White label SEO pricing for agencies: costs, margins and the work behind your brand

White label SEO pricing is the price of work your client never sees being done. An agency sells search engine optimisation to its own client under its own name, a provider does some or all of the work behind the scenes, and the gap between the provider’s invoice and the client’s invoice pays for the agency’s account management, its sales effort and its profit. This page sets out how that gap is built in the UK market: the pricing models providers use, the figures some of them publish, what pushes a quote up or down, how agencies mark the work up, and the contracts, VAT and data-protection rules underneath an arrangement most clients never hear about.

I am Moeez Abbas. BoltClicks is my one-person SEO, Google Ads and Meta Ads practice, run remotely from Lahore, in Pakistan, to UK and US hours, and agencies can ask me about white-label work as well as businesses hiring me directly. There is no UK office and no team behind me. That matters to a white-label buyer, because two of the rules covered below, the VAT reverse charge and the UK GDPR rules on making personal data available abroad, apply to any provider outside the UK, me included. A provider in Manchester or Glasgow is treated differently, and I say where.

A word on prices before any numbers appear. I do not publish a white-label price list, and you will not find one invented here. My direct prices for businesses are published, and I quote them later as a reference point; anything else would be a written quote for a specific agency and its client sites. Every other figure on this page is either a named third party’s published price, read on the date given, or a worked illustration that is labelled as one. Where a provider prices in US dollars, the figure stays in dollars.

If you are a business owner wondering whether your own agency outsources its SEO, the section on red flags is the one to read first.

There are three parties. The end client is the business whose website and Business Profile are being worked on. The agency sells the service, signs the contract with the client, sends the invoices and owns the relationship. The provider does the SEO work for the agency and invoices the agency, not the client. In a pure white-label arrangement the client sees only the agency: the reports carry the agency’s logo, the emails come from the agency, and the provider’s name appears nowhere.

A typical arrangement runs in five steps.

1. Paperwork first. A non-disclosure agreement covering the client’s identity and data, and a services agreement covering scope, price, notice, ownership of the work and a promise not to approach the agency’s clients. Where the provider will see personal data, the data-processing terms belong here too.
2. Briefing. The agency passes on the client’s services, locations, customers, competitors, past SEO work and anything the client has already been promised.
3. Access. The provider is added as a user to the client’s own Google Search Console property, Google Analytics 4 property, Google Business Profile and website, at the lowest role that lets the work be done. The next section covers the roles.
4. Work and approval. The provider proposes, the agency approves anything the client should see before it goes live, and the provider either implements the change or hands a brief to the client’s developer.
5. Reporting. The provider writes an unbranded report, the agency adds its branding and its own commentary, and the agency sends it. Day-to-day questions are best kept in a channel the agency controls, whether email or a shared Slack workspace, so nothing about a client lives only in the provider’s inbox.

Who talks to the end client is the question that causes most friction, so settle it in writing. Some providers never speak to clients at all; Studio 36 Digital, for one, says it never contacts its partners’ clients. Others will run briefing calls under the agency’s brand, which the White Label SEO UK guide describes as an option some agencies prefer, and Link Digital says it can join sales calls and answer emails as if it were one of the agency’s own employees. A third pattern is the openly introduced specialist, where the client knows an outside SEO is involved but still contracts only with the agency. Each works; leaving it vague does not.

White-label SEO is a business arrangement, and nothing in Google’s spam policies or its hiring advice is aimed at who sells the work. Google’s concern is the work itself, and its advice on hiring an SEO reminds site owners that they are responsible for the actions of any company they hire. In a white-label chain that responsibility runs upward: if the provider buys links and the client’s site loses its rankings, the client blames the agency. Choosing the provider is part of the agency’s own risk management.

