Table of contents:

• The different types of SEO pricing models
• What are the benefits of paying for a monthly SEO retainer?
• Wouldn’t paying an hourly price work out better?
• Why we would encourage you not to pay for performance-based/guaranteed first page rankings
• How much does your agency charge?
• Is your business ready to start improving its search engine optimisation?

Introduction

It sure can be confusing trying to work out how much any company should spend on search engine optimisation services in sunny Bristol. For many businesses, most of their new customers come via Google’s organic results- therefore, the level of investment is something that they need to get right.

This, therefore, means businesses need to carefully consider the level of SEO work they require to ensure they get good value for money. You don’t want to underspend and end up with mediocre or half-baked work!
At the same time, well, you don’t want to pay through the nose to keep the agency director in a new Ferrari each year.

Prices vary, and therefore vary massively in the South West- for example some agencies charge as little as £300 pcm, with some quoting in excess of £3k pcm. The reason prices vary wildly is that some companies focus only on technical SEO improvements, which often means a few basic tweaks here and there to say page titles. This won’t usually cut the mustard if that’s the only work being implemented. This therefore means that some of these companies are just taking money for pulling a few of the more quick and basic SEO levers- such as editing H1 tags on the odd main page!

In contrast, others really roll up their sleeves and focus on writing long-form evergreen content and building backlinks (that’s us!). This can involve considerable hours of work and unpicking, for example, your direct competitors’ backlink profiles until the late evenings. It could mean writing 2,000-word articles as regular as clockwork, which is, well, time-consuming to say the least!

The range of work offered by Bristol agencies therefore varies massively; it is thus challenging to compare quotes when the job is so different.

It can therefore feel like comparing apples with pears-well, that’s unless you have a good understanding of what you need and set clear guidance for it.

 

Follow the breadcrumbs

Okay, bear with us when we explain this.

If you were to throw money at any marketing agency, sometimes, its is literally like burning money.

However, if you are clear about what you want from the outset, such as stating, “I have these competitors; name 1, 2, or 3 competitors’ websites,” then the objectives become much clearer.

By stating that you want to overtake their visibility with these direct competitors in terms of keyword ranking, you’re much more clearly setting out what you want to achieve. Plus, the agency then knows right: I need to build a stronger backlink profile. Then a comparison of the content marketing can be made by stating: for example they are writing, say, four posts a month, we need to quote for more or the same number.

If an agency is allowed the minimum, they will sometimes do just that- if the goals are much clearer, such as I need to overtake this direct competitor then your setting and defining the goal posts. This may sound blooming obvious, but trust us when we say, when businesses just opt for the cheapest monthly SEO prices, what they get in terms of work is shocking or just non-existent.

 

What are the benefits of monthly retainers?

By a country mile, monthly retainers are the most common billing option SEO agencies offer.

They can also be the best option when the goals are clearly defined.

This means that the services run on an ongoing basis, often with a fixed price retainer, often billed at the start of the month.

Therefore, often written into a set of agreements, there will be an understanding of how much time will be spent diligently working on content marketing, link building, and on-page SEO, and how much consulting time will be spent each month on this work. Often this is broken down into set hours on each task, and then where this time is spent, actually working on-site and off-site improvements should be itemised like a MOT failure sheet!

 

Hourly rate

In our opinion, this is less common among most SEO agencies in 2025/2026. The reason is that regardless of which business you run, you are often operating in a highly competitive niche, and because of this, you are almost on a constant treadmill of work that is needed.

A constant cycle of having to produce SEO work each month to keep up with the leading organisations in your industry means an hourly rate is often not the best option unless you have a large or unlimited marketing budget.

Therefore, an hourly rate is often not reasonable, as it may just mean changing a few meta titles or product descriptions or if you allow the company to bill what the website needs, the costs can run away with themselves.

What is often needed is a lot more substantial work, which is why companies usually prefer a monthly retainer instead.

 

Performance-based/guaranteed rankings

From experience, we urge you to be extremely wary of any business offering “guaranteed 1st page rankings on Google”. The reason is that when a business guarantees first-page results, often in a very short period, it means they are going to get the website to rank for search terms that no shopper is using.

So, we are talking about organic SEO here, sure you can spend on Google Adwords, which of course is a good way of spending money, and can provide instant visibility. However here we are talking about organic SEO.

For example, let’s say you sell legal services, let’s say that you are an employment lawyer- you might get on the first page, for example for: “employment lawyers that specialise in compromise agreements and have a vast amount of experience in this field”.

This sounds okay; the problem is quite simple: no shopper is really searching for a query that long. Technically, the SEO business has achieved a first-page ranking that it promised- but what on earth is the point if no one is searching for it?

Therefore, guaranteed rankings can be a monumental waste of time and money if the end result is ranking on page one of Google for long-tail keywords no one is searching for. Instead, you’re better off going with a more honest and transparent agency (like us), which works on a monthly retainer and just provides a full break down of the work carried out.

