How Much Do Affordable SEO Services In the UK Cost and What Are the Benefits of Search Engine Optimisation for Your Business

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What is SEO?
SEO Vs. Paid Traffic
SEO VS Social Media Advertising
Cost or Investment of SEO Services
SEO and Return on Investment
How to Choose an SEO Agency
Do You Get Emails About SEO? (We Do, Too).

At LMNts, we love search engine optimisation as it delivers long term results for our clients. It is a great way of getting your brand noticed and building engagement. You will also make your content seen. We rarely engage in paid advertising and have been growing our agency on SEO and word-of-mouth marketing only in the past few years. So believe us when we say: it’s a great way of getting people to buy from you. Here’s the lowdown on the cost (or investment) of SEO services in the UK.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimisation is basically a method of making your content shine and appear in the top results of search engines. It is pretty much playing by the books but also being smart and innovative. It is not about buying crappy backlinks or spamming blogs with your links. It is a strategy that will get you qualified and targeted traffic for many years to come, provided that you don’t break the rules.

Search engine optimisation is simple if you know what you are doing and understand the guidelines of search engines. It’s like with every profession. If you go to a lawyer and ask a simple question they will know the answer by heart, because they dealt with the situation loads of times and went through the court process before. But if you ask someone with no knowledge of the law, they will – at the best – take some snippets of information from the internet and will try to bodge a strategy. That’s exactly what most people offering search engine optimisation do.

SEO Vs. Paid Traffic

There’s often a massive confusion among business owners about search engine optimisation and paid search engine placements. While both ways can work for brands, there are a couple of differences we would like to highlight here, so you can choose the right option for your business.

As you can see above, there are loads of advantages and disadvantages of both approaches. If you have the budget and would like immediate results and sales, you might opt for PPC. In case you are in business for a long time, and can wait until the traffic builds up, or you don’t have thousands of pounds to throw at your marketing (plus testing as well) you will probably be better off choosing a partner providing affordable SEO services.

SEO VS Social Media Advertising

Social media platforms reward users in the beginning with free traffic, until they establish their user base and get enough advertisers on board. Then the organic traffic starts drying up and you will have to pay for reach. This happened when Facebook first started offering advertising, the same happened to LinkedIn and – recently Snapchat and TikTok. So if you are an “early adopter” you will be able to make money easily. Otherwise, it will be more challenging.

Social media marketing is also negatively affected by the presence of bots and fake accounts. This is something I talked about in my latest LinkedIn newsletter.

There are still loads of benefits of being present on social media. Here are some of the best platforms for different types of businesses.

Platform	Type of Business
Pinterest	eCommerce brands
TikTok	Influencers and content creators
Facebook	Community leaders
Instagram	Visual brands
LinkedIn	Business2Business lead generation
Twitter	Engagement and news stories

We are definitely not saying that you should not use social media for your brand. In fact, you should. It can enhance your reputation and your SEO strategy, too.

Here are the main differences between SEO and social media advertising.

SEO	Social Media Marketing
Targeted based on intent	Targeted based on demographics
Retargeting possible	You can retarget people
Keyword based	Content based
No cost associated with clicks	Pay per lead or click
Long term goals	Usually to promote one offer
Based on behaviours	Based on buyer personas

Cost or Investment of SEO Services

We always say to our clients that marketing should be viewed as an investment not a cost. If you invest in your SEO, you cannot expect immediate results, so you will have to sign up for at least 6-12 months to see a change in your rankings.

That said, some companies offer this very cheap. You should not confuse affordable SEO services with cheap automation that might potentially get you banned from search engines. I have written about this in a previous post and if you are confused you should check it out.

Depending on how many keywords you would like to target and the geographical area you would like to cover, you will pay £450-£15,000 per month for affordable SEO services in the UK. If you go with a freelancer or a spammy SEO company, you might pay less, but you cannot expect great results.

An experienced SEO professional will need to cover loads of areas and play by the rules set by search engines. They will not engage in link buying, engaging with link farms, or any other unethical practices. They will also have to pay for advanced SEO tools and analytical software to provide you with an overview of the results. This is something a freelancer will never be able to do.

WebFX estimates that the average monthly package for search engine optimisation services costs between $1,500 and $5,000. Some companies still charge per hour, which means that you will have to check what’s included and whether it helps your brand grow. The hourly cost can be anything between $100 and $300.

According to Growth Ramp, most companies will charge you less than $1,000 a month, about a quarter of the companies charge over $4,000 and another quarter charge between $1,000 and $2,000. If you come across an SEO expert offering their services for less than $150 per hour, they either undervalue themselves, or are not that good.

Source: GrowthRamp

Most reliable companies offer affordable SEO services that include the following:

SEO audit (produced by advanced software)
Keyword research
SEO plan
Content SEO
Analytics tools and Search Console integration
Page speed optimisation
Page rank growth and link popularity focus
Monthly SEO reports
On site meta tag and title tag optimisation
Internal linking structure
Image optimisation

SEO and Return on Investment

Among all marketing methods – when done right – SEO has the highest potential return on investment. According to Moz, the average return on investment is 275%. This means that for every pound you spend you should expect to get 2.75 pounds back. Now, that is the average, and the number doesn’t take into consideration your industry, the keyword competitiveness, and other factors.

According to DemandJump, there are different estimations for SEO services ROI. Some sites say it is 748%, others say it is 500%. So, you will never know until you try. Just make sure that you work with the right affordable SEO services provider that has a proven track record and can show you their previous results.

How to Choose an SEO Agency

Make sure that you check out the credentials and the reputation of the website before you approach a company. There are loads of companies pretending to be in the UK and they are not. Another thing you should check is the real reviews and case studies.

It can also be useful to check if the company ranks for certain target keywords. You can ask them to see how their SEO is doing. You can’t preach what you don’t practice, so if their own site is struggling to show up on search engines, chances are that they are not as good as they claim to be.

The first thing you will have to do is make sure that you talk to someone in person and ask about their goals. Ask to see some example accounts and results.

Ask them about the minimum term of contract, the charging structure, and other fees. The more transparent their pricing is the better security you will have. You should always sign a written contract with the company before giving out access to your accounts.

The next step will be to ask them for a proposal that includes the plan and what they will do. This will highlight the main activities they are willing to carry out for the set price. Once you see this, you will know if they have a clue what they are talking about or not.

Finally, it is crucial that you ask the SEO agency about their GDPR policies. You don’t want them to break the law, or have access to your account after you stopped working with them.

If anyone promises you immediate results, though, you should run as fast as you can. No affordable SEO services will come with a first page ranking. You will see this advertised in cold emails, but don’t fall for this promise. It’s likely to be a scam.

Do You Get Emails About SEO? (We Do, Too).

Every week we get dozens of emails like this from so-called “SEO companies” about affordable services. So do our clients. It is important that you steer clear from these offers; they will give you low quality service and – in the worst case scenario – get you banned from search engines. It’s not worth risking your reputation just to save a couple of hundred pounds.

There are loads of dangers of working with low quality cheap SEO services.