How Much Does SEO Cost For A Trade Business In The UK?

For a local trade, SEO comes down to three jobs:

1. Your Google Business Profile. Categories, services, photos, posts and reviews. This decides whether you show in the map results, where most local calls come from.

2. Your website. A page for each job and each main town, set up so Google can read it. This decides whether you show in the normal results.

3. Trust signals. Reviews, and your business listed with the same details on the directories that matter.

A good SEO company does those three things every month and tells you, in plain English, what changed. Anything else is extra.

Monthly fee. The most common. You pay every month for ongoing work. It only makes sense if you can see what is done each month.

One-off setup. A fixed price to get your profile and website set up properly. Often the best value for a new business, because a lot of the gains come from getting the basics right once.

By the hour. Rare for small trades, and hard to judge, because you are paying for time, not results.

• A guaranteed number one ranking. Nobody controls Google.

• A long contract. If the work is good, you will stay anyway.

• No monthly report, or a report full of charts you cannot read.

• "We will build you hundreds of links." Bought links break Google's rules and can sink your site.

• No mention of your Google Business Profile. For a local trade, that is where the calls are.

• They will not tell you the price until you have sat through a sales call.

Our prices are on our pricing page. In short:

• Website, £499 one-off. Includes basic SEO setup, a page for each service, area pages, and the site submitted to Google and connected to your Google Business Profile.

• Launch Pack, £699 one-off. Everything in the website, plus your Google Business Profile fully set up: categories, services, photos, posts and Q&A. Also business email and review cards. No monthly fee.

• Google Business Profile management, £99 a month. We keep your profile active and optimised every month.

• Fully Booked, £699 setup and £899 a month. Monthly local SEO and Google Business Profile management, missed-call text-back, review request automation, 12 social media posts a month made from your job photos, and the care plan. It works because you send us job photos every week.

There is no contract on any of them. You can stop when you like.

If you are new, or your website and profile have never been set up properly, start with a one-off. Getting the basics right is where most of the gains are, and you do not need to pay monthly for that.

Move to monthly work when the basics are done and you want more: more towns, more of a certain job, or a profile that stays active without you thinking about it.

• What exactly will you do each month?

• How will I know it is working?

• Is there a contract, and how do I leave?

• Who owns my website and my Google Business Profile?

• What will you not do?

If the answers are vague, the work will be too.