 

Local SEO

How much of my business will be paying per month?

There are many factors to consider, such as the city’s population and size. For example, in a large city, say for example in Bristol there will be a lot of competition. However, then compare this with in a small town, there will be fewer competitors; therefore, it is much simpler to cut through and get a business onto the first page of Google in a village or town because there’s less competition.

However, with that said for an average large city in the UK, and we would recommend paying between £300 and £ 3,000 per month for local SEO (based on level of competition).

The price difference is based on the level of competition in your area. If your competitors are heavily investing, working hard, and doing a lot of work, you will need to match that level of effort if you want to overtake them.

 

National SEO

To rank nationally, you have to consider all the businesses operating locally, then multiply that by a national basis. It could mean your therefore competiting with say a thousand plus businesses nationally. For example, you are competing with companies based in all the UK’s major cities. This involves much more work, so the search engine optimisation is much more complex.

We would suggest a budget of £3000 plus national SEO.

 

How our agency can help

What we would say is the most crucial factor to consider is what level of experience the agency or specific freelance SEO consultant has. You have to factor in that here at Digital Tailors, not a single consultant here working for us has less than 10 years of experience. This is what really makes the difference, so we are not interested in competing with companies offer super low prices, as their packages often disappoint the customer over the long run.

The reason is that super cheap monthly retainers or hourly rates typically mean cutting corners.
When you cut corners, you sometimes get very short-term wins, but rarely does this really help improve the website’s long-term ranking on Google.

This is where we come in: we are only interested in implementing methods that help the business in the long run. This means putting your effort and time into the important work, the more time-consuming jobs that is well worth all of that effort.
So, for example, writing highly informative long-form buying guides, this could easily be in excess of 2000 words, stuffed full of helpful information and answering questions which are frequently asked.

This involves a lot of research into page SEO and, obviously a huge amount of time spend proofreading. This is the type of work that can move the needle towards SEO success.
Come to the best, come to us.

 

If your shopping around to find a new agency then talk to us. We’ve been helping businesses for an extended period of time to improve their organic search as well as the local search engine optimisation.
Meta title

Author: David Lang
Subject: Link Building Strategy

Introduction

We get it, you’ve had your website designed, whether it be a Drupal, Magento or a WordPress website and now your planning on how you can bring more shoppers. Reading around various blog posts on how to improve a businesses search engine optimisation, one of the core pillars if you like of gaining more visitors, more sales is to build backlinks.

Superb quality content marketing, optimising for various keywords, and also building backlinks are the areas that any business should work on in order to improve the businesses Google EEAT score.

 

What does Google EEAT even mean?

Think of it like a tick box exercise that Google carries out when its checking the quality of the content marketing a business has published in Bristol.

Also, it doesn’t matter if you run a large firm, say with 1000 solicitors, or you’re a sole trader with a website, Google EEAT is used to work out how good a businesses search engine optimisation is.

It stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

Now, the experience and expertise, that’s mostly proved through on-page SEO, such as the businesses content marketing.

However, to improve the authoritativeness of your business’s website, to improve that part of Google EEAT you need to build links. As this whole article is about building links, and why they are important, let us explain that point a little better.

 

What is authoritativeness in the context of SEO?

Well, imagine this, two businesses are based in Clifton Bristol, and they specialise in offering the two same service, let’s say that’s employment law.

Therefore, just for the purposes of highlighting how backlinks work, lets imagine those two businesses are on the same road and have similar websites.

One solicitor has no backlinks, lets say it ranks on page four of Google’s organic SERP’s.

However, then you have business two, it has backlinks from all around the U.K. That business lets say is part of the “magic circle” therefore, the owner of the business is well-known, regularly appears in newspaper articles and on leading solicitor websites. These websites all link back.

 

Well which business in Bristol will rank at the top of Google’s organic results?

You guessed it business two, that’s because it has a better backlink. The reason is more “link equity” will be flowing through to those pages.

The more link equity, the stronger the DA score for those pages.

The more pages with higher DA (Domain Authority) score, the more those pages will rank higher on Google. Links are therefore very important, and trust us when we say, in a city like Bristol often there’s only a small number of freelancers, agencies and companies that truly know how to build good links that are relevant to the business.

 

Quality over quantity

Imagine a jacket for a second, you can buy a lot of cheap jackets made with cheap fabrics that don’t last that long before the white internal stuffing comes out.

Alternatively there are British brands that build quality, such as Barbour Wax Jackets, which are some of the best winter jackets in the world.
Now the point we are trying to make here is simple, think quality over quantity. This is the same with content marketing and backlinks. The reason why this business, with its partners are so well known in Bristol is simple, for over 10 years we place quality over above all else.

We produce top-notch content, not just that, we also build quality do-follow backlinks from some of the best brands in the entire world.

