How much should a Wrexham business spend on SEO and a website?

For a business in Wrexham the honest range is a few hundred pounds a month for the monthly work and a few hundred to a couple of thousand for a site, depending on how many areas you serve and how many pages need writing properly. What matters more than the number is what it buys: a named person, listed work, your own profile and site at the end, and figures from Google every month. This guide is how to read a quote, what a cheap deal leaves out, and when the right answer is to spend nothing.

What sets the price

Three things: how many areas you genuinely serve (Wrexham alone is less work than Wrexham, Chester and Mold), how much new writing each month (a page or guide a month is the standard, two for a business with many services), and whether the site needs building or fixing. What does not set the price, in a fair quote, is the size of your business. A one-person trade and a firm with twenty staff need the same profile, the same review routine and the same pages.

What a fair quote contains

• The work listed by month: profile, reviews, pages, mentions, technical care, report. "Ongoing optimisation" is not a list.
• A named person who does it, not a rota.
• Your own Google profile, your own domain, your own site, all in your name.
• Search Console access for you, so the figures are Google's and not the agency's dashboard.
• A minimum term of three months, then monthly. Twelve months up front is a way to stop you leaving.
• The price on the website, the same for every business.

What a cheap deal hides

The £99-a-month offers that reach Wrexham businesses by cold call share four features. The profile is created under the agency's account, so you lose it when you leave. The site is on a platform with a monthly licence, so it is rented. The "content" is town pages on a template, which Google filters. And the report is a PDF of graphs with no enquiries in it, because there were none. The cheap deal costs more than the fair one within a year, in the work that has to be undone.

What a website should cost here

A real site with a page per service, your own photos, the areas and a working form is a few hundred pounds; a full business site with fourteen to eighteen pages is around a thousand more; a site with the first month of the monthly work built in is more again. One-page sites are not worth building at any price, and anything under a few hundred pounds is a template with your name typed in.

When not to spend

If you are booked a season ahead with the work you want, from people you like, at your price, a finished profile and a small site that closes the name search is enough, and no retainer. Spend on SEO when you want to change the work, not just get more of it: bigger jobs, fewer small ones, a second area, a specialism. The retainer is a lever for choosing, and it is worth most to a business that can afford to be picky.

The test for any quote: if you left after a year, what would you still own? If the answer is nothing, the price is irrelevant.