“How much does SEO cost?” is usually the first thing a small business owner asks, and the answers online are rarely useful. You’ll find anything from £50 a month to several thousand, with very little explanation of what changes between them.

This guide gives you real numbers, explains what drives the price, and tells you how long to wait before judging whether it’s working. It’s written for local businesses and trades in Welwyn Garden City, Hertford, St Albans, Harpenden and across Hertfordshire, but the principles apply anywhere.

Start with what you’re actually buying

“SEO” gets used for two different jobs, and they’re priced differently.

Your Google Business Profile. This is the free listing that shows on Google Maps and in the “map pack” when someone searches “electrician near me” or “hair salon Hertford”. For many local businesses it brings in more calls than the website does. Optimising it means filling in every field properly, choosing the right categories, adding services and photos, posting regularly and building up reviews.

Website SEO. This is about getting your own website to rank in the ordinary search results below the map. It covers the pages themselves (what they say and how they’re structured), the technical health of the site, and the links pointing to it from elsewhere.

If you’re a local business that serves people in a particular area, the Google listing is usually the cheapest and quickest place to start. Website SEO matters more once you want to rank for searches across a wider area, or for services where people research before they pick up the phone.

What we charge, so you have a real reference point

Prices vary from agency to agency, so it helps to have actual figures. Here are ours.

Google listing optimisation

  • Basic: £49 a month
  • Pro: £99 a month
  • Ultra: £149 a month

Search engine optimisation (website SEO)

  • Basic: £299 a month
  • Pro: £599 a month
  • Ultra: £999 a month

There are no contracts on any of them. We work month to month, so if it isn’t working for you, you stop. You can see what’s in each package on our Google listing optimisation and SEO pages.

What makes SEO cost more or less

The monthly price mostly reflects how much work goes in each month. A few things decide how much work you need.

How competitive your search terms are. A plumber trying to show up for “plumber Welwyn Garden City” is competing with a handful of local firms. An accountant trying to rank for “accountant London” is up against hundreds, many with years of content behind them. More competition needs more content, more links and more time.

How big the area is. Ranking in one town is a smaller job than ranking across the county. Each extra town usually needs its own well-written page and its own reasons for Google to trust you there.

The state of your website. A site that loads slowly, has thin pages or can’t be read properly by search engines needs fixing before anything else works. Sometimes that’s a handful of pages. Sometimes the honest answer is a rebuild, and we’ll tell you which before you spend anything.

What you’ve got already. A business with years of reviews and a few local press mentions starts well ahead of a brand-new one.

How long before you see results

This is where expectations go wrong most often.

For a Google Business Profile, most listings show movement in local search within four to eight weeks. Competitive categories and larger towns take longer.

For website SEO, expect early movement in about three months and meaningful change in about six. That isn’t padding. Google needs time to recrawl your pages, notice the improvements and trust them.

If anyone promises page one in a fortnight, they’re selling you something else.

Warning signs when you’re comparing quotes

  • A guaranteed number one ranking. Nobody controls Google’s results. What an agency can guarantee is the work, the reporting and the reasoning behind every decision.
  • Long lock-in contracts. If the work is good, you won’t want to leave. A twelve-month tie-in mostly protects the agency.
  • No clear reporting. You should be able to see what was done each month and what changed: rankings, clicks, calls and enquiries.
  • Very cheap “SEO packages” with thousands of links. Bulk low-quality links can do more harm than good.

So what should a small business budget?

For most local businesses and trades, a sensible starting point is the Google listing on its own, from £49 a month. It’s quick to show results, and it’s where most “near me” customers find you.

Add website SEO once the listing is working and you want to reach further: more towns, more services, or searches where people compare options before getting in touch.

Want a straight answer for your business?

Tell us what you do and where you work, and we’ll tell you honestly which of these is worth your money, and which isn’t. If you’d like to read more first, How to Drive More Customers to Your Business covers how Google listings, local SEO and advertising fit together.

Get in touch with Groove Marketing. We’re based in Welwyn Garden City and work across Hertfordshire and North London.