What does domain trust or domain authority actually mean?

Depending on which SEO tool you use, whether it be Moz Pro, Majestic Backlink Checker or Ahrefs, there all good. However, they often describe DA, that’s domain authority in slightly different way. However, all of them do the same thing, they measure how powerful that backlink is. Just as a electrician would check the power of a cable or wire using a multi-metre, well, the tools of the trade for any good SEO agency is to use backlink checking tool to see the strength of the DA before we proceed to build that link.

Domain Trust and Authority

Domain trust or domain authority simply refers to the strength of the link, the power of the backlinks.

 

Why is it considered important to have a link building strategy?

A link building strategy is very important, as backlinks do get deleted from time to time.

Also, a business in Bristol that has more links, more powerful do-follow backlinks, well they will simply rank higher.

Even since the days of Google PageRank, Google used links as way of deciding where a business should rank.

Fast forward to 2025 and at the time of writing we about to enter 2026, well backlinks are still important. Backlinks are still “crawled and indexed” by Googlebot, the businesses that simply have the best links in Bristol, well you guessed it, they are often the businesses that rank at the top of the organic results.

 

How can you build links?

Links are best built, when you do nothing at all.
Now what do we mean by that statement?
Well, its simple?

If your company in Bristol has dedicated a lot of time and energy into writing helpful guides and information, then naturally surrounding websites often tend to want to link to you without you even asking.

Lets say you sell some of the best fair-trade, organic coffee around. Well, you may also have a coffee shop that hires out meeting space, and then a lot of groups in Bristol may tend to meet there.

Everyone from Sci-fi fans, through to classic car enthusiasts, and on there blogs, on there websites, and on forums, and on social media links will be built. For example “The annual meeting of alien spotters will meet as luxe Coffee at 7pm this Tuesday”. Then theres a link to the venue from a blog.

The more links are an indication to Google that your business is popular in that area, and it’s a good way of Google knowing, well how popular is your business. And this stands to reason, as why would other businesses and bloggers, and people on social media want to link to your Bristol coffee shop unless they had a reason to.

 

How many backlinks do I need?

The simple answer is more than the competition.

If the competition have 100 good quality links, well your going to need 101.

This is why SEO agencies are never short of work, well if they are good at what they do that is. That’s because its like an F1 race, were all competing for that top spot, and sometimes its just that little advantage, such as having one more link that does it, that gives your business that top spot.

However the problem comes in terms of maintaining it, because as soon as you do get that edge. A competitor will see the backlinks you have built, say using their own account of Ahrefs, they will then seek to overtake you. So, its always that game of working hard, yet you cant slow down on the treadmill as otherwise you will be overtaken.

 

Does your business have experience of building backlinks?

Do the average Brit love a cup of tea? That’s the same as asking whether we have experience of building backlinks, we would actually go a bit further than that, say our business owner, is probably the most or one of the most knowledgeable link builders in Bristol today.

We have gained links from some of the biggest SEO websites, such as Search Engine Land, through to gaining links from household names such as Samsung Electronics for our clients.

 

We truly are that good.

Is there such thing as bad link?

For sure, its one of the reasons businesses fail, and SEO firms close as well.

It’s a piece of cake to build low quality and spam links. The problem comes when Googlebot indexes too many of these. If Google detects you have been building spam links, then overnight a penalty could be issued. Often there’s no warning, no e-mails, just a website that doesn’t rank on page 1,2,3 or 4 or even beyond. The business is removed from Google’s results, then to recover from a Google Penguin penalty- well that can take years.

So, that’s why we strongly state, quality over quantity.

 

How we can help

Serving clients in Bristol, yet we have a national reach. We don’t compete on price, plus we wont be the cheapest option, however we are one of the best. How can we say that with such conviction?
Simple, we have 10 years experience behind us, we are one of the best at what we do.

 

 

We get it, SEO can mean that businesses have to follow so many metrics, things can get, well over-whelming.

After all, there’s organic traffic, backlink analysis, bounce rates, then CTR to monitor. However, to get a well performing website, you need to monitor all of these.

What does click through rate (CTR) even mean?

 

Quite simply put, in a nutshell, the “click through rate (CTR) is simply how many times a page or blog post on your website get clicked compared to how many impressions, that times it appears in Google’s results.

In essence, in laymen’s terms, how often does your website pop up for a query, compared to how many times it obtains a click from a shopper.

 

Why should we be paying attention the CTR?

The click through rate can indicate how well optimised your businesses meta titles and meta descriptions are. If you successfully implement schema mark-up, then this can help to greatly increase your businesses chances of appearing in Google’s SERP’s as a “rich snippet”.

 

What exactly is a rich snippet?

A rich snippet is simply when your businesses SERP result looks different to all the other companies. The reason being, for example, a product may have schema mark-up directly applied to the customer review rating.

