Manchester & the North West 0161 315 1152 [email protected]
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Manchester SEO Agency

Stop paying for clicks.
Start owning your rankings.

Full technical, on-page and local SEO for Manchester businesses — built on a free audit, explained in plain English, reported monthly in numbers you can check yourself.

Two decades in search No lock-in contracts You keep every login 0161 315 1152
Monthly reportclient-preview.co.uk
Organic Sessions
0
↑ trending up
Visibility Score
0
out of 100
"local seo manchester"#4 ↑ 9
"technical seo manchester"#2 ↑ 6
"seo services manchester"#7 ↑ 14
Sample reporting dashboard — the view every client gets, monthly.
0%
of online experiences start with a search engine
BrightEdge Research
0%
of all website traffic comes from organic search
BrightEdge Research
0%
average close rate for SEO leads, vs 1.7% for outbound
Search Engine Journal
0%
of searchers never scroll past page 1 of Google
HubSpot Research
"ppc company manchester" — £24.72/click on PPC"ppc agency manchester" — £15.91/click on PPC"seo expert manchester" — £10.76/click on PPC"seo agency manchester" — £9.60/click on PPC"seo company manchester" — £8.70/click on PPC"local seo manchester" — £4.01/click on PPCFree SEO + AI Visibility Audit → whatisseo.co.uk/free-seo-audit"ppc company manchester" — £24.72/click on PPC"ppc agency manchester" — £15.91/click on PPC"seo expert manchester" — £10.76/click on PPC"seo agency manchester" — £9.60/click on PPC"seo company manchester" — £8.70/click on PPC"local seo manchester" — £4.01/click on PPCFree SEO + AI Visibility Audit → whatisseo.co.uk/free-seo-audit
A different kind of agency

Most agencies want you on a monthly bill forever. I would rather teach you to do it yourself.

Two decades in search. I have built my own systems and ranked my own businesses, not just other people's. That is exactly why I will tell you something most agencies will not: for a lot of businesses, SEO is learnable. If you can spare an hour or two a day, you can look after your own website and keep thousands of pounds a year that would otherwise be a retainer.

What exists already Training companies Teach you SEO on a course, then leave. No campaign, no accountability, nobody to check your work six weeks later when it stops making sense.
What exists already SEO agencies Run the campaign for you, and quite often keep the knowledge. You pay monthly, and if you ever leave you are back where you started, still unable to judge the work.
What this is This one Both, and the choice is yours. Learn it in a day and do it yourself, hand it to us, or take the training first and then decide once you actually understand what you are buying.
8 hoursTo learn the whole job, start to finish, hands on
1-2 hrs a dayTo maintain your own site once you know what you are doing
£1,200-3,000Typical UK monthly retainer this replaces
From £499One-off, no VAT, no subscription

And if you have no time at all, take the training anyway

This is the part I would want if I were buying. Do the day, understand what good looks like, then hand the work to us. You will know whether the monthly reports mean anything, you will be able to ask the awkward questions, and you can leave whenever you like without losing the knowledge. Clients who understand the work are better clients, and an agency that is confident in what it does has no reason to fear an informed one.

20 yrs Two decades in search Through every algorithm change that mattered, running our own business throughout.
5.0 ★ 45 Google reviews Public, verified by Google, and not editable by us. Read them.
48 Free tools, no signup The same checks we run on client work, ungated. Use them.
£0 To find out where you stand Full audit of your site, on screen in seconds. Run it.
Real market data, not a stock chart

What a click actually costs in Manchester

These are our own Semrush figures for the Manchester search cluster. Every one is a click you pay for again the next time somebody wants it.

Cost per click, by keyword

Bar length = cost per click · meter = SEO difficulty
ppc company manchester £24.72 14 £2,472/mo
ppc agency manchester £15.91 18 £1,591/mo
seo expert manchester £10.76 23 £1,076/mo
seo agency manchester £9.60 36 £960/mo
seo company manchester £8.70 29 £870/mo
local seo manchester £4.01 12 £401/mo

Right-hand column is 100 clicks a month at that rate. Source: Semrush keyword data, Manchester SEO/marketing cluster, Aug 2026.

The same clicks, paid for all year

“seo agency manchester” · 100 clicks a month
£960M1£1,920M2£2,880M3£3,840M4£4,800M5£5,760M6£6,720M7£7,680M8£8,640M9£9,600M10£10,560M11£11,520M12

Month one alone is £960. The training day is £499, or £999 with the work implemented on your site — about half a month of the same spend.

