What’s A Good Budget For SEO?

SEO is important.

Right from establishing your online presence, to dominating the SERPs — everything starts with a comprehensive SEO strategy and content strategy.

But businesses often stay clear of SEO and any other digital marketing efforts as they think it might end up being expensive or “unnecessary”. We can definitely tell you that SEO for your website is far from unnecessary, it is a necessity for your website to rank on the SERPs.

As for the expensive part, SEO is only as expensive as you want it to be. If you create a budget that includes all the major expenses that you are likely to incur as a part of your strategy, you will be able to generate results without overspending or going out of budget. 

With that in mind, let us discuss more why budgeting for SEO is so important.

Why is Budgeting for SEO Important?

SEO is defined as an organic strategy to elevate the visibility and influence of your brand on the SERPs. However, in reality, SEO is not the free or “no-cost” strategy that people make it out to be. Depending on the goals and outcomes that you are targeting, SEO can easily prove to be expensive.

While SEO is cheaper than most other marketing strategies you would need to consider for your business, you will definitely need to invest some money and effort. There are so many activities within the scope of SEO, that without a budget, it would be easy to lose track and end up spending too much too soon.

With a properly set SEO budget in place, you would be able to optimise the kind of efforts targeted towards the SEO performance of your website. Doing so will ensure that you have enough set aside for your other marketing strategies and efforts.

Top Factors Impacting Your SEO Budget

When you set your own SEO budget, you will need to consider several kinds of factors to be accurate. First, you will need to have enough details and information about your business to gauge the kind of SEO strategy you will need. 

This information combined with a comprehensive consultation with a professional SEO will tell you more about the efforts required, and the estimated duration of the project or campaign.

Current State of Your SERP Performance

To understand the extent of additional efforts you will need to put into levelling up your SEO performance, you will first need to assess your current standing. Use SEO software such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider to see if your SEO performance is up to the mark.

Analysing your SERP performance is also a great way to consistently optimise your SEO and content strategy.

For instance, you may want to check if your website is ranking for the most crucial keywords for your business. You may also want to check if your website content contains enough keywords and internal/external links.

It will also be beneficial to conduct a detailed SEO audit on your website so that you can narrow down the issues that you want to address with the new strategy. 

Campaign Goals

Another highly critical factor that may influence the budget that you set aside for your SEO efforts are your campaign goals. The magnitude of efforts and expertise required to elevate your SEO strategy will determine the amount of monetary investment that you will need to direct towards your SEO strategy.

You will also need to ensure that your budget is able to justify all the activities, and tasks that will be required to implement your SEO strategy effectively. 

For instance, if you plan to build backlinks as part of your strategy, it is important to consider the cost associated with getting content created for the purpose. Or if you want to establish an online presence for local search queries, you will need to consider the costs associated with setting up a local SEO strategy. These costs may include online reputation management or citation-building activities.

Estimated Duration of the Campaign

For any SEO campaign to succeed as per expectations, having a holistic approach to conducting the campaign is required. With that in mind, if you decide to carry out a specific set of activities to boost your SEO performance, you will need to narrow down the timeline to implement them effectively.

Set a tentative timeline for each activity or task so that you can gauge the total duration of the SEO campaign. The campaign duration will let you know more about the resources that you will need to deploy, and the costs that you will incur in the process.

Along with the timeline associated with the implementation of your campaign, you will also need to account for how quickly you want to see results. If you want to see results in a few weeks or a month, your SEO efforts would probably need to be more aggressive, which in turn, will cost more.

In the same thought process, it is also good to debate whether you need SEO vs SEM and decide which alternative will be more beneficial for generating results within your expected timeline.

Evaluation of Current Budget Allocation

When you design a new strategy and are looking to implement it, you should always consider the status quo and how it is working for your business. Deciding a budget for SEO strategy for your business is no different.

It is important to consider how well your current budget is working for your business and the kind of activities that are included within it. You will also need to consider how your current budget has been allocated across strategies and the kind of outcomes it is able to generate.

Doing so regularly will ensure that you are able to eliminate any unnecessary activities and instead have more effective strategies in place. By shifting your marketing budget allocation this way, you will be able to maximise your SEO performance, without adding too many costs to your existing marketing budget.

Size of the Website and Industry

The amount of money that you would need to spend on your SEO strategy will also depend on your website and industry. 

For small business websites that do not have many web pages, the amount of effort will be comparatively lesser even if you choose to implement an aggressive SEO strategy. On the other hand, if you have a major Squarespace eCommerce store, your SEO efforts will be stepped up a notch and will definitely require a lot of monetary investment.

Similarly, industrial competitiveness can make all the difference in the kind of SEO strategy you implement. If you are in a highly competitive industry that has a lot of existing players, you will need to put that much more work into ranking higher on the SERPs. If your industry does not have too many players competing on the SERPs, you will be able to easily rank even with basic SEO strategies and activities.

Now, it is important to understand that these are only the major factors influencing your SEO budget and that there are more factors to be taken into account. Most importantly, you will need to consider the requirements of your business, and your SEO goals to arrive at a more accurate strategy for your business.