If the product, lets say has 5 star reviews, your web designer has added schema, then this product rating may appear in the SERP’s. Now, when someone is searching for a product, and there’s say 10 organic business results in Google’s SERP’s, the business which has schema mark-up applied, will stand out in the SERP’s. The star rating will appear, which means it will attract more clicks from shoppers.

 

Tell me how is the CTR calculated?

How CTR or click through rate is calculated is a piece of cake, let us explain:

CTR simply means = number of clicks / number of impressions then x 100

What does number of clicks mean?

Number of clicks is not all the clicks that you receive once a shopper is on the website browsing the products or services.

No the number of clicks is just simply the number of times shoppers in Bristol click on websites SERP result in Google’s SERPs. Therefore, the number of times they click the websites meta title.

 

What does number of impressions even mean?

The number of impressions, is a statistic that you can obtain from your businesses Google Search Console account. It simply the total number of times your websites pages or blog posts appear in Google’s or another search engines results.

 

How important is the CTR in terms of Search Engine Optimisation?

CTR is often an overlooked metric many agencies. Often agencies report on keyword rankings, organic traffic and backlinks, which are of course important. However, Google has a very clever algorithm which always working out engagement, how many shoppers are clicking that on that website?

For example, you might have a business in Bristol, lets say a really good SEO consultant, now they might be ranked let’s say 6th in Google’s organic results in the SERPs. However, that business might be hoovering up all of the clicks, because of schema, or because that consultant is becoming more and more popular in the fantastic city of Bristol.

Now Google will notice this, it will know that the business is say ranked 6th in Google’s organic results. However, because it keeps hoovering up the majority of the clicks, of the shoppers who are searching a local SEO consultant, Google will know of time that this business should move up.

 

Relevant

Now what Google always wants to do, is supply the most useful and also the most relevant answer to any question.

That could range from, where’s the best place to buy a rugby ball, through to where’s the best place to have a relaxing get away just outside of Bath.

So, therefore what Google is doing is using “ranking factors” to determine where a business should rank in Google’s results. However, then something called Google’s Rank Brain is also being actively used to monitor how effective that business is that gaining clicks, plus also retaining interest of the shopper, through dwell times, and how high the bounce rate is.

 

What is Google Rank Brain

Well simply put, Google’s Rank Brain is thought to be the 3 most significant and important ranking factor there is. So, most top marketing agencies, such as Digital Tailors, believe backlinks are number one, then content marketing quality, such as Google E-EAT score is next, then there’s also RankBrain.

Now, Rank Brain is powered by AI, that is its like a eyeball, that is constantly working out which businesses are getting clicks, which ones are not. Then its reshuffling the results, based on engagement.

Relevance and also retaining interest
An essential part of the SEO process, is gaining more clicks, so improving the CTR. However, this just one aspect of good agencies work, the agency then has to work hard to retain the shopper’s interest. If they don’t, the dwell time will be low, which means that shoppers, and visitors to the website, don’t really want to spend long reading the article or browsing the products.

This shows that they are not interested in the business, however, they could then go to a competitor’s website and spend say 10 minutes or longer on there. Showing that they are more interested in a competitor website than they are yours, if for example they are spending less than 60 seconds on your website.

 

Dwell time

If the dwell time is very low on the website, it shows that shoppers don’t want to spend long on the website.

Therefore this could be because of the quality of the businesses content marketing.
The work might not offer a solution to the question, it might be “content thin” meaning that the content marketing doesn’t offer much in the way of useful information.

Therefore, the work doesn’t satisfy what SEO companies call “user intent”.

For example, if there looking for say a pair of running trainers, made by a certain brand, yet its clear after a minute, that the company doesn’t stock that brand, well that’s going to lead to a lot of customers angry, because they will see that they have clicked on a meta title and description which says that they stock that brand. However, if they clearly do not, the dwell time will decrease which damage the businesses organic search engine optimisation.

 

Optimise your meta titles and descriptions

The meta descriptions and meta titles are key to improving the businesses CTR. Therefore, you want your business to be clicked more in Google’s SERP’s, you have to carefully consider how these descriptions and titles are written, in order to draw in more clicks.

 

Schema mark-up and rich snippets

When you are looking across a bunch of apples to pick and buy, the juicy apple that looks the biggest, more fresh, has nice colour will be the apple your eye in drawn to.

Now, think about this logic, when you are optimising your meta titles and meta descriptions.

What you want to do, is to rewrite the meta titles and descriptions, so that in the SERP’s they stand out like a bright light.

For example, mention things that you know your customers in Bristol want to hear, such as you a long-established business. Perhaps your plumber that offers free call our charges? Perhaps you’re a company that can offer free next day delivery. What ever it is, make sure that you write it into the meta title and the meta description, so that you can stand out from the crowd.

 

What can I use Schema mark up to mark up?

