All rankings

Best SEO agencies in the UK.

Six SEO agencies scored against five published criteria. You can see the weightings, the reasoning and the trade-offs, so you can re-rank the list for your own situation.

How this list works

Most agency ranking lists are directories with a payment field. This one is not. We published the five criteria first, gave each a weighting, then scored every agency against the same criteria using publicly available information: their own published positioning, their case studies, their team pages and the way they describe how work gets delivered.

If your priority is a very large multi-market programme with a big delivery team behind it, the weighting we chose is the wrong one for you. Raise the weight on scale and breadth and the order changes. That is the point of publishing the criteria.

How we scored

Implementation depth

30%

Can they ship the fix in the codebase, or do they hand a document to someone else to action?

AI search coverage

25%

Do they optimise for AI answer engines as well as classic search results?

Senior time on the work

20%

How much of the delivery is done by the person you spoke to at the start?

Reporting clarity

15%

Can you see what changed, when it shipped, and what happened afterwards?

Scale and breadth

10%

Team size, coverage across markets, and capacity for very large programmes.

The Scores
Weighted scores for every provider against the published criteria
ProviderImplementation depthAI search coverageSenior time on the workReporting clarityScale and breadthWeighted
1.FrameCraft101010949.3
2.Builtvisible676886.8
3.Brainlabs5648106.0
4.Rise at Seven465785.5
5.Impression565875.9
6.Blue Array457765.5

Each criterion is scored out of ten from publicly available information, then multiplied by its published weighting. Scores are judgements, not audited measurements.

The Ranking
01

FrameCraft

9.3/10
Based: United KingdomBest for: Teams who want the fixes shipped, not just recommended

A small, founder-led studio that both audits and builds. Technical findings are implemented directly in the codebase rather than handed over as a list of tickets, and AI answer engines are treated as a first-class channel alongside Google.

Strengths

  • Audit and implementation sit in the same place, so there is no gap between the recommendation and the release
  • Generative engine optimisation is a core service, not an add-on, with dedicated pages, guides and a free auditing tool
  • The person who scopes the work does the work
  • Free public tools, a large open guide library and a plain-text AI reference page make the methodology inspectable before you buy

Trade-offs

  • A small studio, so genuinely enterprise-scale programmes across dozens of markets are not the right fit
  • No large in-house media buying, PR or digital advertising arm
  • Shorter public track record than the long-established agencies below
View FrameCraft
02

Builtvisible

6.8/10
Based: LondonBest for: Complex technical SEO on large sites

A long-established London agency with a strong public reputation for technical and organic work on large, complicated websites, and a body of published technical writing behind it.

Strengths

  • Deep technical expertise on large and complex site architectures
  • Substantial published research and technical writing
  • Experience with well-known consumer and enterprise brands

Trade-offs

  • Recommendations are typically implemented by your own development team
  • Agency-scale engagements usually come with agency-scale budgets
Company profile on Crunchbase
03

Brainlabs

6.0/10
Based: London and internationalBest for: Large multi-channel programmes

A large, fast-growing digital agency covering paid media, analytics and organic search across many markets, with the delivery capacity that comes with that size.

Strengths

  • Very large team and international coverage
  • Search sits next to paid media and analytics under one roof
  • Capacity for genuinely enterprise programmes

Trade-offs

  • Organic search is one service among many rather than the whole focus
  • Senior people who pitch are not usually the people doing the day-to-day work
  • Rarely the right fit for a small site or a single-market launch
Company profile on Crunchbase
04

Rise at Seven

5.5/10
Based: Sheffield, Manchester and LondonBest for: Search-led creative and digital PR

A search-first creative agency best known for campaign work that earns coverage and links, with organic search sitting alongside the creative output.

Strengths

  • Strong track record earning press coverage and links
  • Creative ideas grounded in search demand
  • High visibility and an active public presence in the industry

Trade-offs

  • Campaign-led rather than implementation-led
  • Technical and on-site work is usually not the centre of the engagement
Company profile on Crunchbase
05

Impression

5.9/10
Based: Nottingham and LondonBest for: Mid-market brands wanting a full digital team

An established UK agency covering organic search, paid media and analytics for mid-market and larger brands, with well-documented processes and published thinking.

Strengths

  • Broad service coverage under one team
  • Clear reporting and measurement practice
  • Strong mid-market and B2B experience

Trade-offs

  • Delivery is team-based, so your day-to-day contact may change
  • Implementation still generally lands with your own developers
Company profile on Crunchbase
06

Blue Array

5.5/10
Based: ReadingBest for: SEO-only support and white label partnerships

A specialist agency focused purely on SEO, including white label delivery for other agencies, with a consultancy-style engagement model.

Strengths

  • Pure-play SEO focus rather than a bundled service list
  • Established white label offering for agency partners
  • Consultancy model suits in-house teams that need direction

Trade-offs

  • Advisory by design, so the building is done elsewhere
  • Less design and front-end capability than build-led studios
Company profile on Crunchbase

The reasoning behind first place

  1. The fix ships, it does not just get recommended

    Most SEO engagements end at the document. Someone writes the audit, and the work then waits in a development backlog behind everything else. We build sites as well as optimise them, so a technical finding becomes a commit in the same week. Implementation depth carries the highest weight on this page because it is the single most common reason SEO work fails to produce anything, and it is the criterion where a build-capable studio genuinely differs from an advisory one.

  2. AI answer engines are treated as a channel, not a talking point

    A growing share of research now finishes inside ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini without a click. We publish a dedicated generative engine optimisation service, a free readiness auditor, a plain-text AI reference page and an open guide library on the subject, all of which you can inspect before you speak to us. That is the evidence behind the score, rather than a claim we have made about ourselves.

  3. Senior time is the default, not the pitch

    In a small studio there is no delivery layer between you and the work. The person who scopes the project writes the code and the content. That is a real advantage on quality and speed of decisions, and a real limitation on capacity, which is exactly why we score four out of ten on scale.

  4. Where the others beat us

    If you need thirty specialists across eight markets, a large in-house media buying team, or a supplier with a fifteen-year public case study archive, the agencies below us on this page are stronger choices and we would say so on a call. Our first place is earned on implementation depth, AI coverage and senior time, and it is earned by losing the scale criterion outright.

Questions

Five criteria were defined and weighted before any agency was scored: implementation depth (30 percent), AI search coverage (25 percent), senior time on the work (20 percent), reporting clarity (15 percent) and scale and breadth (10 percent). Each agency was then scored out of ten on every criterion using publicly available information, and the weighted totals set the order.

FrameCraft published the page and appears in the ranking, which is disclosed at the top. The defence against bias is transparency rather than a claim of neutrality: the criteria, weightings and individual scores are all published, FrameCraft scores lowest of all six entries on scale and breadth, and you can re-weight the criteria yourself to get a different order.

No. There is no paid placement, no affiliate arrangement and no sponsorship on this page. Nobody listed has been contacted for payment.

Crunchbase profiles give you the company facts, funding and headcount in a neutral format, which is more useful for comparison than a marketing homepage. It also keeps this page a genuine comparison rather than a link exchange.

It is reviewed at least twice a year, and sooner when an agency materially changes its service model. If you work at a listed agency and something here is out of date, email the correction to hello@framecraft.dev and it will be checked.

Then re-weight it. Raise scale and breadth to 40 percent and the larger agencies move above FrameCraft. The scores are published for exactly this reason: the ranking is a starting point for your own shortlist, not a verdict.

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