Ecommerce SEO pricing
How Much Does Ecommerce SEO Cost in the UK?
£1,000–£2,500
What most UK online stores pay a month for agency SEO
£799
Median published UK monthly SEO price (Whito, June 2026)
15–30%
How much SEO prices have risen since 2024 (Whitehat SEO)
The short answer
Most UK online stores pay £1,000 to £2,500 a month for agency SEO, or £300 to £2,500 a month for a freelancer. £1,000 a month is enough for agency-focused work on a smaller or niche catalogue, but not to compete with larger marketplaces in a crowded category. The median published UK monthly SEO price is £799 (Whito, June 2026), and prices have risen 15–30% since 2024 (Whitehat).
This guide will unpack what each budget should get you, the differences between freelancer and agency work, audits, and payback.
How much does SEO cost in the UK in 2026?
| Service provider | Monthly cost | Hourly rate |
|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | £300–£2,500 a month | £40–£100 an hour (Whitehat) |
| Small agency | £1,000–£2,500 a month | Depends on delivery framework |
| Mid-market agency | £2,500–£7,500 a month | Depends on delivery framework |
| Ecommerce SEO agency | £2,000–£6,000 a month for a growing store | Depends on delivery framework |
Price ranges will vary depending on the ecommerce vertical. Catalogue size and how crowded the category is matter more than turnover. Pricing models also vary by agency, with 78% of UK providers selling monthly retainers (Whitehat).
What does each monthly budget buy a Shopify or WooCommerce store?
£500 a month
About 5 hours of work a month
- Smaller, impactful fixes are the key focus at this budget.
- Month 1 could be: fix title tags and meta descriptions on the top collections, set up Google Search Console, and find products that Google hasn’t indexed.
- Ongoing: performance monitoring, small fixes, and maybe 1–2 collection descriptions a month.
- Can’t do: a thorough content programme, technical theme fixes, or anything very competitive.
- Fits: a new store that has a smaller catalogue in a niche with very little competition.
- Consider: anything below £500 is likely automated work and delivery, which may yield short-term benefits but crumble over time.
£1,200+ a month
About 10 to 15 hours of agency time a month
- Month 1 should include: a technical audit (if not done during the sale period) and priority fixes, such as duplicate /collections/ and /products/ URLs that cause indexing problems and dilute results.
- Ongoing: rewrites of 2–4 collection pages each month to target your ideal customer and match intent. Fixes to product page templates that need to be reformatted and improved to rank more dominantly. A detailed buying guide each month to feed into AI search engines and support /collections/ and /products/ rankings. A monthly report that shows organic revenue and valuable business metrics that make sense.
- Can’t do: large content programmes and hyper-aggressive strategies, international stores targeting multiple locations through organic at the same time, or full technical website migrations (unless quoted as a bolt-on to the monthly fee).
- Fits: a more established store that has a few hundred products and anywhere between 10 and 20 collections it’d like to focus on.
This is the starting point for Clutch SEO retainer bands. View our ecommerce packages →
£2,500+ a month
About 20 to 30 hours a month
- Delivery of hours can vary each month depending on the time of year and the work required, for example more work ahead of seasonal rushes.
- Delivery will be more aggressive, with more collections and products optimised each month. There should be elements of AI search work (product feeds, Merchant Center, structured data) and internal linking across the catalogue.
- Fits: stores in competitive categories that need more aggressive strategies and have several hundred products across many collections.
£5,000+ a month
40+ hours a month
- Expect access to top-level tools and experts.
- This should include hyper-aggressive content that targets multi-modal search across multiple collections, which suits larger catalogues with thousands of SKUs. It should include filtered and faceted URL control to ensure peak performance.
- Fits: stores up against the big retailers and marketplaces that target numerous countries.
Tip: when starting discussions with an agency, ask the provider for a detailed list that states what they expect to deliver each month for your budget.
Is £1,000 a month enough for SEO on a Shopify store?
Yes, if you have a focused product catalogue that you’re looking to grow and a list of fixable problems, £1,000 should be an adequate budget. However, if you’re selling products in a category dominated by Amazon, John Lewis or Argos, you’ll need content at scale, which means further investment would be required.