Schema mark-up can be added by yoru web developers, it can be used for multiple different reason to enhance a business’s CTR.

For example, you might want to schema mark-up in the following ways:

 

Product reviews

If you sell products / services in South West England, then you might be up against a lot of competition. For example, let’s say you a specialist insurance broker, well, to stand out you may want to add schema-up to your businesses TrustPilot business reviews. This way, when Googlebot indexes the schema mark-up, say applied to the homepage, then what will happen is that your business could be mentioned as a rich snippet.

This going to help your business to stand out in Google’s organic SERPs.

 

Make sure that you use split testing and Google Analytics

Log in from time to time and check your businesses Google Analytics. Which pages, have a high bounce rate? Which ones have a low dwell time? Which pages have a low CTR?

Then start using something called split testing, or A/B testing, you might notice that with some simple improvements that are made to the meta description, plus also the meta title, that you start to gain more customers, by obtaining more clicks. This simply because more shoppers are clicking on your business in Google’s organic results.

 

CTR and content relevancy

It is all too simple, to draw in thousands if not millions of shoppers with an unbelievably cheap deal.

Let’s say for example, your SEO agency writes into the meta description that you have a huge number of say e-bikes for under £500.00.

Now that sounds like a Fabolous deal, that when that meta description appears in Google’s SERP’s it going to gain a lot of attention, plus also clicks. The SEO agency will feal that they have done an amazing job, because the CTR rate might go through the roof.

However, there’s just one big problem!
All of your e-bikes start from a whopping 2k, not the below £500 that you mentioned. This simply means that shoppers will sort the items by price, see that they have been falsely drawn to your website, under a promise, of cheap e-bikes, then they leave. This increases the bounce rate, Google RankBrain will notice that your bounce rate is high.

Now when Google’s algorithms, as well as Google RankBrain spot that the bounce rate for your e-commerce bike store is high, it will compare it with your direct competitors.

Because your bounce rate is through the roof, compared to your direct competitors, what this means is that then, when Google’s algorithm reshuffles the business results, in Google’s SERP’s, your business may move down.

Sometimes say if your bounce rate is through the roof, the dwell time is low, then Google’s algorithm, during a major Google algorithm update, may place your business off page 1 and say place it on page two of Google which will massively negatively impact your businesses organic traffic, that you see in Google Analytics, if that is and important keyword.

 

The key is high quality content marketing

When hiring any agency in Bristol, you have to ensure that as part of your monthly search engine optimisation work, that the business is writing quality content marketing. This work should have a high Google E-EAT score, which will mean that it can earn more backlinks, plus have higher dwell time, as well as lower bounce rates.

 

Come to one of the best agencies in glorious Bristol

Regardless of the size of business that you run in South West England, we want to have a chat with you. With SEO packages starting from

£500 PCM we have priced our monthly organic SEO packages very competitively.

Digital Tailors is one of the best SEO agencies that you will find in the whole Bristol and the whole of Bath, give us a call today.

How should our business be measuring our SEO performance?

Date: 17/11/2025

Subject: Local search engine optimisation / Bristol

 

Introduction

There is a considerable number of SME businesses nestled right across the South-West of England. This region of the country has a strong entrepreneurial spirit with many companies choosing to call Bristol home.

What unites these companies is that they often need to get their company website to the top of the first page of Google ( Google’s organic results and local business results). That’s need to get the business more visitors; therefore, you may need to invest in search engine optimisation actively.

There is a simply a huge number of Bristol SEO companies out there, so when you find the one that’s offering the services your business needs, naturally you start to think, well do they track SEO performance?

This article will decipher which metrics your business may wish to monitor, so that you can then ascertain as say the director of the company whether the SEO is improving or perhaps not as the case might be?

What you don’t want to do is follow vanity metrics, mumbo-jumbo graphs, or focus on keywords rankings for keywords that are not important to your business.

You will want your agency to create a simple report, one that instantly communicates how well businesses’ organic search engine optimisation is doing every month.

Let’s now dive into some of the statistics and figures that your business should be monitoring to see if the SEO is improving.

 

Organic Traffic (Google Analytics)

You will want to monitor your business’s organic traffic using Google Analytics.

Broadly speaking, you can categorise how customers find your website into three distinct ways: Google organic search results, local business results (Google Business), and Google Adwords.

Organic traffic is the metric that we will focus on here, as it’s what our marketing agency does best, that’s helping customers to increase their organic traffic. We can also help your business to appear more often in Bristol’s Google Business results. This is the 3 business results, which appear next to a map, which are often referred to as the “map results”.

For example, lets say you sell roof tiles online, you might sell potentially 100 different varieties of roof tiles on your e-commerce website.

When each customer finds you in the main section of Google’s organic results, this is when you can obtain a click, which is an organic visitor to your website.

