Most agencies aren't transparent about pricing. Here's the honest picture — what you should expect to pay, what you get at each level, and why the foundation matters as much as the strategy.
Prices vary enormously. Here's an honest breakdown of what different spend levels typically deliver.
| Monthly Spend | What You Typically Get | Best For | Watch Out For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under £200/mo | Automated reports, little manual work, templated content | Very small businesses with minimal competition | Often automated tools with no real strategy behind them |
| £200–£500/mo | Basic GBP management, some on-page SEO, monthly report | Local service businesses in low-competition areas | Limited content creation, slow results |
| £500–£1,000/mo | Full GBP management, local content, citation building, competitor tracking | Most UK local businesses | Check what's actually included vs outsourced |
| £1,000–£2,000/mo | Comprehensive strategy, link building, content, PPC integration | Multi-location businesses and competitive markets | Overkill for most single-location businesses |
| Cardiff Media Plan 3 — £295/mo | Full local SEO, GBP management, monthly content, competitor tracking, Bulletproof Website included | UK small businesses who want real results without agency prices | — |
Most agencies do SEO on top of a slow, platform-locked website. That's like painting a house with rotten foundations. We fix the foundation first.
Google directly uses page speed in its local ranking algorithm. A site scoring 40/100 on PageSpeed is competing with one hand tied behind its back — no amount of SEO spend fixes a slow site.
Google indexes your mobile site first. Platform-built sites often perform significantly worse on mobile than desktop. Our sites are built mobile-first and consistently score 90+ on mobile PageSpeed.
Page builders add thousands of lines of unnecessary code that slow rendering and confuse search engines. Our hand-built HTML is lean, semantic, and exactly what Google wants to crawl.
Google factors in HTTPS, security headers, and site reliability. Enterprise-grade hosting with DDoS protection and proper security headers gives our sites a technical edge over shared hosting.
Custom fast site, full ownership, free hosting. Local SEO foundations built in. You handle updates.
We manage everything — site, monitoring, updates, analytics. You stay focused on your business.
Full local SEO offensive. We go after your market and we don't stop.
Most businesses see meaningful movement in local rankings within 3–6 months. Highly competitive markets or those starting from scratch may take longer. We set realistic expectations at the outset — anyone promising page one in 30 days should be treated with scepticism.
Ideally at the same time. SEO best practices should be built into the site from day one — URL structure, heading hierarchy, schema markup, page speed. Retro-fitting SEO onto a poorly built site is harder and less effective than building it right from the start, which is exactly what we do.
Yes. Local SEO focuses on appearing in searches with local intent — "plumber near me", "Cardiff accountant", "best café in Newport". It involves optimising your Google Business Profile, building local citations, getting reviews, and ensuring your site has proper local schema markup. It's distinct from broader national or ecommerce SEO.
No. All Cardiff Media plans are month-to-month. We believe if the results aren't there, you should be able to leave. We're confident enough in our work not to need to lock you in. If you cancel, you keep all your website files and your domain — always.
Free 20-minute call. We'll tell you exactly what it would take to outrank your local competitors — and give you a fixed price to do it.