The words are used loosely, and providers do not agree on them. Studio 36 Digital’s page says white-label SEO and an SEO reseller programme are, in practice, two names for the same thing. The White Label SEO UK guide draws a line between them: white label describes the unbranded delivery, while a reseller programme may add volume pricing tiers and co-branded sales material. Both views are defensible. What matters in a contract is not the label but the answers to four questions.

The first three put the agency in the middle of everything. It owes the provider whether or not the client pays, unless their contract says otherwise, and it answers to the client for the quality of the work. The fourth is a different business: the agency introduces the client, the provider signs them, and the agency receives a referral fee. Third Marble offers several of these side by side: white-label work, a “preferred partner” arrangement and a referral partner programme. Link Digital, a UK agency, runs an affiliate route next to its reseller scheme and says it pays 5 per cent commission for the life of each client introduced.

For someone searching “seo reseller uk”, the practical distinction is money and liability. A reseller buys at one price and sells at another, so the margin section below is the important one. For someone looking for a white-label digital marketing agency the question is wider: the same structure can cover pay-per-click management, paid social, websites and email. Link Digital, one of the UK agencies ranking for that search, says partners can resell every service it offers, from web design and SEO to PPC, social media and email, at discounted agency rates. The rules on access, contracts and data below apply to all of them. Whichever word you use, write down the four answers in the table; if the provider’s terms and your client contract disagree on any of them, you have found the problem before the client does.

Two agencies can send a provider the same request, “SEO for a client, what would it cost?”, and get quotes that differ by a factor of three. Often both are reasonable. These are the variables underneath.

• The end client’s competition. A heating engineer in Kendal competing with a handful of local firms needs far less work than a conveyancing practice competing nationally with large law firms and comparison sites. Third Marble’s package table makes this explicit by tying each tier to the number of competitors in the client’s market.
• Locations. Every additional branch means another Business Profile to manage, another set of citations, and often another location page that has to say something true about that place. Per-location pricing exists because the work grows with the map.
• Size and state of the site. A ten-page brochure site on WordPress, Wix or Squarespace and a Shopify store with thousands of product URLs are different jobs. Old redirect chains, duplicate pages or a botched migration need fixing before anything else pays off.
• Who implements. Some providers only send recommendations; others make the changes themselves, which takes longer and carries responsibility. SEO Brothers’ rate card shows implementation as a line of its own.
• Content. Volume, research and review all cost money, and regulated sectors cost more: a solicitor’s pages must stay within what the Solicitors Regulation Authority allows, and a financial adviser’s within the Financial Conduct Authority’s rules on financial promotions.
• How links are obtained. Earning links through outreach and digital PR is slow and labour-intensive. Buying them is quick, cheap and against Google’s spam policies. When one quote is far below the others, this is often why.
• Communication. Meetings are expensive. Third Marble says it keeps its rates down by dealing with one contact at each agency, mostly by email.
• Tools. Rank trackers, crawlers and link indexes such as Semrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog and BrightLocal all carry subscriptions, spread across clients.
• Volume and currency. More clients usually earn a lower rate per client, as Third Marble’s two agency plans and Studio 36 Digital’s volume-based wholesale rates show. A dollar-priced provider also costs a different number of pounds every month.

For most quotes the first three variables do the heavy lifting, and all three, the competition, the number of locations and the state of the site, are visible from the outside before any access is granted. A provider that names a monthly figure without looking at the client sites is pricing a package, not the job.

Google publishes its own questions to put to an SEO before hiring one. Ask for examples of previous work. Ask whether they follow Google Search Essentials, previously known as the Webmaster Guidelines. Ask what results they expect, in what timeframe, and how they measure success. Ask about experience in your industry and your country, and check references with past clients. All of those apply to a white-label provider. Agencies need a few more, because they are buying on someone else’s behalf.