 

Keyword rankings

The business will obviously want to rank as high as possible in Google’s organic rankings. The higher you rank for high-volume search terms on Google, the more customers will come to your business’s website.

That’s it, simply put, before a business starts putting together a monthly SEO report, you need to carry out keyword research, in order to understand, which keywords you should be optimising the website for.

Then monitor the organic traffic for these keywords. Use Google Seach Console as well as also Google Analytics to monitor organic traffic levels, as well as where your website ranks for certain keywords.

There are various SEO tools on the market, such as Moz Pro, as well as SEM Rush, to name a few, that you can use to monitor your business’s keyword rankings.

 

Bounce Rate

How high is your website’s bounce rate?

A website bounce rates can sound initially like a SEO term, that’s super complicated.

However, a websites bounce rate is an SEO metric that’s super simple to explain what it means.
Simply put, it’s the percentage of visitors who leave your company website after viewing only one page.

Why is a high bounce rate considered bad?
Generally speaking, when it comes to search engine optimisation, a business often focuses on metrics to be as high as possible, such as gaining an increased amount of organic visitors.

However, when monitoring the bounce rate, you want to be the complete opposite; you want the metric to be as low as possible.
The reason is that a high bounce rate is simply an indication that many shoppers in Bristol are disinterested with the website if they are leaving in there droves after visiting one page.,

If the shopper is leaving after visiting only one page, this suggests that they are not interested and don’t want to shop anymore on the website.

Therefore you will to decrease the bounce rate as much as possible.

 

Page Load Time

How fast is your website?

Let’s face it, we’re all impatient today, for example, imagine how you feel when you’re stuck in traffic in the city centre during peak rush hour? Things move very slowly, and this can be annoying when we need to get a move-on and be somewhere in Bristol.

Sure, it can be infuriating.

This is why you need a fast website, which is designed to be supersonic fast.

If you invest in high-quality hosting, your website should load faster, helping to lower your bounce rate because customers can get to the page they wanted faster.

 

How important are quality links?

Quality backlinks are what moves the needle and can sometimes blast businesses to the first page of Google.

As any good marketing agency will tell you however, that building quality backlinks is easier said than done.

However, having a strong backlink profile, one that is powerful in terms of having a lot of quality links, this can massively help improve your business’s search engine optimisation.

When hiring any Bristol SEO agency, note that the SEO report should note how many quality links have been built that month.

You might also want to note in the report how many links were lost during the month, because backlinks can actually be deleted from time to time.

For example, you might have a top-quality backlink from a national newspaper, such as The Financial Times.

However if the FT decides to delete that news story, lets say because the page too old, then this can mean your business loses a good quality backlink. Then in say Ahref’s it could be noted then as a “lost link”.

Therefore, the quality backlink might be deleted, which can impact your businesses search engine optimisation.

 

What are user engagement metrics?

So, think about dwell times again: that’s how long is the shopper spending on your website?

What are the dwell times for the website as a whole?

You can use Google Analytics to check this.

How long does the average shopper spend on the website?.

Are the shoppers leaving after a relatively short period of time?

If they are, it could be due to the U.X, which refers to the “user experience” of the website.

For example, if you have thousands of products, and lets say your website makes it difficult for customers to sort what’s in stock, plus what is out of stock, and sort items by price, for instance.

Shoppers will often need this sort of functionality on e-commerce websites, thats to make their lives much easier.

If they can’t sort items for them, otherwise they could simply leave to go to a competitor’s website instead.

Therefore, the dwell time and the bounce rate are highly connected to the user experience your website offers.

 

Therefore make sure of the following when improving a websites U.X:

– How fast is your company website?
– Are you offering the same functionality as a competitor? For example, sorting by in-stock or out of stock items?
– Is the text easy to read?
– Is the mobile version of the website easy to use?
– Can navigate using the main menu easily?

 

Find an agency that focuses on local SEO

If you’re based in the beating heart of Bristol, you might not want to attract customers across the whole of the United Kingdom. Instead you might want to focus on customers within a 10-mile radius around your business for example?

You might therefore want to gain as many local visitors as possible, therefore prioritise on finding an agency, that specialises in local SEO. That is exactly what we can offer at Digital Tailors, we are local SEO specialists.

 

High-quality content marketing is absolutely crucial.

Google needs to know what the website is about, therefore the business often has to write of text, we refer to this text as “content marketing”.
Writing content marketing includes, writing helpful guides, evergreen content, product descriptions, and blog posts.

 

Start to optimise for longtail keywords.

It’s a bit like entering a car race, when you enter one competition and win, you can start to build more confidence, and then you go after the more highly competitive races as your driving ability gets better and better.

This is also true for your business’s content marketing and organic search engine optimisation.

When you want to improve your SEO, you may want to target more low-competitive keywords, using long tail keywords to attract more customers, leading to increased business in a short period.
.

Track your business’s SEO performance.

