Category: SEO
SEO
If I type into Google "How much should I pay someone for SEO in UK", the answer I get back from Google's AI tool is:
The cost of SEO in the UK can range from £50 to over £10,000 per month, depending on the size of the business, the type of service, and the agency's experience.
and then.....
Factors that affect SEO cost
Average SEO costs
Obviously you can do the same search on Google and you may get a different answer but its likely that the answer is not what you want to hear, especially if you haven't already factored in the costs of your business being found online into your business plan.
The first question may be:
Do I really need to be found online?
For some businesses the answer may well be no. I know personally of some businesses that do not have a website for example because they are so popular already that they don't need one. These are all bricks and mortar businesses where people go and find the products and services they want, delivered in a way that is appealing to the customer. We've probably all got our favourite coffee bars or hairdressers etc and we go to them because they provide what we need in a way that we appreciate and we grow to be loyal to these businesses.
If you are lucky enough to be running this type of business then perhaps all you need to do is to maintain:
1. A Google Business Profile which is free and gets you an entry on Google maps
2. An Instagram account where you can post images of your latest products or pictures of happy staff members.
In this case, you need to be found for an online search, either at a local level or at a wider level. Either way, a Google Business Profile, an Instagram account and a Facebook account will only get you part of the way to where you need to be. You are going to need a website that works well in conjunction with your social media presence and one that is featured on page one of Google, ideally at the top of page one. I say Google. Other search engines are available but as Google dominates the market in search engines, I will concentrate on Google. If you can get it right for Google then usually it is also right for Bing etc by default.
So number one priority is that you know what keywords your prospective customers will use when they search for your business. This is usually a description of the product or service that you provide but it is best not to assume too much about what your customers key into a search bar, when there is freely available information about how many searches per month are being made for specific keywords. This data is available for free in something called the Google Keyword Planner.
My first action when planning a website is nearly always to determine what are the optimal keywords for the site based upon what the client tells me about their business. A lot of work goes into optimising individual pages for specific keywords so it is crucial to do this in a planned way.
It amazes me that even this week I have seen two websites that were built without specifying any meta data which is one of the key components required when optimising a website. This indicates to me a complete lack of concern about being found, as if Search Engine ranking was just an afterthought!
Going down the track of building a wonderful looking website but without building in the necessary factors to get your site found online is a truly pointless exercise.
I can help get you started with a well designed website by which I mean not just visually appealing but far more importantly, technically well designed to rank for specific keywords.
The key factors for me are:
It can take months before a new website starts to work for you. The age of a website is a small but relevant factor when search engines determine rankings. The longevity of the domain name is an indication of authenticity so your brand new domain name may not look to the online world as having authenticity just yet.
You may be lucky and progress in the rankings quickly. This very much depends on the level of competition in your local area where you are trying to get noticed. If you are a locksmith in York for example you will have a hard time getting your business found because of the level of competition there is and a lot of your competitors are spending serious money on SEO which (after optimising the website) usually means link building.
Every couple of days I get an email offering link building services for my website, often from individuals in far off countries. These emails often list a few websites where the person has created links previously.
Looking at some competitor sites and finding out where their links come from, I have often noticed a huge volume of suspect links with rather thin content surrounding the link and sometimes no content at all! Having this sort of link coming into your site is dangerous and probably worse than not having any links at all. Links coming from dubious suspect sites are likely to make your site considered suspect too. You really don't want them, however cheap they are.
If you do find yourself getting dodgy links then you can disavow these links by loading a file of the pages concerned to Google but you will probably need some technical help to do that, so why pay good money to buy them in the first place?
At the more positive end of the scale, some companies offer well written original articles, typically of several hundred words on a relevant subject, of relevance to your business which usually contain one link to your site and can bring some small benefit in terms of domain authority and therefore rankings. However, the people writing these sort of articles have very specialist skills in both writing, finding the right websites to host the article and having a level of appropriate knowledge that will make the article authoritative as well as relevant and you will have to pay for those skills.
Just to be clear - link building is not a service which I offer.
If you have some writing skills then it is a great idea to provide fresh interesting content to your site on a regular basis as Google likes fresh content.
Nearly all the websites I build have a blog which can be maintained and added to from the Admin pages. This is exactly what I am doing right now - adding to my blog posts with a large chunk of fresh content and I try to advise all my clients to do the same thing whenever they can. It's free once you have paid for the website. All it takes is some of your time. You can also share the finished blog post onto social media which may get a few more visitors to your site.