Ways to Allocate Your SEO Budget

When you want to create a stellar SEO strategy, you will need to make some tough calls. You will need to decide how your SEO budget should be allocated, and whether you want an in-house team to contribute to your SEO strategy, or not.

Hiring In-House Expertise

The first alternative of creating an in-house SEO department is a major undertaking. So, if you are a bootstrapped startup or a small business still trying to find its feet, this option may not be for you. 

You may be wondering why you need to wait if all you need to do is hire an SEO manager. Well, you may be a tad bit misinformed, if you think hiring experienced SEO personnel will help you develop your SEO performance.

When you are looking to set up an SEO team for your business, you are looking at hiring the following 4-8 resources for the team:

• SEO Manager or Strategist
• Content Writer
• Content Editor
• Web Developer and Designer
• Marketing Project Manager
• SEO Analytics Expert

Depending on the scope and requirements of the SEO strategy for your business, you will need to decide on the number of resources you will need to hire. So, if you are going with this alternative, you will need to think about the costs associated with each of these resources and chalk up your budget accordingly.

Bear in mind that SEO professionals in Australia have the highest average salary in the world at $91,989, according to the State of SEO: Performance, Salaries and Budgets by Search Engine Journal. However, there is definitely a dearth of qualified and experienced SEO professionals in the country.

Alternatively, you can also have SEO freelancers work on your campaign, and in case, you will only need to deploy an experienced and professional SEO manager who can track and oversee the campaign progress. You will need to set aside a budget of $70 to $200 per hour for every freelancer. The cost of hiring a manager to manage SEO freelancers is additional to the freelancing cost.

Employing an Agency

If you feel like setting up an in-house team for driving your SEO strategy is not something you can afford right away, you can consider deploying an SEO agency. There are many agencies in Australia that are experienced and equipped to help you with your SEO efforts, but you will need to select one wisely.

When you are selecting an agency to outsource your SEO, you have several considerations to keep in mind. You can either outsource all your SEO activities to the agency or seek help with a few specific activities.

Say, you have a team of electricians in Brisbane, and you have a great website to work with but are struggling with generating leads through it. This particular goal is ideal to outsource to a professional SEO agency. Remember, if you decide to opt for a top-level SEO company, you can expect to pay anything upwards of $1000. The cost may go higher if you are going for a national or international campaign.

However, when you are working with an agency, it is important to narrow down the right questions to ask before associating with them and to seek more information about how your SEO goals are going to be achieved.

Buying Automated Tools

When you are just starting out with your SEO strategy or when you already have existing team members working on your SEO, all you might need is a bit of additional help. And by additional help, we are referring to the many tools and software that can help you elevate and drive your SEO strategy.

SEO tools such as Ahrefs, and SEMrush might help you accomplish a wide range of SEO tasks and activities. More than that, you will be able to access and leverage analytics to drive the SEO performance of your website.

Such SEO tools can also help you carry out certain SEO tasks instantaneously, or even automate some of the repetitive ones so that you can focus on the crucial ones.

How to Budget for SEO Effectively?

By now, we are positive that you have a clear understanding of an ideal SEO budget and all the factors that impact it. It is now time to look at the process you can follow to create an effective SEO budget. 

1. Set Goals

As is the case with any project or campaign that you might want to undertake, the first step in the process is to set clear and SMART goals. Your goals will shape your SEO strategy, and thus determine the budget you will need to set aside.

Depending on your goals, you will also be able to gauge whether they are achievable with the help of freelancers, or whether you should go for a specialised SEO agency with the necessary expertise. 

You will also be able to determine whether you should have resources on an hourly, monthly or per-project basis considering your goals.

2. Develop a Budget

Keep the goals and strategy that you have set in the first step handy so that you can develop a budget with all of these points in mind. You need to ensure that you account for all the activities and tasks that will be required to implement the SEO strategy.

Your SEO budget should also have room for any additional tasks and activities that you may need to accommodate, so you must ensure to set aside some money for miscellaneous expenses.

While it may be tempting, try not to be too stingy with your budget, if you are just starting out with an SEO strategy. Instead, try to structure your strategy in a way that you don't have to undertake major expenses right at the beginning.

3. Calculate ROI and Re-evaluate

One of the major mistakes that businesses make when they set a budget for any project or campaign is not keeping track of the ROI. It is a good idea to keep checking whether you underestimated or overestimated any expenses in your SEO budget.

At this point, it is also a good idea to check your performance using SEO metrics and figure out the changes you will need to make to your existing strategy.

Feel free to keep optimising the budget so that you can fund all the primary expenses for your SEO strategy without jeopardising your planned budget. Remember, that the right budget will ensure that you do not lose any sleep for at least 6 to 12 months — so plan ahead and smartly.

Key Takeaways

Creating an SEO strategy might seem like a complicated task, but setting up a budget for it can get even more daunting. You have to account for a lot of activities and tasks, and there are a lot of uncertainties that you might not be able to consider at the outset. 

However, you will need to create a budget so that you can set aside some financial resources to implement your SEO strategy effectively. More often than not, you will find that employing an expert SEO agency might be a better alternative for your business. If you decide to do that as well, feel free to get in touch with us so that we can chat more about your SEO goals.