£960A month, at 100 clicks
£11,520Over twelve months
23×The cost of learning to do it yourself

Straight multiplication of the CPC above, not a projection. Paid clicks do not compound: stop paying and the traffic stops that day.

Why WhatIsSEO

Built to be checkable, not just trusted

Every claim on this page is something you can verify yourself, in your own Search Console and Analytics, without taking our word for any of it.

Two decades in search

Our own SEO business, through every algorithm change that has mattered. The agency name is new; the experience behind it is not.

Full audit before any quote

We look at your site, your competitors and your real search demand before recommending anything, not a generic package.

Plain-English reporting

Monthly reports show rankings, traffic and what we actually did. No jargon dashboards you have to decode yourself.

You own everything

Your Google Analytics, Search Console and tracking stay in accounts you control. Nothing is held hostage if you leave.

No lock-in contracts

SEO takes months to show results and we say that upfront, but you are never tied into a contract you cannot leave.

Learn it, or hand it over

Training companies teach and leave. Agencies do the work and keep the knowledge. Here you choose, and you can start with the training and decide afterwards.

SEO and AI search together

Ranking in Google and being cited by ChatGPT are two different jobs. Almost nobody covers both, and doing only the first is half the work in 2026.

48 free tools, nothing gated

Every tool on this site runs against your real website with no signup, including the live test of whether AI crawlers can reach your server.

Beyond Google

Search isn't just Google anymore

A growing share of questions never reach a search results page at all — they're answered directly by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's own AI Overviews. If an AI system can't read your site, it can't recommend you, no matter how good you are.

  • The free audit checks whether robots.txt is silently blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and others
  • We set up llms.txt — an emerging standard AI tools check for a clean summary of your site
  • Structured data (schema.org) that both Google and AI systems can read and cite directly
See AI Search Optimisation

Who has to be able to read you

Every one of these fetches your site with a different user agent. The free audit requests your page as each of them and reports what your server actually returned.

A block at CDN or firewall level does not appear in robots.txt, which is why this is tested by fetching rather than by reading a file.

Services

SEO and AI search services

Manchester-based, working across Greater Manchester, the North West and UK-wide. Pick the starting point that matches your problem — or take the free audit and let the data decide.

Targets: "seo services"

SEO Services

Full-service SEO for businesses across the UK: technical fixes, on-page optimisation, content and link earning, built around a plan we show you before we start.

Learn more
Targets: "local seo manchester"

Local SEO

Get found by customers searching near you. Google Business Profile, local citations, reviews strategy and location pages that actually rank.

Learn more
Targets: "technical seo manchester"

Technical SEO

Site speed, crawlability, indexing and schema. The foundation that content and links can't compensate for if it's broken.

Learn more
Targets: "ecommerce seo manchester"

Ecommerce SEO

Product and category pages that rank, a feed that doesn't fight your own SEO, and a site structure that scales past 50 products without breaking.

Learn more
Targets: "ai search optimisation manchester"

AI Search (GEO/AIO)

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews now answer questions directly, without a click. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AIO (AI Optimisation) are how you get cited in that answer instead of skipped.

Learn more
Targets: "digital marketing agency manchester"

SEO + PPC

SEO and paid search working from the same keyword and conversion data, instead of two agencies pulling in different directions.

Learn more
Targets: "seo training"

SEO Training

Learn to run your own SEO in a single day, in a class of three or four, in Manchester or live over Zoom. Hands on throughout. £499 taught on real example sites, £999 with every change implemented on your own website, plus 90 days of supervised follow-up.

Learn more
Targets: "seo courses"

SEO Courses

Scheduled small-group courses: four weeks live online, a two-day masterclass in Manchester, or a private team day. Never more than four people, hands on throughout, and every one covers AI search as well as Google.

Learn more
Guides & Tools

Learn SEO, or let us do it

Free guides on how SEO actually works, plus tools to check your own site — and a clear path to hand it to us when you'd rather not do it yourself.

Three ways to use this site

Do it yourself, learn it with me, or hand it over

All three are genuinely on offer. The free material is not a teaser with the useful parts removed — it is the same thinking, written down.

Do it yourself Free no signup

Guides, tools and a live audit

Every guide on this site is complete and ungated, and all 48 tools run against your real site. Plenty of businesses need nothing beyond this, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

The complete guide to SEO 48 free tools Free audit of your site
Learn it with me From £499 small class

A full day, nine to five

When you want to own this yourself but not spend a year working out the order to do it in. Both disciplines, SEO and AI search. £499 taught on real example sites, or £999 with everything implemented on your own site as we go.