Here are three checks you can do yourself to help with the answer:
- Look at your website backend or Google Analytics 4 to identify how many of your pages bring in most of your revenue.
- Assess where the top-ranking competitors have written content sitting on their collection pages.
- Review Google Search Console to see if products are showing as not indexed.
Tip to make £1,000 go further: fix your website indexing first, then find the 10 highest-revenue collections before writing your own product descriptions using Google Search Console data, and don’t pay for spammy link packages.
Freelancer, agency or in-house: what does each cost?
SEO freelancer
- Freelancers range between £40–£100 an hour depending on experience. Day rates sit at £200–£400 junior, £400–£700 mid-level and £700–£1,200+ senior (Whitehat).
- Freelancers are good for one-off fixes and smaller SEO budgets.
- Watch for: one person’s capacity, and whether they know Shopify’s URL structure or WooCommerce plugins.
SEO agency
- SEO agencies range between £70–£300 an hour, with retainers from about £1,000 a month.
- London agencies typically charge more because of higher overheads, with Visionary putting it at 15–35% and Whitehat at 30–50%.
- Agencies are good for ongoing work that needs technical expertise, content at scale, organic strategy and reporting skills combined.
In-house SEO hire
- Senior UK salaries range from £55,000–£80,000, or roughly £70,000–£100,000 once employment costs are added (Visionary).
- This means an in-house hire only becomes cheaper than an agency once you spend more than about £9,000–£12,000 a month on SEO.
| Option | Typical cost | Best for | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO freelancer | £40–£100 an hour, or £300–£2,500 a month (Whitehat SEO) | Stores spending under £2,000 a month, or one-off jobs such as fixing indexing or collection title tags | One person’s time and skills. Work stops when they’re ill or on holiday, and few freelancers know both Shopify’s URL structure and WooCommerce plugins. |
| SEO agency | £70–£300 an hour, retainers from about £1,000 a month. London agencies charge 15–50% more (Visionary Marketing, Whitehat SEO). | Ongoing work that needs technical fixes, collection and product content, and revenue reporting together | Paying for account management instead of work, junior staff on your account, or a 12-month contract you can’t leave |
| In-house hire | £55,000–£80,000 salary, about £70,000–£100,000 with employment costs (Visionary Marketing) | Stores that would spend more than £9,000–£12,000 a month on SEO | A high fixed cost, and one person rarely covers technical SEO, content and reporting alone |
Still deciding between a freelancer and an agency for your store? We’re publishing a full guide to agency, freelancer and DIY SEO for Shopify stores in February 2027.
How much does an SEO audit cost?
Ecommerce SEO audits typically range between £500–£7,500 for a one-off audit. Audits at the lower end of the bracket are typically more of an automated crawl report. Ecommerce audits should check the problems specific to the platform, as this will inform the technical fixes and overall strategy.
What ecommerce audits should cover:
- Duplicate product URLs through collections
- Variant and filter URLs being indexed
- Products Google hasn’t indexed, and why
- Theme and app speed
- Product and collection structured data
- Collection page content and internal links
- For WooCommerce: plugin conflicts and database bloat
Free ecommerce audits are done to find the biggest issues holding website performance back, but they don’t price the fixes. Clutch’s free video audit shares the findings following the audit and discusses them with store owners and their teams.
What makes ecommerce SEO cost more or less?
Ecommerce SEO usually costs more than SEO for a service business. Whitehat SEO lists ecommerce among the sectors that pay a 30–50% premium. How much more depends on five things about your store.
01
Who you’re up against
If Amazon, Argos or John Lewis rank for your main searches, you need more content on every collection page, buying guides that answer questions the marketplaces don’t, and more pages improved each month. That pushes most stores towards £2,500 a month or more. If your competitors are other independent shops, a smaller budget goes much further.
02
How big your catalogue is
A store with 40 products in 5 collections can have every important page improved within a few months. A store with 2,000 products across 80 collections needs templates, rules for filter URLs and ongoing work just to keep Google indexing the right pages.
03
Whether your product descriptions are your own
If you use the manufacturer’s descriptions, the same text appears on dozens of other stores, and Google has little reason to rank yours. Rewriting them is one of the biggest content costs for a store, and one of the most worthwhile.
