A straight look at the bottom of the UK SEO market. What the low prices are paying for, which of it is harmless, which of it can get your site penalised, and how to check before you buy.
Anyone looking at a £99-a-month offer and wondering whether it is a bargain or a trap. The honest answer is that it can be either, and the difference is knowable before you pay. It is a question of what is being done with the hours, not how few there are.
It depends entirely on whether the scope is honest. A supplier doing a small amount of legitimate work for a small fee is good value. A supplier claiming full-service SEO for the same fee is doing something automated, and automated link building is the tactic Google penalises. The price is not the warning sign; the mismatch between price and claimed scope is.
Yes, and this is the part rarely explained. Bulk directory and paid-link building is classed as a link scheme under Google's spam policies, and the penalty falls on the site receiving the links, you. Recovery takes longer than the original work and sometimes requires disavowing links you paid for.
Roughly one to two hours of a person's time at UK rates, once overheads are covered. That is enough for genuine incremental work. A page optimised, a profile updated, a report read. It is not enough for content, links and technical work simultaneously, so if all three are promised, they are being automated.
Ask three questions. Where exactly will my links come from? Who writes the content and what is their process? Can I see the Search Console account directly? Vagueness on any of the three is the answer. A legitimate supplier finds all three easy.
Partly. Google Search Console and Analytics are free and are the two that matter most. Paid tools help with keyword research and competitor analysis but do not do the work. Our free audit covers the automated checks at no cost.
A one-off technical audit with a prioritised fix list, implemented by you or your existing developer. Bounded, quotable, no ongoing commitment, and it removes the guesswork that makes retainers expensive.
Because it is rarely the same service. One quote is two hours of automated reporting; another is fifteen hours of research, writing and technical work. The proposals often use identical language. Ask for deliverables per month instead of a description.
Not inherently. Google's position is that it judges content quality, not how it was produced. It becomes a problem at volume with no human expertise or checking, which describes most content included in very cheap packages. That kind of output has been hit hard by recent helpful-content updates.
Audit what was done: check your backlink profile for sudden low-quality additions, check for pages you did not commission, and check Search Console for manual actions. That diagnosis is the first step and our free audit covers part of it.
Sometimes, and it is the best value in any cheap package because the profile itself is free and the returns for a local business are high. If a cheap package covers only that, it may still be worth it.
Rates are lower in some markets, so cheaper is not automatically worse. What matters is the same as anywhere: what the hours are spent on, whether a human writes the content, and whether links are earned or bought. Judge the method, not the postcode.
Spend nothing first. Claim your Google Business Profile, fix your page titles, and run a free audit. Those cost you time only, and for most small businesses they outperform the bottom tier of the paid market. Then spend when you know what needs doing.