When you’re looking for affordable search engine optimisation you want to know that you’re getting the most out of your limited budget. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that you’re spending your money in the most effective areas, and aren’t signed up with a cheap SEO agency that isn’t giving you value for your marketing spend.
This is even more important in the age of AI, where you not only need to think about how your website is performing in AI search, as well as organic, but also about how you can leverage AI to make the most of your efforts.
There once was a time when the internet was young, and simply having a website gave you the edge over your competitors.
But those days are long gone, and to make an impact with your website today you not only need great strategy, great web design and excellent development, but it also requires smart, effective digital marketing.
Finding a budget for online marketing can be really difficult, especially for small businesses. So it's essential that you're investing in cost-effective SEO and AI optimisation that focuses your limited spend in the areas where it will make the biggest difference.
In this guide, we'll look at some of the best options for affordable SEO services, how to make the most of a limited budget, and how to identify red flags from cheap digital marketing plans that aren't worth the money.
- The myth of cheap SEO
- The truth about cheap digital marketing options
- Low cost SEO in the age of AI Search
- How to find an affordable SEO package for a small business
- Technical audits
- Content and keyword research
- Local SEO
- NAP citations
- Reputation management
- Leveraging AI to tmake the most of your marketing budget
- Affordable SEO plans for small business
The myth of cheap SEO
Let's start with the biggest problem when talking about low cost digital marketing packages - cheap website SEO that doesn't actually work, or worse, that uses black-hat tactics that tank your reputation (and ranking).
You'll find lots of companies online who'll tell you they can give you a cheap SEO solution for as little as £99 a month.
They'll usually also tell you that they have "guaranteed results", or will "get you to #1 in Google".
With the introduction of AI in search, there are also now plenty of companies offering the same, or similar offers for ranking in AI search and LLM engines such as ChatGPT.
But when it comes to digital marketing for organic or AI powered search, what you're really paying for is a combination of expertise and time. If you're spending £100 a month on your SEO, think about how much actual work that's going to translate to - not to mention the quality of that work.
To give you an idea, Ahrefs did a comprehensive study of SEO pricing in 2024, which showed that in the UK, 85% of SEOs charged over $60 per hour, with 30% charging more than $150 an hour.
Which means that your £100 a month budget may not even get you an hour of work.
Source: Ahrefs
That's really not a huge amount of time to be spending on your website. In fact most agencies will spend more than an hour putting together a basic monthly report, so that leaves very little budget left for actual website improvements.
This is a big red flag that your "affordable monthly SEO" is actually paying for basic report generation and very little else. Not a great return on your investment.
The truth about discount digital marketing options
The classic pitch for low-cost SEO was typically to get you to “number one in Google”. Which was a promise that sounded impressive until you ask the question “for what?”.
Today, things are even fuzzier, as it’s very difficult to get reliable data from LLMs and AI powered search about what people are actually searching for, much less what’s being cited and what’s being recommended.
At best, all most tools can provide is educated guesswork.
This can make it difficult for the very best digital marketing agencies to show value in their work - and can make it very, very easy for less reputable agencies to get away with not doing much at all.
Another key red flag to look out for, is the promise of quick results using one or more of the following tactics:
- Reliance on AI written articles
- Articles hosted on a sub-domain
- Content in your website’s background colour so it can’t be seen by users, but can be picked up by crawlers
- Fake listicles with your company as the top result
- Bulk publishing of Reddit posts
Because AI has created some big changes in search over the last couple of years, some of these tactics have enjoyed some short-term success in AI visibility.
However, they can also have a significant negative impact on your organic SEO, which is intertwined with your AI visibility. So using these tactics could get your website pushed far down the rankings for organic search, which will end up negatively impacting your AI visibility too.
Don’t forget, the majority of your audience is still most likely to be using organic search, and AI search itself relies on organic results, so it’s a big mistake to jeopardise your organic rankings for the possibility of more AI exposure.
So, if cheap monthly SEO and AEO/GEO aren't actually effective, what's the alternative if you're looking for low cost SEO services for small businesses?
The answer is by using your budget wisely, and investing in some short-term services that are likely to bring the biggest wins, and set you up to manage your own digital marketing in-house too.
Low cost SEO in the age of AI search
Since the advent of AI Overviews and AI search, it's become even more important to make sure you're spending your digital marketing budget in areas where it can actually make a difference.
That's because it's become even harder to generate clicks from your content, even if it's fantastically ranked, rated and viewed. So today you want to be focusing your efforts on strategies that raise your profile and reputation. However, these are often the more time-intensive strategies, including content marketing, video generation and social media marketing.
