SEO Manchester
Manchester is the hardest market on this website and we are going to be straight about that before anything else. Our own page for this city sits at position 88, which is page nine. If you are a Manchester business looking for an agency promising page one for the city head terms inside a year, we are not it, and neither is anyone honest.
A £1,000 deposit, then 11 monthly payments, or £5,500 for the year. That buys up to five target keywords, a named consultant, and a monthly roadmap you can read in ten minutes.
See all three packagesWhat we already know about Manchester
Greater Manchester is close to three million people across ten boroughs, and the commercial catchment behaves as one market with very different local characters inside it. Salford, Stockport, Trafford and Altrincham are all distinct places to search in, and a campaign aimed at the city centre reaches none of them well.
Proof from a comparable campaign
Cambridge Podcasts is a national campaign run entirely from Sheffield that produced organic growth of over 500% and around three extra enquiries a week. Ask and we will open the live reporting from that account on a call. The actual dashboard, not a screenshot, so you can see what your money would be buying.
Where the campaign reaches
We run campaigns across Salford, Stockport, Trafford, Bolton, Oldham and Altrincham. If your customers travel to you, the campaign covers where they travel from, so you are not paying to rank in one postcode while the work comes from six.
What our own data says about this city
It is worth showing the numbers rather than talking around them, because they make the argument better than we can.
The old page for this city collected 2,778 impressions at an average position of 87.9. The three search terms it appeared for sit at 93.09, 90.29 and 64.18. For comparison, our Doncaster page sits at 24.4 and our Leigh-on-Sea page at 21.8, both without much recent attention.
That is not a comment on the page. It is what happens when a small agency competes for terms in a city with a mature agency sector, several hundred firms fighting for the same phrases, and incumbents who have been building authority since before this domain existed. Anyone showing you a proposal to fix that in six months is either not looking at the same data or is not showing it to you.
The honest strategy for a Manchester business
None of the above means SEO does not work here. It means the head terms are the wrong target, and there are three better ones.
- 01
Your borough, not the city
"Plumber Stockport" and "accountant Altrincham" are winnable in months. "Plumber Manchester" is a multi-year project against firms with a decade of head start. Greater Manchester is ten boroughs and most customers search the one they are in.
- 02
Your specialism, not your sector
Competing for a broad service term in this city is a fight with everyone. Competing as the obvious answer for a narrow, well-defined version of it is achievable, and the enquiries convert far better because the person searching already knows what they need.
- 03
The map pack rather than the organic listings
Proximity is a ranking factor you cannot buy your way past, and it works in your favour locally. A well-run Google Business Profile puts a Chorlton business in front of Chorlton searchers regardless of what the city-wide organic results look like.
- 04
Paid search while organic compounds
If you need enquiries this quarter in Manchester, Google Ads is the honest answer and organic is the long game running underneath it.
Ten boroughs, not one city
The single biggest strategic mistake we see in Greater Manchester campaigns is treating it as one place.
Salford, Stockport, Trafford, Bolton, Oldham, Bury, Rochdale, Tameside and Wigan are all substantial towns in their own right with their own search behaviour, their own local competitors and, crucially, their own far cheaper keywords. Someone in Altrincham searching for a service will very often type Altrincham, not Manchester.
For most service businesses that is the whole opportunity. A page per borough you genuinely serve, each one actually about that place, will outperform a single city page by a distance and will get there years sooner. The discipline is to build the ones you can serve properly and stop, rather than generating one per postcode. The previous version of this website produced 190 templated location pages in a single day and they earned twelve clicks between them.
Working with a Sheffield agency
We are forty miles east over the Pennines, an hour on a good day. That is close enough to come over when it matters and far enough that we are not going to claim a Manchester office we do not have.
Some agencies rent a virtual address in a city and list it as a location. It is common, it is transparent to anyone who checks, and it is exactly the kind of inherited detail our audits catch on other people's websites. We are not going to do it here.
What you get instead: a named consultant with a direct line, monthly video calls, shared reporting you can open whenever you like, and in-person meetings where sitting across a table actually helps. If proximity is genuinely a requirement, Manchester has a lot of good agencies and you should use one.
When we will tell you not to bother
There are Manchester businesses we would turn down, and it is fairer to say which now.
If you are a city-centre business whose only viable customers search the city head terms, and your budget is Local at £497 a month, the arithmetic does not work. You would be paying for a year of work to move from position 88 to position 40, which produces no enquiries at all. That money is better spent on paid search, or on a website that converts the traffic you already have.
