How much does SEO cost in the UK?

Ours starts at £350 a month with no minimum term. Across the market you will see £300 to £600 for a small local business, £1,000 to £3,000 for national terms, and agencies who will not talk below £2,000. The number matters less than what is inside it: ask how many hours it buys and what gets done in them.

How long before it works?

Google Business Profile changes can move within days to a few weeks. Organic rankings on a competitive term take months, because they depend on Google recrawling and re-trusting the site, and that is not on your schedule. Anyone offering page one in thirty days is targeting phrases nobody searches, or is about to do something you would not want done to your domain.

Can you guarantee first place?

No, and treat a guarantee as disqualifying. Nobody outside Google controls the index. What can be committed to is the work, a plan you can read, and reporting that shows what changed.

No. Paid links breach Google's link spam policies and the penalty lands on your domain, not on the agency that sold them. If a proposal includes a monthly quantity of links, ask where they come from.

Should I be paying for SEO at all?

Often not. If your Google Business Profile is not set up properly, fix that first as a one-off. If you have no website, get one. Paying monthly while your profile has the wrong primary category is paying somebody to push a car with the handbrake on.

Home/SEO

SEO for UK businesses

For businesses already online and still not found. from £350/mo, monthly, cancel whenever.

Get a quote Find your city

We can show you the market, not just describe it

This site is a UK business directory built from open data, holding 55,823 listings across 16 cities. That means the advice on these pages is grounded in a count rather than an assertion — and it differs by city, which is the useful part.

55,823

businesses counted

23%

publish their opening hours

cities broken down

Counted from this directory, sourced from OpenStreetMap. A business whose website we have not recorded shows as having none, so treat these as a floor rather than an exact figure.

What you get

from £350/momonthly, cancel whenever · first changes live in week one

Ongoing work on the things that decide whether a local business appears when somebody nearby searches for what it does.

Google Business Profile kept correct and active, not set once and abandoned

The pages people actually search for, written and kept current

Technical faults fixed as they appear rather than listed in a report

Consistent name, address and phone across the places that matter in the UK

A monthly note in plain English: what changed, what it did, what is next

No minimum term. A month at a time.

No guaranteed positions, and be wary of anyone offering them.

No link buying. It breaches Google guidelines and the risk lands on your domain.

Get a quote

We reply by email and read every enquiry ourselves. Nothing is charged from this page.

How it actually goes

Look before touching

Search Console, the Google profile, and what actually ranks today. A week, and if the answer is that you do not need a retainer we will tell you.

Fix the free things first

Categories, services, hours, obvious technical faults. These move fastest and cost least, so they go first rather than being held back to justify month three.

Then the slow work

Pages worth ranking, written properly. This is where the months go, and where being honest about the timeline matters.

Report what changed

Impressions and clicks from Search Console, not a rankings screenshot. Position three on a phrase nobody searches is not a result.

SEO by city

Each city page carries the real figures for that market. Ordered by how many listings we hold, not by how much we would like to sell there.

London

24%publish hours

31,768 listed · mostly restaurants

Edinburgh

30%publish hours

3,151 listed · mostly hairdressers & beauty

Birmingham

17%publish hours

3,140 listed · mostly takeaways

Manchester

21%publish hours

2,927 listed · mostly takeaways

Bristol

18%publish hours

2,391 listed · mostly hairdressers & beauty

Leeds

17%publish hours

2,181 listed · mostly takeaways

Glasgow

27%publish hours

2,106 listed · mostly restaurants

Newcastle

21%publish hours

1,952 listed · mostly takeaways

Sheffield

23%publish hours

1,544 listed · mostly restaurants

Brighton

21%publish hours

1,444 listed · mostly cafes

Liverpool

14%publish hours

1,015 listed · mostly pubs & bars

Cardiff

28%publish hours

533 listed · mostly restaurants

Belfast

15%publish hours

499 listed · mostly restaurants

Nottingham

13%publish hours

484 listed · mostly restaurants

Coventry

20%publish hours

387 listed · mostly pubs & bars

Leicester

22%publish hours

301 listed · mostly restaurants

Questions

How much does SEO cost in the UK?: Ours starts at £350 a month with no minimum term. Across the market you will see £300 to £600 for a small local business, £1,000 to £3,000 for national terms, and agencies who will not talk below £2,000. The number matters less than what is inside it: ask how many hours it buys and what gets done in them.
How long before it works?: Google Business Profile changes can move within days to a few weeks. Organic rankings on a competitive term take months, because they depend on Google recrawling and re-trusting the site, and that is not on your schedule. Anyone offering page one in thirty days is targeting phrases nobody searches, or is about to do something you would not want done to your domain.
Can you guarantee first place?: No, and treat a guarantee as disqualifying. Nobody outside Google controls the index. What can be committed to is the work, a plan you can read, and reporting that shows what changed.
Do you buy links?: No. Paid links breach Google's link spam policies and the penalty lands on your domain, not on the agency that sold them. If a proposal includes a monthly quantity of links, ask where they come from.
Should I be paying for SEO at all?: Often not. If your Google Business Profile is not set up properly, fix that first as a one-off. If you have no website, get one. Paying monthly while your profile has the wrong primary category is paying somebody to push a car with the handbrake on.

The other things we do

Web design

Sites for businesses that have not got one yet.

from £900

Google Ads

For when you need the phone to ring this month.

from £300/mo + spend

Not sure any of it applies yet?

The cheapest useful thing for most local businesses is the £149 google business profile fix — a one-off, no retainer. We would rather sell that first.

What it covers

Who you would be dealing with

The same people who built this directory. That is the portfolio at the moment: 55,000 UK business listings, the search behind them, and the data work that keeps them accurate. There is no client list on this page because there is not one yet, and inventing one is not something we are willing to do.

What that buys you is a low price and direct contact with whoever does the work. What it costs you is the reassurance of a case study. If that trade is wrong for you it is a reasonable thing to decide, and an established agency with a portfolio is a perfectly sensible alternative.

Being listed in this directory is free and buying anything from us changes nothing about where a business appears in it. The organic order is not for sale.

Tell us what you need