But even if you've not got a large budget to spend on getting an agency to produce this sort of content for you - there are ways you can use their expertise to set you up with the right tools to create and manage that content yourself.
How to find an affordable SEO package for a small business
If you're not able to invest more than a couple of hundred pounds a month on SEO, then an ongoing marketing service probably isn't for you. It's incredibly unlikely that you'll see a good return on your investment when the budget is that tight.
But instead of spending £100-£200 a month for a year without making any headway, you could take that budget and invest it in some one-off SEO services that can actually make an impact.
In fact, most online marketing campaigns start with a one-off set-up cost that usually covers an initial audit and research.
There are also often some quick wins to be had with SEO, particularly if your website hasn't been optimised in the past.
Now, we're not promising that these methods are going to shoot you to the top of the search engines, or provide you with a sustainable ranking. However, we do think that these are the best options to make the biggest initial impact, and to give you a foundation that you can build on in the future.
Affordable SEO: Technical audit
Any digital marketing offering should start with a technical audit of your website to make sure it's correctly built and optimised. Any technical audit should start with the following (but not be restricted to):
- Meta titles and descriptions
- Appropriate alternative text on relevant images
- Website architecture
- Schema
- Page Speed and Core Web Vitals scores
- Use of semantic heading tags
- Setting canonical links
- 301 redirects
- Robots.txt file
- Sitemap
- Internal linking structure
If your website is built on a platform like WordPress, it's also essential to check for updates to any themes and WordPress plugins - especially if you don't currently have a website maintenance contract.
Even if your website has only been around for a while, it's very likely that there will be some small technical changes that can make an impact in terms of SEO.
However, sometimes there can be so much technical updating required, or the website can be so archaic that it's actually worth investing in a whole new website.
Sometimes this can give you a clean slate and can help you sort out a whole host of problems, from security and page speed to content architecture.
But, as we're talking about keeping to a SEO budget, it's unlikely that you're in the market for a brand new website too!
So some technical updates could be the answer instead, as they could make all the difference to how your website performs, which is a key factor in how Google views and rates your website.
Why affordable organic SEO must include keyword research
If you're going to invest your SEO budget on only one thing, we'd recommend it to be keyword research.
It might sound strange for us to advise you to go for something that's passive, and not active, but actually it's keyword research that forms the foundation of almost all organic SEO.
The nature of keyword research has changed significantly in the last few years as search has changed, shifting from specific keyword targets, to identifying more general topics, questions and content types, but the fundamental aspects are still the same.
And once you've got a reliable keyword and content strategy, it means that you can actually manage some digital marketing in-house.
You can use your keyword research to update on-site content and meta data. You can use it to build a content marketing plan and do your own in-house blogging.
Content is still very much king when it comes to digital marketing, so having reliable keyword data means that you can at least set your website up to target the right types of content from the outset, even if you don't have an ongoing strategy to build on that foundation or adapt to future changes.
Keyword research typically includes:
- An audit of the current content on each page of your website. This should include average positions, average clicks, impressions and click-through rates
- Research on new opportunities by looking at competitors, synonyms, trending topics - these should also include average Volumes and Keyword Difficulty scores
- Branching out of keywords from specific targets to broader topics, content types and strategies
- Creating a plan that assigns content priorities to all your current pages
- Sets out new page opportunities or structural changes based on keywords, topics and types of content
Keyword research is no longer about identifying specific target keywords and creating content for them, but for identifying topics, questions and content themes that you can use to plan your website strategy and user experience.
Affordable local SEO packages
Local SEO is another really great way to spend a small SEO budget - although it's a lot more impactful if your business does have a local focus.
If your company has a UK wide target audience, then some local SEO strategies can (and will) still bring you some benefit, but the gains for locally focussed businesses are much greater and should definitely be a big focus for your online marketing budget allocation.
Local SEO is all about ranking in your local area, and great local SEO can actually help you leapfrog the organic listings for searchers in your area - who are exactly the people you're looking to target anyway!
One of the best ways to achieve that is with an optimised Google Business Profile. A great profile can help you get listed in Google's "local pack", which is the listings you see under the map when you do a search.
The local map pack appears at the top of the SERPs
Another popular method of improving your local SEO is to have dedicated location pages. These are really important if you have several locations to cover, but can also help you rank for more localised keywords.
For example, you may be looking for customers from Warwickshire and the surrounding areas, but have dedicated landing pages for Warwick, Leamington and Coventry.
These pages help Google to understand the areas you cover, and also provide users with tailored information depending on where they're based.