If you serve a borough, or a specialism, or you have a real physical location that the map pack can work with, the picture is completely different and the same budget is well spent. The free audit is how we tell which of those you are, and we would rather say no at that point than take a year of fees to prove it.
What it costs
Campaigns start at £497 a month plus VAT for Local: a £1,000 deposit then eleven payments, or £5,500 for the year, covering five target keywords and five URLs.
For a Manchester business competing across several boroughs or in a contested vertical, National at £997 is frequently the honest recommendation, and we will say so on the first call rather than let you under-spend for six months and conclude that SEO does not work.
Everything we publish a price for is on the pricing page, including the cases where the answer is that you should not buy this.
Four steps, then round again
SEO never finishes. The work runs on a loop, and you see the report every time round, good month or bad.
- Step 1Keyword research
We start with the terms that show buying intent, not the ones with the biggest numbers. Alongside those, lower-competition terms that rank sooner and bring early results.
- Step 2Competitor analysis
Then we look at who outranks you and why. Once we know what they are doing, we know what it takes to beat it.
- Step 3Implementation
The team does the work: on-page fixes, new content, links and local signals. Every item is listed in your monthly report, not buried in a dashboard.
- Step 4Reporting & revision
Each month you see what was done and what it moved. When something is not working, we change it rather than wait for it to come good.
Three packages. Prices included.
Pick the one that matches where your customers are. Pay for the year, or a deposit and eleven monthly payments. Either way, the number on this page is the number on the invoice.
- Up to 5 keywords per campaign
- Up to 5 URLs included
- GMB post every 14 days
- 1+ new landing page or article
- Targeted locations, blog posts, on-page SEO report
- Initial audit & corrections, citations audit
- Monthly roadmap & action report
- Up to 10 keywords per campaign
- Up to 10 URLs included
- GMB post every 7 days
- 2+ new landing pages or articles
- Targeted locations, blog posts, on-page SEO report
- Initial audit & corrections, citations audit
- Monthly roadmap & action report
- Up to 20 keywords per campaign
- Up to 10 URLs included
- GMB post every 4 days
- 5+ new landing pages or articles
- Targeted locations, blog posts, on-page SEO report
- Initial audit & corrections, citations audit
- Monthly roadmap & action report
Every package includes keyword analysis, heading tags and meta description optimisation, image alt tag analysis, duplicate content checks, sitemap creation, mobile responsiveness reporting, citations, load time testing and search engine reports. All prices are subject to change. Budgeting for the website too? Here iswhat a website should actually cost.
Need something fixed this week?
Unexpected deadline, site down, or let down by another agency? Call and we will tell you straight away whether we can help.
SEO in Manchester: the questions we get asked first
How much does SEO cost in Manchester?
SEO in Manchester costs £497 a month plus VAT on our Local package: a £1,000 deposit, then 11 monthly payments, or £5,500 for the year. That buys five target keywords and five URLs, and the price is published so nobody haggles on a call. Most Manchester businesses start there and move up once it is paying for itself.
How long before I see results?
Expect movement in eight to twelve weeks and ranking change you feel in enquiries between three and six months. Anyone promising page one in a fortnight is buying links or measuring something that never becomes a customer. The monthly report shows the direction early, so you are never paying blind.
Do I need to be based in Manchester to work with you?
No, you do not need to be in Manchester. We run campaigns across Yorkshire and nationally, and most of the work happens over calls and shared reporting, so distance costs you nothing. If you want to sit across a table from your consultant, we come to you. Local clients built this agency.
What do I actually get each month?
Every month you get a roadmap and action report listing what was done and what it moved, plus the work itself: on-page changes, content, citations and Google Business Profile posts. The report lands whether the month was good or bad, so you always know what your money did.
Can you fix a site another agency worked on?
Yes, we take over sites other agencies have worked on, often. The audit comes first, so you know what state the site is in before you spend another penny on it. If the last campaign left thin pages or bought links, clearing that out is month one, because nothing else sticks until it is gone.
Do you tie me into a long contract?
The packages run for a campaign year: a deposit, then eleven monthly payments. That is the honest length, because SEO produces little in month two and a rolling monthly deal means neither side commits. You know the total cost on day one, and we have time to do the job.
Ready when you are
Tell us what you are trying to rank for and we will look at the site and the search results before we reply. You get a straight answer, including if SEO is not the right spend for you yet.