Training in Manchester Online over Zoom, worldwide
Hand it over Quoted after an audit

We do the work

When the hours are worth more spent on your business than on your website. Technical, local, ecommerce and AI visibility, priced only after we have actually looked at your site.

All SEO services What a package includes Talk to us

The thread through all three is the same 20 years of doing this, since 2006. The free guides are written from it, the course teaches it directly, and the service applies it for you.

Get Your Free SEO Audit

See exactly what's holding your rankings back. No obligation, no jargon.

Areas We Serve

SEO across Manchester & the North West

Local search behaves differently town to town — here's where we work.

How it works

The process, start to finish

01

Free audit

We scan your site for technical issues, review your current rankings, and map the keywords your customers search for.

02

Strategy call

A 30-minute call to walk through the audit findings and agree what to prioritise first. Quick wins vs. longer-term plays.

03

Fix & build

Technical fixes, on-page optimisation and content get built out against the plan, with you signing off anything that touches your live site.

04

Track & report

Monthly reporting on rankings, organic traffic and conversions: in plain English, with the reasoning behind every recommendation.

05

Refine

SEO is never "done". We adjust the plan as Google's algorithm, your market and your results change.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Everything people ask before hiring an SEO agency in Manchester — answered plainly, no sales spin.

What does an SEO agency in Manchester do?

Technical fixes so Google can properly read your site, on-page work so it matches what people search for, and, increasingly. Making sure AI systems like ChatGPT can read and cite you too. A genuine agency starts with an audit, not a sales pitch.

How do I choose an SEO agency in Manchester?

Ask what their audit checks, whether you keep access to your own Analytics and Search Console, whether there's a minimum contract, and what happens to the work if you leave. Vague answers to any of those are the answer.

Why choose WhatIsSEO as your Manchester SEO agency?

Because everything we claim is checkable. The free audit is the same live scanner running on this site, our stats are cited sources or our own keyword data, and the experience behind it is real: two decades in search, trading as SEO-Professional.co.uk, with brands of our own built entirely on organic search, and 45 Google reviews at a 5.0 average.

How much does SEO cost with a Manchester agency?

It depends entirely on your site's condition and how competitive your keywords are. We quote after the free audit, never before, since a generic day-rate ignores whether you need 3 fixes or 300.

How long does SEO take to show results?

Technical fixes can move within weeks. Competitive commercial keywords realistically take 4–9 months of consistent work, see our full breakdown in the keyword research guide.

Do you offer month-to-month contracts, or am I locked in?

No lock-in, ever. SEO takes months to show results and we say that upfront, but you're never tied into a contract you can't leave.

What happens during the free SEO audit?

A live scan covering on-page SEO, technical health, performance and speed, design and visibility, accessibility, and whether AI crawlers can read your site. Enter your name, email and URL at /free-seo-audit and the results appear on screen and land in your inbox.

Do you only work with Manchester businesses?

No — we cover Manchester & the North West, including Chester, Liverpool, Bolton, Stockport, Preston, Altrincham and Wigan, each with genuinely local detail instead of a templated page.

What is GEO/AIO and why does it matter now?

Generative Engine Optimisation and AI Optimisation. Making sure ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can read and cite your business, not just traditional Google search. See our full GEO/AIO service.

Can I see the SEO work myself, or do I just have to trust you?

You should be able to check every claim yourself, that's the whole design of this site. Your Google Analytics and Search Console stay in accounts you control, and monthly reports show exactly what was done.

Do you guarantee first-page Google rankings?

No, and any agency that does is not being straight with you, no one controls Google's algorithm. What we guarantee is a genuine audit, a clear plan, and honest reporting on what actually moved.

How is SEO different from Google Ads (PPC)?

PPC rents visibility. The clicks stop the moment the budget does. SEO builds an asset that keeps compounding after the work is done. See the real cost-per-click data on this page for what that difference is worth.

Do you work with ecommerce sites?

Yes: see our ecommerce SEO service for product/category page structure, duplicate content and shopping feed issues specific to online stores.

What if I want to leave. Do I keep everything?

Yes. Your accounts, your data, your rankings. Nothing is held hostage. That's the point of no lock-in contracts and you owning your own Analytics and Search Console from day one.

How do I get started?

Run the free audit on your own site right now at /free-seo-audit, or book a strategy call directly if you'd rather talk it through first. Either way, nothing is quoted before we've looked at your site.

Book a Strategy Call

30 minutes to talk through your goals and whether SEO is the right channel right now.