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.
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