SEO Contract Job Trends

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SEO skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 558 461 471
Rank change year-on-year -97 +10 +44
Contract jobs citing SEO 83 63 113
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.17% 0.21% 0.26%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.20% 0.23% 0.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 28 82
10th Percentile £256 £160 £226
25th Percentile £305 £249 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £408 £425 £405
Median % change year-on-year -4.12% +4.94% +19.12%
75th Percentile £538 £525 £475
90th Percentile £658 £572 £623
UK excluding London median daily rate £325 £400 £363
% change year-on-year -18.75% +10.34% +6.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 5 7
10th Percentile £21.39 - £11.44
25th Percentile £25.48 £13.25 £16.35
Median hourly rate £31.18 £13.90 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +124.28% -44.40% -9.09%
75th Percentile £34.61 £15.75 £31.88
90th Percentile £35.91 £36.60 £39.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £13.70 £19.47
% change year-on-year +133.58% -29.64% -11.50%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

SEO falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 42,415 26,864 37,189
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.78% 91.03% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,461 17,061 23,740
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,543 1,206 2,581
10th Percentile £14.71 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.13 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.06% -25.68% +1.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% +9.23%

SEO
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SEO relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

SEO job vacancy trend in the UK

SEO
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SEO.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SEO

SEO
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SEO over the 6 months to 13 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SEO in the UK

SEO
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SEO.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SEO

SEO
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SEO over the 6 months to 13 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SEO in the UK

SEO
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SEO within the UK over the 6 months to 13 June 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -103 75 £415 -2.35% 142
London -50 43 £500 +42.35% 42
UK excluding London -98 33 £325 -18.75% 116
Work from Home -77 15 £519 +22.06% 92
South West -19 8 £325 +18.18% 7
North of England -56 8 £325 +85.71% 42
North West -32 6 £325 +85.71% 24
Midlands -52 6 - - 19
East of England -26 5 - - 15
South East -62 4 £263 - 30
West Midlands -51 3 - - 9
East Midlands - 3 - - 10
Scotland -14 2 £425 +11.84% 3
North East -34 2 - - 8