As you can see, SEO is all about working hard, implementing high-quality white-hat work, and then refining the strategies to generate the best results possible.

This business has over 10 years of experience in helping businesses in the South-West of England to rank on the first page of Google.

 

If you want one of the most experienced, knowledgeable and best agencies in the region working with you, then why not give us a ring?

 

Date: 14/10/2025

Subject: U.K. SEO Costs

SEO List

Introduction

For many businesses today, it does go without saying that they need to be highly visible on Google.co.uk to gain customers.
Without this, some businesses might cease trading!

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is therefore vital to many British businesses- yet, of course, having a physical location on a prominent road within the United Kingdom also helps.

However, with huge mounting costs, not many businesses can afford that central office location with luxury office space, complete with bean bags spread across the office floor!

In this article, we are going to look at some of the factors you need to consider when deciding how much to pay for search engine optimisation here in Blighty per month.

 

Business size and industry competitiveness

It’s just a fact that sometimes it’s much easier to get some businesses from specific industry sectors onto the first page of Google.

This stands to reason: some businesses selling certain products or services often can’t afford to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in search engine optimisation because it simply isn’t worth it in terms of return on investment.

A local window cleaning business, for example, can’t spend as much per month as a group of solicitors’ practices can in the city centre. The price of the product or service and the demand for those items ultimately dictate how competitive the business sector is and how much businesses spend per month on improving their SEO.

If your business is in a sector where direct competitors are forking out a ton of money per month, well, in short, they will be harder to beat.

For some businesses, they may therefore be spending upwards of 5k per month, and in key business sectors — insurance, clothing, and holiday companies could be spending millions per year.

Therefore, the point we are getting at is that SEO prices vary primarily based on how competitive your industry is.

 

Check your current visibility.

When a builder builds a new slate roof on a house, it often involves a lot less work than building the whole house from scratch (we are stating the obvious, yet stay with us)

This concept should be applied when considering SEO services, because sometimes the website is on page 3 of Google for a very competitive term.

Now, page 3 of Google —well, that is a good starting point for improving the businesses on-page and off-page ranking factors and bumping the company onto page 1.

That’s because, with some magic being performed by a good SEO consultant, you can start to move onto page one faster than a business that’s started off being ranked on page 7 of Google.

However, if the website is brand-new and beyond page 14 of Google, that’s a hell of a lot of work — a considerable amount — and therefore it needs to be incorporated into the price.

 

Local SEO / national/ international campaigns

Let’s take another example: it’s much simpler to get the website to rank locally in just one city, like Bristol, than to get the same website to attract business on a national scale.

However, when you expand those keywords to reach customers nationally, or even internationally, you increase the competition you face.

This means that instead of 1000 competitors, you might be up against 10,000!

Therefore, given the high level of competition at the national or international level, the price will need to reflect the competition the SEO company faces.

 

Scope of work (technical, content, marketing, link building, reporting)

Some businesses might require, let’s say, one piece of content marketing, some link building, and some on-page SEO each month.

This work might be pretty straightforward —perhaps even run-of-the-mill — and can be implemented with ease. Therefore, the monthly retainer should reflect this.

However, some other businesses will need a completely different, scalable solution, with much more link building, content marketing, and reporting to various stakeholders.

Again, it’s the amount of work needed that will dictate the price.

 

Freelancer /SEO agency/In-house team

When you’re searching on Google to find a company to help you with your SEO, you’ll see many different descriptions of SEO businesses that can be used to find an agency. The cheapest will be a “freelancer,” and the most expensive will be a large “SEO agency” with offices in the city centre.

You can also always hire an in-house team; however, many businesses find that hiring an external agency is more accountable for bringing in better results.

 

Let’s get brass tacks- how much does SEO cost per month?

 

Freelancers / small business / local SEO: ~£300–£600/month

Freelancers, some of whom work from home, might not employ any staff and therefore incur significant cost savings that can then be passed on to the customer.

These cost savings can be substantial; therefore, this is why many people choose freelancers.

However, as with everything, there are pros and cons.

The pros are that you can save money, and the cons are that there are so many hours in a day, and a freelancer can sometimes get overwhelmed if they take on too much work.

Therefore, a freelancer often has to wear many hats, including those of a link builder, content marketing writer, and on-page SEO expert.

So, could your freelancer get overwhelmed?

Will the freelancer be burning the midnight oil, drinking copious amounts of coffee, and perhaps becoming a bit wired?

Therefore, you need to assess whether freelancers have sufficient free time to dedicate to your project.

 

SME SEO campaigns: £500–£1,500/month

Then you have your small-to-medium campaigns, which a local agency handles typically.

Within the agency, there will often be dedicated staff, some of whom focus on local search engine optimisation tasks, such as creating business citations / NAP listings.

At another part of the office, there might be a highly talented link builder, someone responsible for PR, and someone responsible for social media.

 

You get the picture.

