What does a technical SEO audit cost for a UK small business?

What to take away

Most UK small businesses pay between £500 and £3,000 plus VAT for a technical SEO audit, and scope decides where in that band the quote lands.
A crawl review with an indexation check and a prioritised fix list sits at the lower end; log file analysis and JavaScript rendering work sit at the top.
London agencies charge more for the same deliverable, and VAT at 20 per cent is added to nearly every quote from a registered supplier.
Compare quotes only against a written scope of work, because two prices of £900 can buy very different amounts of analysis.

How the price bands usually break down

Quotes cluster into three broad tiers. At the entry level you are buying a crawl of a small site, a review of titles and internal links, and a short document of fixes. Nothing is implemented, and nobody opens a server log.

Audit tiers and deliverables

Entry

Fee ex VAT: £500–£900
Crawl: Up to 500 URLs
Indexation check: Yes
Core Web Vitals: No
Log file analysis: No
Roadmap: Fix list

Standard

Fee ex VAT: £900–£1,800
Crawl: Full site
Indexation check: Yes
Core Web Vitals: Yes
Log file analysis: No
Roadmap: Prioritised

Deep dive

Fee ex VAT: £1,800–£3,000
Crawl: Full site
Indexation check: Yes
Core Web Vitals: Yes
Log file analysis: Yes
Roadmap: Prioritised

Use the table to frame a brief, not to forecast a market rate. Two quotes in the same band can still promise very different deliverables.

Below £500, expect a templated report built from a single crawl with light manual review. Between £500 and £3,000, the standard audit sits in the middle tier: the quote depends on site complexity and manual review, so check which of the six tasks are included. Above £3,000 you are usually buying implementation as well as diagnosis. Ask suppliers to price implementation separately from diagnosis, say whether crawler, log-analysis and rendering-tool costs are included, and state the delivery timescale and any revision allowance.

What drives the price up or down

Site size matters less than complexity. A 40-page brochure site on a modern CMS can take a day to review. A 4,000-page ecommerce catalogue with faceted navigation can take a week, because pagination, filters and duplicate URLs all need judgement.

Site complexity drives cost

40-page brochure site

Review time: One day
Main issue: Basic checks
Pagination: Not an issue
Duplicate URLs: Rare
Log file analysis: Optional

4,000-page ecommerce catalogue

Review time: One week
Main issue: Faceted navigation
Pagination: Needs judgement
Duplicate URLs: Most common finding
Log file analysis: Costs extra

Duplicate URLs are the single most common finding. Fixing them means choosing a canonical version of each page, which the Google Search documentation on consolidating duplicate URLs sets out in detail.

Add log file analysis and the cost climbs, because somebody has to clean the raw logs, match user agents and read the crawl patterns. Our log file analysis for UK site owners guide explains what that work delivers and why it takes longer than a crawl.

What a fair scope of work should cover

Ask every supplier to price the same six tasks, so the comparison is like for like.

A full crawl of the site, with the URL count and crawl settings stated.
An indexation review covering robots.txt, sitemaps and noindex tags.
A canonical and duplicate URL check, with examples of the offending templates.
Core Web Vitals and mobile rendering checks on your highest-value templates.
A cookie consent review, since the ICO guidance on cookies and similar technologies sets out what a compliant banner must do.
A prioritised action list with an estimated effort for each fix, delivered as a spreadsheet as well as a PDF.

Ecommerce briefs need a seventh item. Filter and facet handling, out-of-stock pages and pagination rarely appear in a generic audit. The technical SEO audit checks UK ecommerce sites often miss are a sensible starting point.

VAT, London rates and paying for the work

VAT at 20 per cent applies to almost every audit bought from a VAT-registered supplier, so a £1,500 quote costs £1,800. Always ask whether the figure you have been given is inclusive or exclusive.

London rates sit above the national picture. A consultancy with a Shoreditch address may quote £1,200 a day where a freelancer in Leeds quotes £500 for the same work. Geography is not a quality signal, so price the deliverable, not the postcode.

If cash flow is the blocker, government-backed finance and support for small businesses is listed on GOV.UK, so it is worth checking before you commit to a fixed fee.

Common questions

Is £500 enough for a technical SEO audit?

Sometimes, for a small site of 50 pages or fewer with no rendering or JavaScript issues. It buys a crawl and a written list of fixes, not a strategy or implementation.

Do I pay VAT on a technical SEO audit?

If the supplier is VAT-registered, yes, at 20 per cent. Most agencies are, and freelancers above the registration threshold must be. Ask for a written quote showing the net figure and the VAT separately.

Fixed fee or day rate?

Fixed fees suit a defined audit with a clear deliverable, and they protect you from scope drift. Day rates suit ongoing work where the problems are not yet known, but you carry the risk if the audit runs long.

Can we do the audit in house?

Yes, if somebody on the team can read a crawl and interpret server logs. Tools supply data; a paid audit supplies judgement.