I know it's not always easy to come up with the volume of text content that I have written here but even just adding a blog post about the recent jobs you have completed can help. Take a photo if that makes sense, add a title, a few lines about the work you've done and maybe the customer's feedback and save it.
Again it may not suit every business model but my eyes were opened wide when I built a website for a nail bar business and I realised that the Vietnamese owner was taking pictures of her customer's nails after she'd done her work and posting them on Instagram. She had numerous followers on Instagram and because her Instagram account had a link to her website, within a couple of weeks her site was on page one of Google and has stayed there ever since. One smart lady!
Some people may tell you that it is easy to get to the top of page one of Google. Just use Google ads. But the problem with that idea is that a lot of people realise that:
a) A top of page sponsored listing i.e. an advert is no guarantee of a good product or service
b) The company concerned is paying for that advert and the only way to pay for those adverts is by charging you more for their products and services.
Here is some 2025 data to look at:
| Type of result | Click through rate |
| Ad Position 1 | 2.1% |
| Ad Position 2 | 1.4% |
| Ad Position 3 | 1.3% |
| Ad Position 4 | 1.2% |
| Search Position 1 | 39.8% |
| Search Position 2 | 18.7% |
| Search Position 3 | 10.2% |
| Search Position 4 | 7.2% |
| Search Position 5 | 5.1% |
| Search Position 6 | 4.4% |
| Search Position 7 | 3.0% |
| Search Position 8 | 2.1% |
Data source: https://firstpagesage.com/reports/google-click-through-rates-ctrs-by-ranking-position/
As you can see, as long as your website is ranking at number 7 or above you are going to get more clicks without doing Google ads than if you were to pay for Google ads.
The article above also suggests that the number of people trusting paid ads has declined slightly since last year.
Of course, if you are on page 20 say, then it might make sense to invest in Google ads to get your business started but if you can afford to wait then I would recommend a wait and see how far you can get with the techniques outlined above. Once you have gone down the Google ads route you might find it difficult to stop because you cannot be certain what impact stopping may have on getting visitors to your site.
To sum up, as you can see there are many ways in which you can help yourself to get an online presence following the launch of your website and I would encourage you to explore them yourself, as only you know what is relevant to be posted where and when. Please feel free to contact me if you want to talk through the merits and demerits of any of these options.
Martin Waring |Websites York | Email
Factors that affect SEO cost
Average SEO costs
Obviously you can do the same search on Google and you may get a different answer but its likely that the answer is not what you want to hear, especially if you haven't already factored in the costs of your business being found online into your business plan.
The first question may be:
Do I really need to be found online?
For some businesses the answer may well be no. I know personally of some businesses that do not have a website for example because they are so popular already that they don't need one. These are all bricks and mortar businesses where people go and find the products and services they want, delivered in a way that is appealing to the customer. We've probably all got our favourite coffee bars or hairdressers etc and we go to them because they provide what we need in a way that we appreciate and we grow to be loyal to these businesses.
If you are lucky enough to be running this type of business then perhaps all you need to do is to maintain:
1. A Google Business Profile which is free and gets you an entry on Google maps
2. An Instagram account where you can post images of your latest products or pictures of happy staff members.
In this case, you need to be found for an online search, either at a local level or at a wider level. Either way, a Google Business Profile, an Instagram account and a Facebook account will only get you part of the way to where you need to be. You are going to need a website that works well in conjunction with your social media presence and one that is featured on page one of Google, ideally at the top of page one. I say Google. Other search engines are available but as Google dominates the market in search engines, I will concentrate on Google. If you can get it right for Google then usually it is also right for Bing etc by default.
So number one priority is that you know what keywords your prospective customers will use when they search for your business. This is usually a description of the product or service that you provide but it is best not to assume too much about what your customers key into a search bar, when there is freely available information about how many searches per month are being made for specific keywords. This data is available for free in something called the Google Keyword Planner.
My first action when planning a website is nearly always to determine what are the optimal keywords for the site based upon what the client tells me about their business. A lot of work goes into optimising individual pages for specific keywords so it is crucial to do this in a planned way.
It amazes me that even this week I have seen two websites that were built without specifying any meta data which is one of the key components required when optimising a website. This indicates to me a complete lack of concern about being found, as if Search Engine ranking was just an afterthought!
Going down the track of building a wonderful looking website but without building in the necessary factors to get your site found online is a truly pointless exercise.
