Is £300 every four weeks for SEO worth it on one van? The break-even, done properly
£3,900. That is the number, and almost nobody selling SEO to a British trade puts it on the page. Three hundred pounds every four weeks is thirteen payments a year, not twelve, so the annual figure is three thousand nine hundred rather than three thousand six hundred. At the day rates UK trades actually publish, that is somewhere between eleven and twenty six days of billed work, and about sixteen days for a typical one van business.
Sixteen days is a fortnight and a bit of your year handed over before you have quoted anything. It is a fair price for the work. Whether it is worth it is a completely different question, and it has an answer you can calculate rather than argue about.
So this is the break-even, run properly, on my own price. Where the money goes, what it has to return at five different margins, the year one that nobody prices for, and the point below which I would tell you not to buy it from me or from anyone else.
£300 every four weeks is £3,900 a year, thirteen payments rather than twelve, or about sixteen billed days for a UK one van trade. On a realistic first year of eight won jobs, keeping 60 per cent after materials, it clears in year one only if your average job is worth more than roughly £800. Below that, buy something faster first.
What £3,900 costs you in days, not pounds
Pounds are abstract and days are not. Priced in your own billed time, a year of SEO at £300 every four weeks costs between eleven and twenty six days depending on the trade, and sixteen is the middle of that.
The day rates below are the ones I collected for the rate guides on this site, from British trades quoting real work rather than from a salary survey. Divide £3,900 by them and you get the only unit that means anything to a sole trader: how much of the year the retainer eats.
| Trade | Day rate | Days £3,900 costs |
|---|---|---|
| Electrician | £250 to £350 | 11 to 16 |
| Plumber | £150 to £350 | 11 to 26 |
| Gardener or landscaper | £180 to £300 | 13 to 22 |
| Painter and decorator | £180 to £280 | 14 to 22 |
| Carpenter or joiner | £180 to £240 | 16 to 22 |
Notice the plumber's spread. Eleven days at the top of the range and twenty six at the bottom, for the same fee, in the same trade, in the same country. That spread is the first clue that the trade name is not what decides this. What you charge is, and more precisely what you keep. Day rates by trade are worth knowing in their own right, and I have the decorators' numbers written up in what painters and decorators charge a day across the UK.
Billed days is still the flattering version
£3,900 does not come out of turnover, it comes out of what is left after materials, fuel and everything else. At 40 per cent kept, the retainer has to generate £9,750 of extra work before you are level.
This is the step almost every "is SEO worth it" article skips, and it is the step that changes the answer. A retainer is paid out of contribution, not out of invoices. So the real question is not "does SEO bring me £3,900 of work", it is "does it bring me enough work that the slice I keep covers £3,900".
Labour led work sits at the top of this range. Anything materials heavy, a bathroom fit or a rewire with the parts on your account, sits nearer the bottom.
Two bars apart, the same fee needs more than double the work. If you have never worked out which bar you are on, that is the calculation to do before you compare a single provider, because it moves the answer further than any difference between them.
Year one, priced honestly
The first quarter produces almost nothing, and you pay for it anyway. On realistic numbers a plumber finishes year one about £1,260 down and goes level partway through year two.
Below is a worked year on round numbers. It is an illustration rather than a client's books, and I have deliberately not flattered it. Google's own starter guide is careful about timescales for a reason: "Some changes might take effect in a few hours, others could take several months." In practice the first three months are indexing.
One van, one plumber, year one at £300 every four weeks
| Payments made (thirteen) | £3,900 |
| Extra enquiries from search, year one | 24 |
| Of those, arriving in the first quarter | 2 |
| Won at one quote in three | 8 jobs |
| Average job value | £550 |
| Extra turnover | £4,400 |
| Kept at 60 per cent | £2,640 |
| Year one position | £1,260 down |
Year two on the same run rate, without the dead quarter: 36 enquiries, twelve jobs, £6,600 of work, £3,960 kept. Level, and about £60 up.
Read that receipt twice, because it is the argument against my own product as well as for it. On a £550 average job, a year of SEO is a loss and the second year is a rounding error. The thing that rescues it is not effort and it is not a better provider. It is the job value.
The number that actually decides it
Keep everything in that receipt and change one figure. At eight won jobs and 60 per cent kept, the average job that clears £3,900 inside twelve months is £812. So the honest rule is not "SEO works for electricians and not for gardeners". It is this: above roughly £800 a job, a year of SEO pays for itself in year one; below it, you are buying a year two return and you need to be able to fund the wait. An electrician doing consumer unit upgrades and rewires clears £800 without trying. A gardener on £180 a day of hedge cutting does not, and the honest advice there is different work, not a cheaper retainer.
So should you buy it? Three answers
Two of these three are no, and the middle one is the most common answer for a British one van trade in September.
One caveat that cuts against the sales pitch, mine included. Nobody can promise you a position, and Google says so in its own words: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." Any break-even model, this one included, is a model. Its job is to tell you what has to happen for the spend to make sense, not to tell you that it will. If the enquiry count in that receipt never arrives, none of the arithmetic saves it, which is exactly why the first thing to check is whether you can see the work happening at all. That is a separate skill, and I have written the checklist in what a monthly SEO report should actually show you.
Why my two prices are £50 apart, and what that says
SEO on a site you already own is £300 every four weeks. With the website built and looked after alongside it, it is £350. The £50 difference is £650 a year, and for a lot of trades it is the better buy, not the dearer one.
I would rather explain the gap than have you find it. Thirteen payments of £300 is £3,900. Thirteen of £350 is £4,550. The £650 between them covers the site itself: built, hosted, the domain, SSL, backups and unlimited small text and photo edits, with the site and domain transferred to you at twelve months.
Here is the part that is awkward for me to say and true anyway. If your existing website is one of the ones that converts nothing, the £300 route is the worse purchase of the two, even though it is cheaper. You would be paying to send people to a page that loses them. I have set out what that failure looks like from the inside in what actually gets cut from a £99 trade website, and the same pattern turns up on plenty of sites that cost far more than £99.
The line that comes off your tax bill
Marketing spend is normally an allowable expense, so £3,900 comes off the profit HMRC taxes rather than out of your pocket at full price.
GOV.UK lists "advertising or marketing, for example website costs" among allowable expenses for the self employed, and says "You can deduct these costs to work out your taxable profit before paying Income Tax as long as they're allowable expenses." For most sole traders that materially changes the real cost of the retainer.
It does not change the break-even in the receipt, because that receipt was already about contribution rather than tax, and it certainly does not turn a bad purchase into a good one. Check your own position with your accountant rather than with me. But if you have been weighing £3,900 as though it were £3,900 out of the bank at full price, it is worth knowing that it is not.
What I would do in your boots
Work out one number before you speak to anybody: your average job value over the last twenty jobs. It decides this more than the provider does.
Add up the last twenty invoices, divide by twenty, and put that figure next to £812. Above it, SEO is a reasonable purchase from whoever you rate, and the questions that matter next are about evidence and reporting rather than price. Below it, keep your £3,900 this year and spend it on the fast channels while you push the job value up.
For my own end of it, I charge £300 every four weeks for SEO on a site you already have, or £350 with the website built and maintained alongside it. Thirteen payments a year in both cases. If you want the website first and the SEO later, that is £50 every four weeks with no build fee and no deposit, a free mockup of your actual business before you pay anything, three months minimum, and the site and the domain yours to keep at twelve months. I would rather sell you the £50 one this year and the £350 one when your job values justify it than sell you the wrong one today.