Get found without paying for every click.
Search visibility for UK businesses, built on technical foundations, pages that answer real questions, and the local signals that decide who shows up in your area.
SynthX Media provides SEO services for small business, including local SEO services and ecommerce SEO for online stores, from £500 a month (excluding VAT), month to month. SEO takes months, and we do not guarantee rankings. Plans are billed monthly because the work is ongoing, and begin with a free audit that shows what is holding your site back. We work in order of impact: technical foundations Google can crawl, pages that answer what people search for, and the local signals that decide who appears for "near me" searches. Technical fixes can show results within weeks; competitive terms take longer.
Reviewed by Michael Early, Founder · Last updated 24 October 2026
Why bother with SEO if I can just run ads?
Because ads stop the day you stop paying, and search visibility does not. A page that ranks keeps bringing enquiries next month whether or not you spent anything. Ads buy attention now; SEO builds an asset. Most businesses eventually want both, but they behave completely differently.
It compounds
Every page that ranks adds to the last one. The work you paid for two years ago is still bringing enquiries, which is not true of any advert.
People trust it more
Plenty of searchers scroll past the ads on purpose. Ranking organically carries a credibility that a paid slot has to work harder for.
The cost per enquiry falls
Ad costs stay roughly flat per click forever. SEO costs the same each month while the traffic it earns keeps growing, so each enquiry gets cheaper.
What happens in the first month of SEO?
Mostly groundwork. Visible ranking movement usually starts later, so the first report is about what was done and what it should produce.
- Keyword research confirmed and technical fixes applied.
- Your Google Business Profile sorted and tracking set up.
- A first report about the work done rather than positions won, because nobody should be promising positions in month one.
What does SEO actually involve?
Three things, in order of what usually holds a site back: technical foundations Google can crawl and rank, pages that genuinely answer what people search for, and the local signals that decide who appears for "near me" searches. Skipping the first makes the other two much slower.
Technical foundations
Speed, structure, mobile behaviour and whether Google can crawl the site properly. Unglamorous, and usually where the biggest wins hide.
Pages that answer
Content built around what people actually type, structured so the answer is obvious. Thin pages stuffed with keywords stopped working a decade ago.
Local signals
Your Google Business Profile, consistent details across the web, and location pages. This is what decides who appears in the map results.
Credibility over time
Other sites referencing yours, earned rather than bought. Slow, and the part most affected by shortcuts that later get penalised.
Which kind of SEO do I need?
It depends on what is holding you back. If the site is slow or badly structured, technical comes first. If you serve an area and want the map results, local is the priority. If you sell products, e-commerce SEO deals with category and product pages, which behave differently to everything else.
Technical SEO
Speed, structure and crawlability. Start here when a site has content but Google is not rewarding it.
Local SEO
Map results and "near me" searches for the areas you actually serve. The priority for trades and anyone with a service area.
E-commerce SEO
Category and product pages, which have their own rules around duplication and filters. For anyone running a store.
How long does SEO take to work?
Months, and anyone promising otherwise is guessing or lying. Technical fixes can show up within weeks because you are removing something holding the site back. Ranking for competitive terms takes considerably longer, because you are earning a position somebody else currently holds. If you need enquiries this month, Google Ads is the honest answer.
Fix what's broken
Technical problems, missing structure and pages Google cannot read properly. Often the fastest visible movement you will see.
Build the pages
Pages that answer what your buyers search for, structured properly. Early signs usually appear on longer, more specific searches first.
Compete for the real terms
The searches with money behind them take longer. This is where consistency separates SEO that works from SEO that was abandoned.
Hold and extend
Rankings are not permanent — competitors move and Google changes. Maintaining position is part of the work, not a sign something went wrong.
What does SEO cost?
Plans are billed monthly, because SEO is ongoing work rather than a one-off fix. What sets the level is how many keywords you are competing for and how much work goes in each month. The audit tells us both before anyone quotes.
SEO questions we get asked most.
No, and neither can anyone else honestly. Nobody controls Google's results, and any agency guaranteeing a position is either buying low-value terms nobody searches for, or hoping you never check. What we can commit to is the work, and reporting on traffic and enquiries so you can judge it yourself.
Every site we build ships with SEO foundations — clean structure, fast loading, proper headings. That makes a site able to rank. SEO as a service is the ongoing work of actually competing: building pages, earning credibility and responding to what competitors do.
You keep what you have earned, at least for a while. Rankings do not vanish overnight the way ads do — but they do erode as competitors keep working and Google changes. Stopping is far less damaging than with paid advertising, which is one of the reasons SEO is worth starting.
No. Volume for its own sake is wasted effort. A handful of pages that properly answer what your buyers search for will outperform a weekly post nobody reads. For most local businesses, service and location pages matter far more than a blog.
If you need enquiries this month, Google Ads, because SEO cannot deliver on that timeline. If you can wait a few months and want the cost per enquiry to fall over time, SEO. Running both is common: ads carry you while SEO builds.
No. Bought links are the fastest route to a penalty, and recovering from one costs more than the shortcut ever saved. Credibility is earned slowly through being genuinely worth referencing, which is less exciting and considerably safer.
Yes. Projects run remotely with scheduled review calls. Local SEO is targeted to wherever you actually serve, not where we sit.
Want to know why you're not ranking?
Send us your web address. We'll check what's holding the site back technically, what you currently rank for, and which searches are realistically winnable — including telling you SEO isn't your problem, if that's the answer.