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Outsourcing SEO for a service business

You pay for SEO every month and a report turns up, yet you cannot point to a single page on your site that is different. Here’s how to hand the work to someone else and still see exactly what they did.

John Geater, founder of IndexFirst6 min read
In brief

Hand over the work itself, not just the advice: fixes to your service and location pages, new pages buyers search while comparing suppliers, technical work and AI answer tracking. Judge the provider by what goes live, with every change dated and checked by a person first. We estimate the full plan at about £22,000 a month from an SEO agency. We charge £1,750 a month.

What should outsourced SEO cover?

Five jobs. A plan for an accountancy practice, a law firm, an IT support company or a freight forwarder should include every one of them.

  1. Fixes to the pages you already haveTitles that appear in Google but don’t get clicked, and service pages rewritten to answer what buyers ask: what is included, how quickly you respond and what you don’t take on.
  2. New pages buyers search when choosingA page for each service and place you cover, such as payroll for Leeds manufacturers, a page for each service from contract recruitment to ISO 27001 consultancy, and comparison pages.
  3. Technical workIndexing, sitemaps, broken links, structured data and a robots.txt that lets AI crawlers read your site. Test yours now.
  4. Tracking AI answersThe questions buyers put to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, asked again and again, with a count of how often your firm is named.
  5. A weekly reportWhich pages changed, and what moved as a result.

There is no need for a separate AI package. Being named in AI answers mostly comes from SEO done properly: pages that answer the question, that crawlers can read and that other sites mention. Google’s guidance says there are “no additional requirements” to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, “nor other special optimizations necessary.”

What does outsourced SEO cost?

UK pricing guides put freelance SEO at about £40 to £100 an hour, and agency time at £100 an hour and up. A typical retainer buys only part of the work. This is our estimate of the whole plan, hired out:

The full SEO and AI visibility plan, estimated cost a month, three waysIndexFirst, done for you: £1,750 a month. Freelancers you find and manage: £8,075 a month. An SEO agency: £22,400 a month. Bars start at £0.IndexFirst · done for you£1,750Freelancers · you find and manage them£8,075An SEO agency£22,400
Our estimate of the monthly cost of the full plan: up to 12 in-depth articles, 50+ fixes to existing pages, service pages and a free tool, AI answer tracking and fixes, outreach, posts and a weekly report, priced at typical UK rates in November 2026.

Writing and page fixes take most of the money. Here are the four largest of the five lines:

The four largest lines of the full plan, estimated cost a month, at an SEO agency and with freelancers12 in-depth articles: £9,600 at an agency, £4,200 with freelancers. 50+ fixes to existing pages, checked daily: £4,800 at an agency, £1,500 with freelancers. Service pages and a free tool: £4,000 at an agency, £1,300 with freelancers. Outreach, posts and reports: £3,000 at an agency, £1,000 with freelancers. Bars start at £0.12 in-depth articles£9,600 agency£4,200 freelancers50+ page fixes · checked daily£4,800 agency£1,500 freelancersService pages and a free tool£4,000 agency£1,300 freelancersOutreach, posts and reports£3,000 agency£1,000 freelancers
Our estimate, a month, by line: articles at £350 (freelance) or £800 (agency) each; fixes and the tool at £60 an hour freelance or £120 an hour agency. The fifth line, AI answer tracking and fixes, is £75 or £1,000. Every line is on our pricing page.

The freelancer figure leaves out the hours you would spend finding, briefing and chasing four or five people. On a 12-month contract we charge £1,500 a month. See how we compare with an agency.

Should the provider make the changes on your site?

Yes. A lot of outsourced SEO stops at advice: an audit, a list of fixes and a monthly report. Then the list waits behind everything else your team has to do.

Done for you means the provider makes each change on your site, directly or through your CMS. That is how we work, in WordPress, Wix, Webflow and Squarespace: changes go live every working day, and we check each one first. When you compare providers, ask who actually edits the site. Our comparison of B2B marketing agencies puts that question to each of them.

How to check outsourced SEO

A report that only describes activity is hard to hold anyone to. These five tests show early on whether the work is real.

  1. Every change is logged with its page and dateGoogle suggests asking any SEO “Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site”. Vague reports usually mean vague work.
  2. A person checks every change before it goes liveAnd you are asked first about anything that alters what you claim, such as response times, fees, accreditations or a new section of the site.
  3. The dates match Search ConsoleTake one change, set the Performance report to the weeks either side of its date and look at that page.
  4. AI answers are counted over many runsThe same question can name you today and leave you out tomorrow. Here’s how to count them properly.
  5. Nobody promises a rankingGoogle is plain about it: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” Anyone who promises one is guessing.

What to keep in your own hands

Owners often worry that when a contract ends, the know-how leaves with the provider. Hold on to these four things and it stays with you.

  1. Search Console and analyticsIn your company’s own account, with the provider added as a user.
  2. Your website and CMS loginsThe provider has access. The account belongs to you.
  3. Your factsServices, areas, prices and accreditations such as ICAEW registration, Cyber Essentials or ISO 9001. You decide what the site claims; the provider writes from what you give them.
  4. The change logEvery change with its page and date, so the next provider or your own team can carry on where the work stopped.

With us, every change we made stays on your site if you leave.