04
Your platform
Shopify sets a fixed URL structure you can’t change and creates duplicate product URLs through collections, which needs careful handling in the theme. WooCommerce gives more control, but plugin conflicts and a bloated database often slow the store down. Neither is cheaper to optimise, but each needs different skills, so check your provider has worked on your platform.
05
Big changes on the way
Moving from WooCommerce to Shopify, changing theme or launching stores for other countries all add one-off costs. Whitehat SEO puts migrations at £1,000–£15,000. Budgeting for SEO before a migration costs far less than recovering lost rankings afterwards.
Costs that aren’t in the monthly fee
Content
£100–£300 per article if you pay a writer separately (Whitehat SEO).
SEO tools
If you buy your own, Semrush Pro costs about £119 a month and Ahrefs Pro £399 (Whitehat SEO).
Developer time
Some fixes need changes to your theme code. Ask whether your SEO provider makes those changes or whether you’ll need to pay a developer as well.
How long before ecommerce SEO pays for itself?
Technical fixes typically show signs of results in 4 to 8 weeks. Commercial rankings take longer, from 3 to 6 months depending on the level of competition in your industry. For ecommerce stores, the point where SEO truly pays for itself can range from month 4 to month 9.
| Example figure | How it’s worked out | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly SEO retainer | £1,200 | What you pay each month |
| Average order value | £60 | Total sales ÷ number of orders |
| Gross margin | 40% | What’s left after the cost of the products |
| Profit per order | £24 | £60 × 40% |
| Orders needed to break even | 50 a month | £1,200 ÷ £24 |
| Extra organic visits needed | About 3,300 a month | 50 orders ÷ 1.5% conversion rate |
If 3,300 extra visits a month looks out of reach for your store, test the figures with a higher order value or margin. Stores selling £150 products at a 50% margin need only 16 extra orders a month to cover the same retainer. These are example figures, and we’d advise using your own.
Should I just use Google Ads?
Google Ads is a solid way to gain traction and bring new users to the site, but it comes at a cost per click, and the traffic may not convert as often (depending on how well the campaign is set up). SEO doesn’t switch off: once the investment has been made and rankings and performance improve, it brings more consistent, stable traffic.
How do you compare two quotes?
The red flags
- Guaranteed rankings. If an agency guarantees improved rankings and page 1 results within 30 days, that’s a red flag. Results should be proven, not promised.
- 12-month minimum contracts. Contracts that lock you in for a year are a bit much. Visionary says 30 days’ notice is the norm.
- Reports with rankings but no revenue. If your monthly SEO reports show rankings but avoid revenue, something is suspicious, and difficult conversations need to be had.
- Link packages. If an agency sells “link packages” and guarantees a number of links, that’s a red flag. Backlinks only bring results if they’re relevant: quality over quantity.
- No access to your own data. If you’re denied access to your own Google Search Console or reports, that should set alarm bells off. This is something you deserve to see and ask questions about.
Questions to ask before you join
- What exactly will you deliver each month at this price?
- Who does the work, and have they worked on Shopify or WooCommerce?
- What happens in the first 30 days?
- How will you show the effect on revenue?
- What’s the notice period?
Clutch SEO pricing
What does Clutch SEO charge?
Our retainers start from £1,200 a month on rolling monthly terms, so you have the option to stop with 30 days’ notice. We don’t use contracts that lock you in, because you deserve flexibility. Prices will vary depending on the catalogue, industry competition and how aggressive a strategy the client wants. These packages are tailored for UK Shopify and WooCommerce stores.
FAQs
How much does SEO cost for a small business in the UK?
Most small businesses spend £500–£2,000 a month. Online stores tend to sit higher because of catalogue size.
How much does AI search optimisation add?
This can vary depending on your current AI visibility. However, AI optimisation typically ranges from £400–£800 a month as an add-on.
Can I do SEO on my Shopify store myself?
Yes, absolutely. You’ll be able to cover the basics of what is needed to get your Shopify SEO on track.
Are SEO contracts normally monthly?
The majority are, with 30 days’ notice. Avoid 12-month lock-ins if you can. Otherwise, request a 6-month break clause to give yourself the option.
Is SEO cheaper than Google Ads?
Per visitor over 12 months, usually yes. Ads win when you need sales this month. SEO wins when you want sales over years without pouring in budget.