I can help get you started with a well designed website by which I mean not just visually appealing but far more importantly, technically well designed to rank for specific keywords.
The key factors for me are:
It can take months before a new website starts to work for you. The age of a website is a small but relevant factor when search engines determine rankings. The longevity of the domain name is an indication of authenticity so your brand new domain name may not look to the online world as having authenticity just yet.
You may be lucky and progress in the rankings quickly. This very much depends on the level of competition in your local area where you are trying to get noticed. If you are a locksmith in York for example you will have a hard time getting your business found because of the level of competition there is and a lot of your competitors are spending serious money on SEO which (after optimising the website) usually means link building.
Every couple of days I get an email offering link building services for my website, often from individuals in far off countries. These emails often list a few websites where the person has created links previously.
Looking at some competitor sites and finding out where their links come from, I have often noticed a huge volume of suspect links with rather thin content surrounding the link and sometimes no content at all! Having this sort of link coming into your site is dangerous and probably worse than not having any links at all. Links coming from dubious suspect sites are likely to make your site considered suspect too. You really don't want them, however cheap they are.
If you do find yourself getting dodgy links then you can disavow these links by loading a file of the pages concerned to Google but you will probably need some technical help to do that, so why pay good money to buy them in the first place?
At the more positive end of the scale, some companies offer well written original articles, typically of several hundred words on a relevant subject, of relevance to your business which usually contain one link to your site and can bring some small benefit in terms of domain authority and therefore rankings. However, the people writing these sort of articles have very specialist skills in both writing, finding the right websites to host the article and having a level of appropriate knowledge that will make the article authoritative as well as relevant and you will have to pay for those skills.
Just to be clear - link building is not a service which I offer.
If you have some writing skills then it is a great idea to provide fresh interesting content to your site on a regular basis as Google likes fresh content.
Nearly all the websites I build have a blog which can be maintained and added to from the Admin pages. This is exactly what I am doing right now - adding to my blog posts with a large chunk of fresh content and I try to advise all my clients to do the same thing whenever they can. It's free once you have paid for the website. All it takes is some of your time. You can also share the finished blog post onto social media which may get a few more visitors to your site.
I know it's not always easy to come up with the volume of text content that I have written here but even just adding a blog post about the recent jobs you have completed can help. Take a photo if that makes sense, add a title, a few lines about the work you've done and maybe the customer's feedback and save it.
Again it may not suit every business model but my eyes were opened wide when I built a website for a nail bar business and I realised that the Vietnamese owner was taking pictures of her customer's nails after she'd done her work and posting them on Instagram. She had numerous followers on Instagram and because her Instagram account had a link to her website, within a couple of weeks her site was on page one of Google and has stayed there ever since. One smart lady!
Some people may tell you that it is easy to get to the top of page one of Google. Just use Google ads. But the problem with that idea is that a lot of people realise that:
a) A top of page sponsored listing i.e. an advert is no guarantee of a good product or service
b) The company concerned is paying for that advert and the only way to pay for those adverts is by charging you more for their products and services.
Here is some 2025 data to look at:
| Type of result | Click through rate |
| Ad Position 1 | 2.1% |
| Ad Position 2 | 1.4% |
| Ad Position 3 | 1.3% |
| Ad Position 4 | 1.2% |
| Search Position 1 | 39.8% |
| Search Position 2 | 18.7% |
| Search Position 3 | 10.2% |
| Search Position 4 | 7.2% |
| Search Position 5 | 5.1% |
| Search Position 6 | 4.4% |
| Search Position 7 | 3.0% |
| Search Position 8 | 2.1% |
Data source: https://firstpagesage.com/reports/google-click-through-rates-ctrs-by-ranking-position/
As you can see, as long as your website is ranking at number 7 or above you are going to get more clicks without doing Google ads than if you were to pay for Google ads.
The article above also suggests that the number of people trusting paid ads has declined slightly since last year.
Of course, if you are on page 20 say, then it might make sense to invest in Google ads to get your business started but if you can afford to wait then I would recommend a wait and see how far you can get with the techniques outlined above. Once you have gone down the Google ads route you might find it difficult to stop because you cannot be certain what impact stopping may have on getting visitors to your site.
To sum up, as you can see there are many ways in which you can help yourself to get an online presence following the launch of your website and I would encourage you to explore them yourself, as only you know what is relevant to be posted where and when. Please feel free to contact me if you want to talk through the merits and demerits of any of these options.
Martin Waring |Websites York | Email