Cheap local SEO: NAP citations
NAP means Name, Address and Phone number, and NAP citations are basically references to your company's details on other websites.
These citations help Google understand who you are, where you're located and what your contact details are. It also helps with your local SEO, as you're proving to Google that you are in a specific local area.
This might be sounding a little like the old spammy tactic of listing your business on a bunch of directory websites for some cheap links. But actually, it's more about getting listed on trusted, relevant directories, so that Google can be certain of your business details (although the links are a bonus!).
You may find that your company is already present on some of these websites - for example, you may already have a Facebook page or a Yahoo Local listing.
Taking some time, or using a tool to check and clean up your company’s citations can ensure you’ve got reliable information on a wide range of trusted websites.
This ensures that Google sees consistent details about your business, and you may also pick up some good value links at the same time.
Affordable small business SEO: Reviews and reputation management
Another way to get the most out of your digital marketing strategy budget is to work on reputation management.
Reputation management is also known as social proof and, basically, it's about getting good, authentic reviews. This is something that has become even more valuable since the introduction of AI in search, as it’s a common thing for AI engines to look for when accessing information about a business.
Google also loves to see what people say about your company, and your review rating will not only display on your Google Business Profile, it sometimes even shows in organic listing results too.
This is a massive bonus if you've got great reviews, as it's a clear sign to users that other people love and recommend your products or services.
But having a bunch of 5-star reviews or glowing testimonials just stuck on a page on your website isn't going to cut the mustard here. Google needs to be confident that these reviews are genuine and from real customers.
So the best places to focus your efforts are through trusted 3rd party reviewing platforms such as Trustpilot, social media sites like Facebook, and also through Google itself.
A great way to generate reviews is to send out emails to customers and clients, requesting they leave a review on one of your selected sites.
A digital marketing agency or search engine optimisation consultant may be able to set up an automated process to handle this for you, so you can start generating reviews without any additional effort at all.
Leveraging AI to make the most of your marketing budget
AI can be a huge help if you’ve got a small budget for your online marketing, but it’s really important that you make sure that you’re using it effectively.
Bulk producing loads of low quality articles using AI may not cost much, but it’s also not going to bring you much success either.
However, using AI to come up with content ideas, identify gaps in your strategy or even as a content planner or editor can be really helpful, and take some of the time-consuming elements of SEO off your hands.
A particularly good use of AI for marketing is to use it to conduct your own research. What do LLMs know about your business? Do they know about your delivery services or terms of use? Can they identify the key uses of your product or the USPs of your service?
This sort of research can help you identify the content gaps on your website, so that you can tailor content to address these questions and make clear what you offer.
Affordable SEO management for small business
When you're creating an online marketing budget, it can be very difficult to navigate through all the different options, pricing and services that are out there.
Ongoing digital marketing is always going to be the most effective long-term solution to improving and maintaining visibility - especially if you have an agency that really understands and works with you.
But with a regular monthly cost that's likely to be in the thousands, that's not a realistic option for everyone.
However, you can make an initial impact with a one-off digital marketing plan that gives you the best chance for an initial boost in rankings, and also sets you up for ongoing SEO that can either be done in-house, or by an agency in the future.
You can expect a one off digital marketing package to include things like:
- Technical SEO audit and clean-up
- Content research and planning
- Local SEO - including GMB optimisation
- NAP citations
- Reputation management
A one-off service like this isn't going to be a magic bullet, or a one-and-done SEO fix, and all of them are infinitely more impactful if they're managed and maintained regularly.
For the best results, you'll want an expert to take all this planning and setup and carry it forward into a digital marketing strategy that grows and builds and changes.
But if your budget can't stretch to that, then you can take the initiative yourself, and build on the research that's been done and the foundation that's been laid. You can start doing your own ongoing SEO, including things like content marketing, link building and landing page creation based on the resources and research from your initial SEO setup.
Whether it's your in-house team or an external agency taking you forward, having a one-off SEO analysis, research and setup process can put you on the right foot from the start, and help you get the most out of your online marketing budget - whatever that might be.
But, a good digital marketing strategy is always developing as the landscape changes, so if you decide to manage your ongoing SEO in-house, it can also be helpful to go through this process on a regular basis - say every year or couple of years.
That way you can keep control of your month-to-month spend, but have a regular audit and analysis from an SEO expert so that you know that you're on the right track, and to make sure you're taking advantage of new opportunities, dealing with technical changes and not spending time on tasks, platforms or strategies that aren't working for you.
Want to find out more about ongoing or one-off digital marketing plans from Edge of the Web? We'd love to hear from you.