SEO
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 23 (27.71%) CMS
2 5 (6.02%) WordPress
3 3 (3.61%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 3 (3.61%) Apache
4 2 (2.41%) Drupal
5 1 (1.20%) Headless CMS
5 1 (1.20%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (1.20%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (6.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (3.61%) Adobe Captivate
3 2 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (1.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 1 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (1.20%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 5 (6.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (2.41%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 9 (10.84%) Google Analytics
2 8 (9.64%) AWS
3 6 (7.23%) Azure
3 6 (7.23%) Azure DevOps
3 6 (7.23%) Dynamics 365
3 6 (7.23%) Power Automate
3 6 (7.23%) Power Platform
4 5 (6.02%) Google Ads
5 4 (4.82%) Adobe Analytics
5 4 (4.82%) GCP
6 3 (3.61%) Amazon EKS
6 3 (3.61%) Amazon OpenSearch
6 3 (3.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 2 (2.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 2 (2.41%) Amazon EC2
7 2 (2.41%) Canva
7 2 (2.41%) Facebook Ads
7 2 (2.41%) Meta Ads
7 2 (2.41%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
8 1 (1.20%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 3 (3.61%) Firewall
1 3 (3.61%) Network Security
2 2 (2.41%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (9.64%) Metadata
2 1 (1.20%) Metabase
2 1 (1.20%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.20%) PostHog
Development Applications
1 7 (8.43%) JIRA
2 3 (3.61%) GitLab
3 2 (2.41%) Artifactory
3 2 (2.41%) Git
4 1 (1.20%) Bitbucket
4 1 (1.20%) Vite
General
1 28 (33.73%) Marketing
2 23 (27.71%) Social Skills
3 9 (10.84%) Organisational Skills
4 8 (9.64%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (7.23%) Public Sector
5 6 (7.23%) Retail
6 5 (6.02%) Presentation Skills
7 4 (4.82%) Advertising
7 4 (4.82%) Automotive
7 4 (4.82%) Finance
8 3 (3.61%) Military
9 2 (2.41%) Law
9 2 (2.41%) Manufacturing
10 1 (1.20%) Banking
10 1 (1.20%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (1.20%) Health Technology
10 1 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (1.20%) Portuguese Language
10 1 (1.20%) Publishing
10 1 (1.20%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 12 (14.46%) Senior
2 10 (12.05%) Developer
3 9 (10.84%) SEO Specialist
4 5 (6.02%) Copywriter
4 5 (6.02%) Microsoft Developer
5 4 (4.82%) Coordinator
5 4 (4.82%) Designer
5 4 (4.82%) Lead
5 4 (4.82%) SEO Executive
6 3 (3.61%) Consultant
6 3 (3.61%) Content Coordinator
6 3 (3.61%) Content Strategist
6 3 (3.61%) Digital Executive
6 3 (3.61%) Project Manager
6 3 (3.61%) Senior Manager
6 3 (3.61%) SEO Consultant
6 3 (3.61%) Web Content Coordinator
7 2 (2.41%) Analyst
7 2 (2.41%) Business Analyst
7 2 (2.41%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (8.43%) HTML
2 6 (7.23%) CSS
3 5 (6.02%) Next.js
3 5 (6.02%) XML
4 4 (4.82%) React
5 3 (3.61%) Apache Tika
5 3 (3.61%) REST
5 3 (3.61%) VML
6 2 (2.41%) GraphQL
6 2 (2.41%) Middleware
7 1 (1.20%) CSS3
7 1 (1.20%) FastAPI
7 1 (1.20%) HTML5
7 1 (1.20%) JSON
7 1 (1.20%) Laravel
7 1 (1.20%) Node.js
7 1 (1.20%) Open Graph
7 1 (1.20%) Redux
7 1 (1.20%) Regular Expression
7 1 (1.20%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (8.43%) Product Ownership
2 6 (7.23%) Management Information System
3 5 (6.02%) Social Media
4 4 (4.82%) Taxonomies
5 3 (3.61%) Educational Technology
5 3 (3.61%) Freedom of Information
6 2 (2.41%) Cloud Native
7 1 (1.20%) AI Agents
7 1 (1.20%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.20%) Blog
7 1 (1.20%) Cyber Threat
7 1 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.20%) Digital Media
7 1 (1.20%) Graphic Design
7 1 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (1.20%) Hackathon
7 1 (1.20%) Low-Code
7 1 (1.20%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.20%) Security Posture
7 1 (1.20%) Video Editing
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.20%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (26.51%) Analytics
2 21 (25.30%) User Experience
3 17 (20.48%) AI
4 16 (19.28%) E-Commerce
4 16 (19.28%) Roadmaps
5 10 (12.05%) Copywriting
5 10 (12.05%) CRM
5 10 (12.05%) Problem-Solving
6 9 (10.84%) Actionable Insight
6 9 (10.84%) Strategic Thinking
7 8 (9.64%) Content Strategy
7 8 (9.64%) Customer Experience
7 8 (9.64%) DevOps
7 8 (9.64%) Digital Marketing
8 7 (8.43%) Stakeholder Management
9 6 (7.23%) B2C
9 6 (7.23%) CI/CD
10 5 (6.02%) Agile
10 5 (6.02%) Project Management
10 5 (6.02%) Storytelling
Programming Languages
1 12 (14.46%) Python
2 4 (4.82%) SQL
3 3 (3.61%) JavaScript
4 2 (2.41%) Bash
4 2 (2.41%) PHP
5 1 (1.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 17 (20.48%) Security Cleared
2 13 (15.66%) SC Cleared
3 7 (8.43%) Degree
4 2 (2.41%) Analytics IQ
4 2 (2.41%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.20%) CISM
5 1 (1.20%) CISSP
5 1 (1.20%) GCIA
5 1 (1.20%) GCIH
5 1 (1.20%) GIAC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (10.84%) QA
2 5 (6.02%) Accessibility
3 3 (3.61%) Actionable Recommendations
3 3 (3.61%) GDPR
4 1 (1.20%) GRC
4 1 (1.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 2 (2.41%) Squid
2 1 (1.20%) Docker
Systems Management
1 3 (3.61%) Grafana
1 3 (3.61%) Terraform
2 2 (2.41%) Suricata
Vendors
1 22 (26.51%) Google
2 13 (15.66%) Adobe
3 11 (13.25%) Microsoft
4 3 (3.61%) Facebook
4 3 (3.61%) Instagram
4 3 (3.61%) Salesforce
5 2 (2.41%) Brandwatch
5 2 (2.41%) HubSpot
5 2 (2.41%) NetBase
5 2 (2.41%) ServiceNow
5 2 (2.41%) TikTok
5 2 (2.41%) YouTube
6 1 (1.20%) CheckPoint
6 1 (1.20%) Cisco
6 1 (1.20%) Fortinet
6 1 (1.20%) Intel
6 1 (1.20%) Palo Alto
6 1 (1.20%) Screaming Frog
6 1 (1.20%) Splunk
6 1 (1.20%) WooCommerce