Rules and ethics
How to compare technical SEO quotes by scope
Technical SEO agency pricing UK: compare quote structures by scope and delivered days, so audits, retainers and packages are not treated as like-for-like.
What to take away
- A public rate card becomes comparable only when you convert it to an effective day rate, which is the fee divided by the days the agency actually delivers.
- Day rates, monthly retainers, fixed-price audits and productised packages price different scopes, so match deliverables before you match totals.
- Ask every supplier for the same four itemsdelivered days, minimum term, notice period and included tool licences.
- Evidence from Google Search Console, Screaming Frog or Sitebulb turns a vague scope into countable work you can price line by line.
- Verify the supplier on Companies House and hold the retainer against a written scope of work before signing.
Why published rate cards resist comparison
Public rate cards from technical SEO agencies quote different units. One lists a daily fee. Another lists a monthly retainer with a scope of work attached. A third sells a fixed-price audit with a page limit.
Those units hide cost. A day rate often excludes reporting, travel and project management. A retainer rarely states how many delivered days sit inside the fee. Normalise every quote to one unit before comparing totals.
Compare deliverables before totals: an audit may have a page limit, while a retainer may include ongoing work.
Converting a rate card into an effective day rate
Run the same arithmetic on every quote you receive.
- Ask for delivered days per month, not billed days.
- Multiply the monthly retainer by twelve to reach an annual figure.
- Multiply the monthly delivered days by twelve to get annual delivered days.
- Divide the annual figure by the annual delivered days to get an effective day rate.
- Add tool licences, reporting hours and travel to the same annual figure.
- Place the result beside an audit-only day rate from another supplier.
Comparing four pricing models side by side
Comparing four pricing models
What the rate card states
- Day rate
- A daily or hourly fee, sometimes with a minimum booking
- Monthly retainer
- A fee, a scope list and a notice period
- Fixed-price audit
- One fee for a defined deliverable
- Productised package
- Tiered plans with feature lists
Benchmark question
- Day rate
- How many days will the audit and the fixes need?
- Monthly retainer
- How many delivered days sit inside the fee?
- Fixed-price audit
- What crawl size and how many templates are covered?
- Productised package
- Which tiers include implementation and which stop at recommendations?
Scoping the work with crawl and search data
Tool choice changes the price, because each tool exposes a different amount of work. Google Search Console supplies query, indexing and Core Web Vitals data. Screaming Frog and Sitebulb crawl templates and flag redirect chains, duplicate titles and orphan pages. Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights measure lab performance. Ahrefs and Semrush cover backlinks and search visibility.
Log file analysis shows how Googlebot spends crawl budget. JavaScript rendering checks need a browser, which adds hours to any quote. Specify which log-file exports, crawls and rendering checks the quote includes.
Comparing a retainer with an audit quote
Write down the retainer fee and divide it by the delivered days in the scope. Add licences and reporting to the numerator. For the fixed-price audit, divide its fee by the days estimated for discovery and fixes. Compare the resulting rates only after checking the scopes and included costs.
Once both effective day rates are calculated, ask which figure would change if the scope expands; audits can grow once crawl data arrives.
A worked example in days, with the fees left as letters so you can drop in your own quotes:
| Step | Quote A: monthly retainer | Quote B: fixed-price audit |
|---|---|---|
| Scope stated | 3 delivered days a month, 12-month minimum term | 8 days of discovery plus 4 days of fix support |
| Delivered days | 3 × 12 = 36 days a year | 8 + 4 = 12 days |
| Cost to divide | 12 × monthly fee R, plus licences L and reporting P | Audit fee F, plus any licences you must buy |
| Effective day rate | (12R + L + P) ÷ 36 | F ÷ 12 |
Read the result both ways. If F equals A's full annual cost, Quote B charges three times as much per delivered day as Quote A, because the same money buys 12 days against 36. If A's delivered days turn out to be 2 a month, not 3, its divisor drops to 24 and its effective day rate rises by half. The headline totals never show either effect.
A checklist before you sign a technical SEO retainer
- Delivered days per month, written into the scope of work.
- Minimum term, notice period and the exit handover process.
- Named tools, and which side pays for the licences.
- Ownership of crawl data, dashboards and annotations.
- A written definition of a completed fix, including deployment checks.
Companies House can help verify a supplier's registration and filing history, but it does not tell you whether a quote is good value; compare that against the written scope. GOV.UK's get information about a company service gives some details for free, including the registered address and date of incorporation, current and resigned officers, document images, mortgage charge data, previous company names and insolvency information. You can also set up free email alerts for when the company changes its details, such as a change of director or address, which is worth doing for the length of a retainer.
If a quote includes log-file analysis, agree how personal data in the files will be handled. Where the files contain personal data, UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 apply; check the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) guidance and set out access, use and deletion responsibilities in the scope.
Common questions
How do I compare a day rate with a monthly retainer?
Convert both to an effective day rate. Divide the retainer by the delivered days in its scope, then divide the other quote by its estimated days. Compare those two numbers rather than the headline prices.
Do public rate cards include tool licences?
Usually not. Ask whether seats for Ahrefs, Semrush or Sitebulb sit inside the fee or appear as a separate line. Licences change the effective day rate once annualised.
Is a fixed-price audit cheaper than a retainer?
Not automatically. An audit covers discovery and recommendations, while a retainer often funds implementation support. Compare delivered days and the definition of a completed fix.
Does the agency need to be based in England?
Location matters less than timezone overlap and reporting cadence. A UK supplier makes contract and data protection terms simpler, particularly for log file analysis that touches personal data.
