Learn how to effectively budget for SEO services and maximize your online presence. Understand the factors that influence SEO pricing and plan your budget accordingly.
Digital is the primary marketing channel for many companies.
Many owners and executives still have difficulty budgeting for online marketing.
Budgeting for SEO can be complex and influenced by factors like project scope, industry competition, and specific services needed. There is no universal calculator for calculating costs.
This article explores key SEO pricing components and how to calculate and plan your budget.
You can read more SEO articles
What Businesses Don’t Understand About Investing In SEO
SEO is an area where you truly get what you pay for. Investing adequately in SEO services can significantly impact your online presence and business growth.
According to recent data, over half of all SEO professionals work with monthly budgets ranging from $500 to $5,000, with 28.6% reporting budgets in the $1,001-$5,000 range.
Many business owners are reluctant to invest in SEO, often because they lack understanding of how search marketing works and are too busy running their businesses to learn about SEO.
Most industries follow a standardized, step-by-step process to achieve specific outcomes.
Many business owners mistakenly assume SEO works the same way, treating it as a commodity.
This misconception leads them to fall for low-cost offers like $99/month “guaranteed page one” services from spammers and scammers, which never deliver meaningful results.
The Cost Of Cheap SEO
I belong to several internet marketing groups on Facebook. It’s truly frightening the number of noobs posing as SEO professionals and taking on clients.
It’s common to see a question like: “I just landed a client that wants to rank for [keyword x] – how do I do it?”
A close second is people using link schemes, specifically private blog networks and third-party pages known as parasite SEO, without ever explaining the risk to clients. Many use AI to generate content at a scale without fact-checking.
However, AI can be a powerful tool when used ethically in SEO.
AI helps automate data analysis, identify patterns, and streamline content creation and optimization, which in turn helps to reduce SEO costs.
If business owners were just throwing money away by hiring an incompetent SEO, that would be bad enough. Unfortunately, the collateral damage from “cheap SEO” can go much deeper.
It can draw a Google penalty and virtually wipe out a website’s visibility on the web.
Business owners must remember that they’re ultimately responsible for any SEO work performed on their site. They should discuss the specific tactics service providers use before entering into an agreement.
Managing Your Resources
With Google utilizing 200+ (and likely exponentially more) ranking factors, it’s easy to become intimidated and paralyzed.
The good news is that if you focus on just three factors, you can still crush it, regardless of your niche.
Here’s what you need to pay attention to:
1. Information Architecture
Your site should:
Be crawlable & accessible to search engines.
Follow Google Webmaster Guidelines for SEO best practices.
Be optimized for a high-quality user experience (paying careful attention to Core Web Vitals).
Render cleanly on mobile, tablet & desktop devices.
2. Content
Your site’s content should conform to best practices as disclosed in the Search Quality Ratings Guidelines with an emphasis on:
Being unique and offering value.
Matching search queries.
Satisfying user intent.
Being of high quality.
Satisfying the fresh content algorithm.
3. Backlinks
It must be natural. Avoid popular link schemes like private blog networks (PBNs) and paid guest posts. Instead, focus on building real links from topically relevant websites with high-quality content.
Quality is key: A lower number of high trust/high authority/relevant links can outperform a large quantity of lower quality links.
You Manage What You Measure – Set Goals
Before establishing a budget, one must define specific goals for a campaign.
Your goals should include measurable results, a defined timeframe, and an actual measurement for success.
At one time, success was measured solely by keyword rankings. While SERPs remain an important metric, they are not the most important.
I would argue that the most important metrics are those that directly impact the bottom line. Organic sessions, goal conversions, and revenue fall into that category.
Goal setting could include improving organic sessions by X%, increasing conversions by Y per month, and/or increasing revenues by Z%.
When setting goals, it’s important to keep a couple of things in mind.
First, they need to be achievable. Stretch goals are fine, but pie-in-the-sky benchmarks can actually work as a disincentive.
Equally important: you need to give the campaign time to work.
According to Google,
“…in most cases, SEOs need four months to a year to help your business first implement improvements and then see potential benefit.”
Developing A Budget
Your goals will determine what tactics are needed for success. This, in turn, sets up a framework for developing an action plan and the budget necessary to support that plan.
This brings us full circle to positioning and paying attention to those factors that move the dial.
How does your information architecture stack up against competitors?
How does your content strategy fare as compared to the competition?
How does your backlink profile stack up against the top-ranked websites?
The answers to those questions will determine priorities as well as the volume of work needed to reach your goals.
In many cases, the actual work performed will be the same, regardless of budget level. The difference is the volume of work performed.
If you add twice the content and twice the links at budget level “B” compared to budget level “A,” you are more likely to achieve earlier success at the higher budget.
That said, the right budget is one you can afford, without losing sleep, for a minimum of 6 and ideally 12 months.
It takes time to properly plan, implement, and tweak a campaign to evaluate its success.
Also, remember that the lower the budget, the longer the journey.
How Much Can You Expect To Spend On SEO?
To execute a local campaign, you could budget between $1,001 and $5,000 per month, the most common budget range among SEO professionals SEJ surveyed in 2023.
The budget will likely be higher for a national or international campaign, with many SEO pros working with budgets exceeding $10,000 per month for broader campaigns.
Some firms offer a “trial package” at a lower price with no contract. This allows prospective clients to test their services while minimizing risk.
There are some options if you can’t afford to retain a top-level SEO pro. The most common is a one-time website SEO audit with actionable recommendations.
Just fixing your website will often lead to a meaningful boost in organic traffic. Content development and keyword analysis are other areas where you can get help from a pro for a one-time fixed rate.
Another option is to become an expert and do it yourself.
SEO Cost Calculator – Measuring Organic Search (SEO) ROI
The following is a calculator commonly used for (incorrectly) measuring return on investment for SEO.
Organic Search ROI Calculation Assuming “One Shots”
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