What SEO actually costs in Pakistan, the UK and Dubai
Quotes for the same brief range from PKR 40,000 to £6,000 a month. Here is what actually drives the difference, market by market.
By Digiloom editorial team · Published · Updated
Why quotes vary so wildly
SEO pricing tracks three things: how many hours of senior time you get, whether implementation is included, and how much content and link acquisition sits in the scope. Almost nothing else matters.
A cheap retainer is not usually a cheaper version of the same work. It is a smaller amount of work, often performed by someone junior, and frequently without any developer time to actually ship changes.
Typical ranges by market
Pakistan: PKR 80,000–250,000 a month for a credible local programme. Below PKR 60,000 you are buying a few hours of reporting.
UK: £1,200–4,000 a month for SMEs, £4,000–12,000 for competitive ecommerce and multi-market programmes.
UAE: AED 5,500–18,000 a month, with property and legal sitting at the top because the competition is fierce.
These are agency retainer ranges. Freelancers sit below, large network agencies considerably above.
What drives the number up
Publishing volume — content is the largest variable cost in most programmes.
Technical complexity — a headless stack with 200,000 URLs takes more engineering than a 40-page brochure site.
Number of markets and languages, each of which multiplies content and technical work.
Link acquisition, which is genuinely expensive when done through earned digital PR rather than bought placements.
Whether the agency implements or only advises.
What cheap SEO usually buys
A monthly report generated from a tool, a handful of meta description edits, and a few hundred low-quality directory links. It is not that the work is bad value; it is that it is not SEO in any meaningful sense.
If your budget is genuinely constrained, spend it on one thing done properly — usually technical fixes plus a small number of strong pages — rather than a thin version of everything.
How to compare two quotes fairly
Ask each agency for: hours by role per month, number of content pieces and their length, whether implementation is included, link acquisition method and volume, and reporting cadence. Put it in a table.
Then ask both what they would do first and why. The answers will differ more than the prices.