, so on its own it tells you nothing.

This guide shows what different budgets really buy, what a cheap package usually looks like on the inside, what a fair deal should include, and when spending very little is genuinely the right call. We don't name or criticise any company. These are patterns to look for, whoever you're talking to.

What does £99 a month actually buy?

Start with time, because SEO is mostly time. In a global survey of 439 SEO providers, Ahrefs found the hourly rate charged most often sat between $75 and $100 (their 2024 figures, in US dollars). At rates anything like that, £99 a month buys about one to two hours of work.

In two hours you could post on your Google Business Profile a few times and glance at a report. You can't write a proper page for each service, build pages for the towns you cover, reply to reviews and check what your competitors are doing. That's simply more hours than the fee pays for.

So a £99 package has two options. Either very little gets done, or the work gets automated to fit the budget. Neither is a scam in itself, but it's worth knowing which of the two you're paying for.

Signs a cheap package is mostly automated

• Your monthly report looks like it came straight out of a software tool, with no comments from a person.
• The "rankings" it celebrates are for your own business name, or for phrases nobody actually types.
• Your town pages are the same page copied, with only the place name changed.
• New links to your site come from websites that have nothing to do with your trade or your area.
• You can't get into your own Google Search Console or Analytics, or the provider controls the logins.
• Nobody can tell you, in a sentence, what they did for you last month.

The price-level warning signs, like promises of the top spot and cold calls, are covered in our guide to what SEO costs in the UK. These ones are specific to the bottom of the market.

£99 vs £300 vs £1,000 a month: what changes

Here's a rough guide to what each budget can realistically cover for a local business. It's based on our own experience rather than a survey.

More money doesn't always mean better work, but it does buy more hours. The question is whether those hours go on things that bring you calls.

What affordable SEO should include

A fair deal at any price looks like this:

• The price is on the website, so you know it before anyone phones you.
• The monthly work is written down, item by item, so you can check it was done.
• The report talks about calls, enquiries and bookings, not just graphs.
• The minimum term is short, and after it you can leave any month.
• You own your website, your domain and your Google accounts.
• You know who is doing the work, and you can talk to them.
• Nobody promises you the number one spot.

The ownership point matters more than people think. Google lets a Business Profile have owners and managers: owners have full control and can add or remove people, while managers can't. You should be the owner. Your agency only needs to be a manager, so if you part ways you can remove them in a couple of clicks.

What £300 a month buys with us

We'd rather you judged us by that checklist than by the word "affordable", so here's ours in full. Our local SEO plan is priced at £300 a month and includes:

• 4 SEO blog articles every month, written for your local market
• 4 SEO location pages every month, targeting the towns you serve
• 12 Google Business Profile posts every month
• Review monitoring & response drafting
• Plain-English monthly report: rankings, calls, enquiries

There's a three-month minimum, and after that it rolls monthly. We ask for three months because proper ranking movement usually takes at least that long, even when the first signs show sooner, and judging SEO on four weeks of work tells you very little. You own everything we build.

Classica Beauty in South Yorkshire is a good example of what steady local work can do, alongside paid ads. Their diary has been full since the new site launched, and in the founder's words: "The ads and local SEO bring people in, and the site turns them into bookings before I’ve even picked up the phone." You can see their site in our portfolio.

When cheap SEO is actually fine

Spending very little, or nothing, is the right call more often than agencies admit.

You've just started

A business that has just opened, with no reviews yet and a simple website, doesn't need a monthly retainer yet. It needs a complete Google Business Profile, a handful of honest reviews and a clear page for each main service. That's a few days' work, not a contract.

You're happy to do it yourself, with a check-in

If you have an hour or two a week, you can do much of the basic work yourself and pay someone for the occasional review of what you've done. A one-off check of your site and profile, then a follow-up a few months later, costs far less than a year of retainer.

You only need your Google profile sorted

For a lot of local businesses, the map results matter more than anything else, and those are driven by your Google profile and the reviews on it. Get those right first. Our Google Business Profile guide and our walkthrough on winning more Google reviews take you through both, free.

Cheap stops being fine when you're in a competitive trade or a big town and you need to overtake businesses that are already putting the work in. That's when you need proper monthly hours, from someone.

Frequently asked questions

Want to know what your budget would really buy?

Get in touch on WhatsApp or phone 01709 225755. Our 10-point check costs nothing: we go through your site and your Google profile, point out what's already working, and tell you honestly whether you need to pay anyone at all yet. If you only need a few fixes, we'll list them for you to do yourself.