Three quotes are on the desk. The first wants £290 a month for "ongoing SEO management". The second wants £1,400 for a list of fourteen line items, six of which you do not understand. The third wants £89 and guarantees page one within three months. The cheapest promises the most, and that is not a coincidence, it is the first diagnostic sign.
You do not need to understand SEO to sort these three out. You only need to know which promises are physically impossible, which questions a serious quote answers on its own, and how to convert a monthly fee into working hours. This piece delivers exactly that, in that order.
Why two SEO quotes are never comparable
SEO is not a product but a collective term for four fairly different jobs: technical work (so Google can process the pages at all), content (so there is something to find), links (so others point at it) and measurement (so you know whether any of it worked). Every agency bundles those differently, and all of them call it SEO management.
So when two quotes carry the same heading, you are often comparing copywriting with technical maintenance. It is like comparing a decorator and an electrician on hourly rate. The first task is therefore not to judge the price but to find out what is actually inside.
A usable quote does that by itself: it names activities, scope and who is responsible. A quote whose entire substance is "search engine optimisation, monthly" is not a pricing question but a decline.
Five promises you can hang up on
"We guarantee position one." Nobody controls the order of Google's results. Anyone guaranteeing a position is guaranteeing something they do not own. In the harmless version it is ignorance; in the usual version it is a guarantee on search terms nobody types.
"Ten keywords on page one." Sounds measurable and is the most elegant way to deliver nothing. You can rank first for "heat pump servicing north Manchester specialist experience" if nobody searches for it. The number without the monthly search volume and without any link to enquiries is worthless. Ask for the monthly volume of each individual term and the room goes very quiet.
"One hundred backlinks a month." Links are not a unit of quantity. Bulk purchased links are a risk you carry and the agency does not, because the domain is yours. A quote that sells links by the piece is selling you your own risk.
"Google certified SEO partner." There is no Google certification for SEO. The partner programme such badges lean on covers Google Ads, meaning paid advertising, and says nothing about the ability to do search engine optimisation. Anyone advertising with it is counting on you not knowing the difference.
"We report the visibility index monthly." A tool's index is an internal working measure for agencies, not a business result. It can rise while your enquiries fall. Success is measured in enquiries, calls, appointments or sales, and if your business cannot produce those figures, then in clicks on the contact page. Never in a score.
The same test now applies to offers about visibility in AI answers. Anyone guaranteeing you a mention in ChatGPT is selling the same impossible promise in new packaging. How to spot that variant is in generative engine optimization.
The questions a serious quote answers on its own
Ask these seven. The quality of the answers sorts the field faster than any price comparison.
| Question | good answer | warning sign |
|---|---|---|
| What is the goal in numbers? | enquiries or revenue, with a baseline | "more visibility" |
| Who writes the copy, who approves it? | a named person, approval with you | stays vague, "content included" |
| Who ships technical changes? | clearly agreed with your developer | "we'll handle that" |
| How many hours a month, on what? | a split by activity | no figure given |
| Whose accounts hold the data? | yours, agency added as a user | "we'll set that up for you" |
| How is it reported? | few metrics, in your language | 30 pages of tool output |
| What happens when the contract ends? | copy and access stay with you | not mentioned anywhere |
The fifth row is the expensive one, and it has its own section below.
The hours test: divide the fee by an hourly rate
The most honest price test needs no market knowledge. SEO work is almost entirely person-time, so convert it into time.
Assume an hourly rate that is plausible for your surroundings; if in doubt, ask what your accountant or your design agency charges. Divide the monthly fee by that rate. Now you have the number of hours that can realistically sit behind it, and you can ask the only question that matters: does what was promised fit into that time?
Run it once at £100 an hour just to see the order of magnitude. A £300 monthly package is then three hours. Three hours is enough for a report and a quick review. It is not enough for two revised pages, a technical audit, link work and a consultation call, which is what the quote says. If the arithmetic does not work, either the quote is not serious, or the work will be done by someone other than the person you met.
The same sum protects you from the opposite reflex, which is to assume the most expensive quote is a rip-off. Fourteen hours a month is a day and a half of work. Someone writing copy, checking technical issues and talking to your developer in that time is not overpriced, they are busy.
The point that can cost you the most: account ownership
This is the section that justifies the whole article, and it has nothing to do with price.
Search Console, analytics, the business profile and any ad account must live on your accounts. The agency gets access as a user, not as an owner. If an agency "sets that up for you", your data sits on their accounts, and on the day you cancel your entire history is gone. Not out of malice, but because it was never technically yours.
What you lose is not merely inconvenient, it is irreplaceable: Search Console data reaches back sixteen months, and retention in analytics is limited. Neither can be reconstructed after the fact. You start from zero with the next supplier and cannot even judge whether the last two years achieved anything.
How to set the accounts up correctly from the start is in setting up Google Search Console. If it is already too late: demand access to the existing accounts and get yourself added as an owner before you cancel, not after.