• Who will do the work, and where? Names, roles and countries. Ask whether any of it is passed on to a further subcontractor, and if so, to whom.
• What does a month contain? Tasks or hours, written down. “Ongoing optimisation” is not a deliverable.
• How are links earned? Ask for examples from the last three months and how each was obtained.
• What access do you need, at what role? The answer should match the roles above, not “send us the logins”.
• Who owns what at the end? Content, reports, keyword research and rank-tracking history, and how you get it out.
• Can I see an unbranded sample report? Then check the footer, the file properties and the links for the provider’s name.
• What is the notice period, and is there a minimum term? Compare it with your own client contracts.
• Will you sign our NDA and a non-solicitation clause? A provider that will not promise in writing to leave your clients alone is telling you something.
• How do you handle personal data? Ask whether they act as a processor, whether they use sub-processors and, if they are outside the UK, how the transfer is covered.
• What happens in a crisis? A manual action in Search Console, a suspended Business Profile, a migration gone wrong. Ask who responds, and how quickly.
• What do you say about AI search? Google’s hiring advice now asks whether a provider’s “AEO” or “GEO” advice matches Google’s own guidance on generative AI features. That guide says optimising for generative AI search is still SEO, that Google Search ignores LLMS.txt files and other AI text files, and that no special schema.org markup is needed, so a package built around them deserves questions.

For a UK provider, the Companies House register shows whether a limited company exists, when it was formed and whether its filings are up to date. Reviews on Trustpilot, Google or Clutch help, though a white-label provider’s best clients are, by design, often unable to review it publicly. For a sole trader or an overseas provider, references and a paid trial on one client matter more, and a single one-off audit is a low-risk way to run that trial.

VAT on the provider’s invoice. SEO bought by one business from another will normally be what HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) calls a business-to-business general rule service, and under VAT Notice 741A those services are supplied where the customer belongs. A VAT-registered UK provider charges UK VAT at the standard rate of 20 per cent, which you reclaim in the normal way. A provider outside the UK charges no UK VAT and the reverse charge applies: your agency accounts for the VAT as if it were both supplier and customer, and for a business that can reclaim its input tax in full the net cost is nil. Two details catch agencies out. An agency that is not VAT-registered must count these overseas services towards the registration threshold, currently £90,000 of taxable turnover over twelve months. And the reverse charge still applies if an overseas supplier happens to hold a UK VAT number.

My own published payment terms say I invoice as an overseas sole trader, so my invoices carry no UK VAT, and a VAT-registered UK business would normally handle them under the reverse charge; an accountant should confirm the treatment before the first invoice, whichever overseas provider is involved. Your own invoice to the client is a separate supply, charged with VAT if you are registered, whatever your provider charged you.

The contract. A workable white-label agreement covers scope and deliverables; price, payment terms and currency; notice and any minimum term; a non-solicitation clause, so the provider cannot approach your clients for an agreed period; confidentiality, often as a separate NDA; who owns content, reports and data at the end; liability and its cap; which law governs it, usually that of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland; and what happens when a client stops paying you. Under most agreements you owe your provider whether or not your client pays, unless the contract says otherwise. If either side pays late, the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 lets a supplier claim statutory interest of 8 per cent plus the Bank of England base rate on business-to-business debts, unless the contract sets a different rate.

UK GDPR: who is responsible for what. Much SEO work involves no personal data at all. Some does: UK GDPR’s definition of personal data includes online identifiers, contact forms and call tracking hold names and numbers, and Business Profile reviews carry reviewers’ names. Where a provider touches personal data, the usual pattern is that the end client is the controller, the agency a processor and the white-label provider a sub-processor, though the roles depend on who decides what the data is used for. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance on what a controller–processor contract must include sets out the Article 28 terms, and one sits awkwardly with a fully invisible provider: the contract must say the processor will not engage a sub-processor without the controller’s prior specific or general written authorisation, and that under a general authorisation it will tell the controller about intended changes and give it a chance to object. The same data-protection obligations must be passed down to the sub-processor by contract, and the agency remains liable to its client for the sub-processor’s compliance. So where personal data is involved, the client has to authorise sub-processing in writing, either for a named provider or generally, and under a general authorisation be told of intended changes.