By hiring various SEO agencies, you can bring in a range of staff members who can help improve the business’s search engine optimisation.

Growing/mid-sized businesses: £1,200–£4,000/month

Competitive, hungry, ambitious businesses—then you can start thinking about increasing your budget quite substantially to the parameters outlined above. The agency can then put in more work—for example, on link-building tasks—and believe us when we say you can literally spend hundreds of hours per month building links for clients! Link building is tedious and time-consuming.

 

Large/enterprise SEO: £5,000+/month

Now we are starting to think about your more competitive industries — such as retailing bathroom suites nationally or, perhaps, for U.K. car insurance companies.

Prices for national SEO vary widely, from $5k a month to companies spending millions to hold on to their top Google spots.

What this means is that you can literally have a group of businesses in the United Kingdom that are sometimes ploughing in excess of £1 million per year into digital marketing. The figure above is actually not that uncommon; that’s when we start thinking of large e-commerce shops retailing clothes, electrical items, or perhaps insurance services.

 

One-off audits/projects: £1,000–£5,000+

Many companies will offer free one-off audits. If the audit is provided for free, it’s often generic, hastily put together, and full of colourful graphs that sometimes amount to complete and utter nonsense.

If you really want expertise, you need an SEO consultant who really knows the trade and applies this expertise when writing the SEO audit report.

This means the SEO consultant will often have to review page by page (the most essential main pages), focusing on the most critical elements, in a way that AI bots usually cannot.

This means casting their eyes over the business’s content marketing, the website’s look and feel, whether the UX needs improvement, and, perhaps, the backlink profiles.

Therefore, a one-off audit can cost between £ 1,000 and £ 5,000 to complete.

 

Hourly rates: £75–£300+

There are a lot of SEO agencies cropping up; some, like those in the fantastic city of Bristol, offer hourly rates for SEO work and a breakdown of what has been completed.

This is great because the company knows precisely how much they are getting for their money.

The downside is that companies charging an hourly fee often don’t need to charge a higher price; when they charge per hour, as we all know, businesses/clients rarely stick to that timeframe and end up wanting more. There will always be time required to liaise with clients via email, phone, and questions; therefore, hiring an SEO per hour is usually more expensive than a retainer.

 

 

What work do agencies carry out?

Content creation/optimisation

We often create content for content marketing by writing blog posts or reworking certain pages, which might be deemed content-thin.

 

Link building & outreach

There’s no point building links to low-quality pages, so improving the content marketing often needs to come first; later, you may want to start a link-building campaign.

 

Technical SEO fixes

Technical SEO fixes might reveal aspects that are holding the website back —let’s say broken links, a slow website, or a design that’s simply tricky to use and might not work on specific devices, such as an Apple iPhone!

These all need to be fixed; otherwise, the bounce rate can be shockingly high, and all that SEO will have been for nothing if the technical SEO fixes are not addressed.

Assess goals (traffic, leads, conversions, revenue)

So, businesses will have different goals, and some try to make the process too complicated by setting unrealistic demands—for example, that the website be in the top 10 for, let’s say, seven keywords by a specific date, a few weeks away.

Now, this might sound really reasonable.

Yet for those SEO experts out there, they will know that many agencies/SEO businesses can optimise their websites for “low-volume keywords” that generate practically no business and are a complete waste of time.

In our opinion, it’s far better to hire a company with highly experienced staff, and one that offers transparency into the work they implement.

This means they set out every month what they have done for a fee. It’s then just a process of sucking and seeing whether that agency delivers.

 

Red flags to watch for:

Guaranteed #1 rankings

A guaranteed first-page ranking should be a red flag for any business owner. The ultimate aim of search engine optimisation is to get the business on page one of Google, so you might immediately think when reading this —perhaps while sipping on a nice, refreshing pint- what on earth are they talking about?

Surely that’s the name of the game? To get a business onto the first page of Google — and to guarantee that —well, that’s even better.

However, as we alluded to earlier, getting a business onto the first page can transform its profitability, bringing in perhaps millions of pounds in extra revenue.

However, you can also get the business onto the first page for keywords that no shoppers are searching for, with such low search volume that the sales phone line starts gathering dust.

 

Good SEO does take time.

We always like to refer to the famous Guinness advert, which states “that good things come to those who wait”. This is definitely the same with search engine optimisation, which often takes a long time to deliver results and more business.

The reason for this is simple: you will be up against direct competitors — your rivals — who could have been investing for longer and investing a lot more.

Businesses that think they can cut these competitors down to size in a couple of months by throwing a few hundred quid at a freelancer are often being naive.

Therefore, you need to carefully consider which agency you’re going to use, and, just as when you’re repairing a car, use quality parts and quality work to ensure the longevity of what you’re doing.

What you don’t want is to hire a company that does quick fixes and a website, only for everything to break down and need repairs a few months later.