Contract length, exit, and what is yours at the end
A long contract term is not inherently dubious in SEO, and that matters, because a lot of guides warn about it reflexively. Effects take time: a revised page shows after four to eight weeks whether it moves anything, and three months is a tight window for a verdict. Cancel after eight weeks and you have paid for the run-up and given away the harvest.
What is dubious is a long term with no milestones and no exit. A fair shape looks like this: a clearly defined first block of two to three months with named deliverables (analysis, technical list, two pages actually shipped), then a review point with the right to cancel, then a rolling extension on short notice. That way both sides carry risk and nobody is stuck for two years.
Three points belong in the contract. The copy that was paid for may keep being used. The account access stays with you. And the reports produced come to you in a format you can still open without the agency.
What to do yourself before the first conversation
An hour of your own work turns you into a buyer nobody can spin a story to. It also stops you paying for findings that sit in your own account for free.
Set up Search Console if it is missing. Open the page indexing report and see how many pages Google has taken in at all, because a site with half its pages outside the index does not have a marketing problem but a technical one (page not indexed). Open the performance report and read the twenty most frequent queries. That takes ten minutes and tells you more about your position than any pitch deck.
With those two reports you can ask the decisive question in the meeting: "Here are my actual search queries and my indexing status. What would you touch in the first three months, and why?" Anyone who answers that specifically can do the job. Anyone who talks about process cannot.
When an agency is the wrong answer
Three situations where a monthly contract burns money.
Your site is technically broken. If pages are not being indexed, the server is slow, or a relaunch scrambled the addresses, you need a one-off engagement with a defined outcome, not ongoing management. That is a trade job with a beginning and an end.
You work purely locally and need three more enquiries. Then the biggest lever sits in the business profile and in reviews, not in the website. You can do that yourself and it costs nothing but attention (getting found locally).
You have nobody to approve content. SEO work without someone in-house who checks the substance and makes decisions produces copy nobody stands behind. In that case buy copywriting with a defined scope rather than "management", and budget the approval time.
And a sentence for the other direction. If your competitors are visible online and you are not, you have no time for the work, and you can name a point of contact, then a good agency is one of the better investments available to you. This piece is not meant to stop you buying, only to stop you buying the wrong thing.
Where to start
- Set up Search Console and spend ten minutes in it before you pick up the phone.
- Check whether the data accounts are in your name. If not, fix that first.
- Put every quote through the hours test.
- Ask the seven questions from the table, verbatim.
- Discard quotes with guaranteed positions or link quantities.
- Agree a short first block with named deliverables instead of a long term.
- After three months, measure enquiries, not a score.
Frequently asked questions
What does SEO cost per month?
There is no market price, because completely different work is sold under the same word. Convert instead: divide the fee by a plausible hourly rate and ask whether what was promised fits into those hours. At three hours a month, a report plus a review is realistic and nothing more. That sum protects you in both directions, against too expensive and against too cheap.
Are SEO guarantees legitimate?
A guaranteed position never is, because nobody but Google decides the order of results. What is legitimate is guaranteeing work: a named number of revised pages, a technical audit document, a monthly call. Anyone guaranteeing an outcome they do not control is telling you something they cannot know.
Is SEO worth it for a small business at all?
Yes, though often cut differently from what gets offered. For a local business the biggest lever usually sits in the business profile, in reviews and in a handful of decent service pages. That is contained work with a good return. Ongoing management with content production pays off when you sell beyond your region or compete in a field with real contest over queries.
How long until SEO works?
Technical repairs take days to weeks, once Google has recrawled. Content work needs four to eight weeks per page for a reliable read, and a new topic area needs months. Google states no deadline for any of it. A quote promising results after four weeks is promising something that is not measurable in that window.
How do I spot a dubious SEO provider?
By three things more reliable than any gut feeling: guaranteed positions, backlinks sold by quantity, and data held on the provider's accounts rather than yours. If one of them appears, the rest of the conversation is wasted time. A fourth sign is a report containing no enquiry and no revenue figure, only scores.
Should I do SEO myself or outsource it?
Do it yourself wherever it needs knowledge of your business: what has to be on a service page, which questions customers actually ask, what separates you from the competition. Outsource everything mechanical and everything technical. The most expensive mistake is outsourcing the substance and then approving copy nobody in the building would stand behind.
What contract length is fair?
A clearly defined first block of two to three months with named deliverables, then a review point with the right to cancel, then a rolling extension on short notice. A long term is not inherently unfair in SEO, because effects take time. It is unfair without milestones and without an exit.
Who should create the Google accounts, me or the agency?
Always you. Search Console, analytics and the business profile run on your accounts and the agency gets access as a user. Otherwise a change of supplier costs you the entire history, and it cannot be restored: Search Console data reaches back sixteen months and no further. This is the most expensive avoidable mistake in the whole subject.
What belongs in a monthly report?
Few numbers you understand without explanation: enquiries or calls, clicks from search, the most important queries, and what was actually done that month. Plus one sentence on what comes next and why. Thirty pages of tool output is not a report, it is evidence that some work happened, and those two things are not the same.