Making data available abroad. The ICO’s brief guide to international transfers, published in January 2026, says a restricted transfer includes making personal information accessible to a separate organisation outside the UK, not only sending it, and that the rules apply to sole traders and the self-employed as well as large firms. Every restricted transfer must be covered by UK adequacy regulations for the destination, or by an appropriate safeguard such as the International Data Transfer Agreement or the International Data Transfer Addendum, supported by a transfer risk assessment; only if neither is available can one of a narrow set of exceptions be considered, and if none applies the transfer must not be made. The ICO’s list of adequacy regulations does not include Pakistan, and the United States is covered only partially, for transfers under the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. So if a provider abroad, me included, will be able to see personal data in a UK client’s systems, the transfer has to be covered before access is given. Often the simpler answer is access designed so that it is not needed: aggregated reports, restricted roles and no exports of form submissions.

Your own marketing. If your agency’s website says “UK-based team” or “all work done in-house”, an overseas or outsourced provider makes that sentence untrue. Change the sentence or change the provider.

The work. The SEO side of my practice covers keyword research and site analysis, on-page optimisation, blog content, technical fixes, Google Business Profile optimisation, Search Console management and monthly link outreach, which is what my published packages list. I also run Google Ads and Meta Ads for direct clients. Whether any of that fits a particular agency’s clients is a question to answer with the client sites in front of us, not from a rate card.

What is published. A few commitments on my site apply to all of my work. I work through partner access only, never ask for passwords and would not accept one if offered. Everything is built inside accounts the client owns, and if the work stops I remove my access and nothing else changes. I do not promise rankings, because nobody honestly can. And my about page is plain that BoltClicks is one person, which puts a hard limit on how many accounts I can take on at once.

The published terms. My pricing and payment pages set the same rules for every direct arrangement: the first month or the full project fee paid in advance, retainers month to month with one month’s notice on either side, invoices in pounds for UK clients and in dollars for US clients, and no UK VAT on the invoice, for the reason given above. Those are terms for businesses that hire me directly. A white-label arrangement is a different contract, so its currency, notice period and payment timing are agreed in writing with each agency, and the notice period is worth matching to the agency’s own client contracts.

What to agree before a client name is shared. The white-label specifics are not on my site, so treat them as points to settle in writing with me or with any other provider: a non-disclosure agreement signed before the client’s identity or data changes hands; unbranded reports, and whose name goes on them; who, if anyone, speaks to the end client, and how that person is introduced; a non-solicitation clause covering the arrangement and an agreed period after it; who owns the content, reports and research at the end; and, where personal data is involved, the Article 28 terms and transfer cover described above. Ask for the link-building method, the review policy and the monthly content volume in writing as well. The red flags above apply to every provider, me included.

The price. I have no published white-label price list and no published agency discount, so I will not invent either here. My direct prices for businesses are on my pricing page: SEO packages at £299 a month (Basic: seven keywords optimised and four blog posts a month), £449 a month (Standard: fifteen keywords, eight posts, technical fixes and a monthly strategy call) and £649 a month (Professional: twenty-five keywords, fifteen posts and link outreach every month), with approximate dollar equivalents of $379, $579 and $829. Those are retail prices, not wholesale ones. Any white-label figure would be agreed in writing before work starts, as every fee on my site is, and would depend on the client sites, the competition and the number of locations; the same page says that if a retainer is not the right fit yet, I will say so rather than sell one. A one-off audit on a single client site is a sensible first test of any provider. My payment terms list an SEO audit as a fixed-price one-off project, and the way I run an SEO audit is set out in full on a separate page.

Send me the sites you want covered, what you have promised each client and how you report to them, and I will look at the competition, the locations and the state of each site before suggesting any work or price. Terms are agreed in writing before anything starts. No ranking promises, and a straight answer if a site needs a developer before it needs SEO.