In today’s business world, implementing an SEO strategy is no longer a question of should you do it. Instead, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) should be asking themselves how they should do it. Search engine optimization ranks among the most effective ways to drive valuable traffic to a website. However, small businesses grapple with estimating the average cost of SEO accurately.

SEO budgets vary from business to business. Additionally, they differ based on the strategy you decide to use. But it doesn’t mean that SMEs cannot figure the adequate financial resources to dedicate to SEO. On the contrary, there are multiple methods to arrive at the right SEO budget.

When it comes to SEO, the statement “you get what you pay for” applies. Your budget is a significant determinant of the ROI and the time taken to realize the benefits of search engine optimization. Thus, it would be best if you got it right from the start.

So, how much do SEO services cost? Here is the answer.

SEO Costs by Technique

There are two primary ways to implement SEO. You can do it yourself or hire a professional to help you. These two methods split up into four techniques, each with specific budget requirements.

Remember, SEO is no short-term project. Ideally, you may need at least four months to start realizing the gains of organic online campaigns. The optimal period for maintaining a campaign is twelve months. It is a good idea to keep these considerations in mind when going through the SEO techniques below.

FACTS: 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google search, Google Images, and Google Maps. In fact, SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media.

DIY SEO

Budget: $50 – $200 per month

If you happen to be operating on a too-tight budget, you can try implementing an SEO strategy on your own. It is worth noting that this method may derail the process and extend the time taken to accomplish set objectives. Remember, you will be competing with seasoned experts hired to market other websites.

To ease the burden of DIY SEO, you may use marketing software. There are dozens of software companies out there that you can hire for as little as $50 a month. Of course, you have to use a more expensive plan for full SEO features, preferably $200 a month. The software should furnish you with recommendations that increase traffic to your site. Actionable tips should follow any guidance provided by the system. Take a look at the objectives provided by the Diib software for our clients:

The principal merit of this method is its ability to tone down SEO costs. Additionally, most tips given by the software are easy to put into action. However, be sure to use SEO systems from known developers. Inferior software may lead to bad SEO, which lowers your site’s rankings.

DIY SEO projects are disadvantageous in that it might take you too long to learn proper SEO practices. Even after months of learning, being at par with SEO experts is unlikely. Therefore, use this technique to get your SEO strategy off the ground before you hand over to a specialist.

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Hire a Freelancer for SEO

Budget: $300 – $1000 per month

One of the most effective ways to start with SEO is engaging the services of a freelancer. There are numerous websites where SEO experts enlist their services. By visiting such sites, you may get a well-rated freelancer at a fair price.

It is a good idea to discuss what services the freelancer will be offering. Many small businesses think that the expert will help you with everything from providing advice to content strategy to on-page SEO. However, most SEO freelancers focus on specific areas. For example, this freelancer focuses on E-commerce and SaaS:

Further, be sure to vet the freelancer thoroughly. Most established specialists have a portfolio where they showcase their past projects. Better yet, you can ask them for a reference.

Among the reasons you would prefer a freelancer is that you don’t have to learn technical SEO. Of course, you may need to understand how to read and interpret reports presented to you by the specialist. While at it, avoid micromanaging the freelancer. Communicate with them without explicitly dictating what to do.

Before hiring an SEO freelancer, you might find it helpful to find out their hourly rates. Rarely do specialists charge per project. Knowing their prices beforehand helps determine how many hours they will work with you, depending on your budget. 

In-House SEO Team

Budget: $8000 – $100000 per month

While not the cheapest to implement, having an in-house SEO team is one of the surest ways to attain SEO goals. The marketing crew will understand your business’s goals and operations better than a freelancer or a marketing agency would. This fact makes hiring an in-house team worth pursuing.

However, assembling an in-house SEO team may not be as easy as it sounds. To start with, the minimum cost of $8000 monthly only attracts a single marketer, probably without specialized skills. An ideal team might look similar to this:

(Image credit: seoclarity)

As a side note, the above persons’ salaries are not the only costs associated with an in-house team. The crew will consist of regular W-2 employees who require an office, equipment, training, etc. Therefore, this method is suitable for established medium firms.

Other than a high average monthly price for SEO, there are quite a few downsides of working with an in-house crew. You can, however, keep in mind that such teams work on a single project at a time. They may increase several pages’ traffic, but their jobs’ nature limits their exposure to one company. Therefore, they may not understand SEO trends as deeply as digital marketing agencies do.

Digital Marketing Agency

Budget: $5000 – $50000 per month

For most SMEs, seeking a marketing agency’s services remains the ideal way to implement SEO. Most agencies consist of several experts specializing in different areas of search engine optimization. Since they also enquire intensely about your business, agencies may be almost as good as in-house teams, only cheaper.

SMEs should take care when hiring agencies. There are cheap marketers offering SEO services at $1500 a month or lower. Should you come across such rates, it would be a good idea to mark that as a danger sign. You might expose your website to bad SEO (think link building through PBNs), which, in severe cases, may cause search engines to block your site.

Even when contracting a reputable SEO agency, be sure to take note of the persons executing your SEO strategy. It is common for agencies to showcase their best talents and later place tasks in the hands of its less experienced staff. This is how the structure should look and who you should be communicating with:

(Image credit: sitebuildertrends)

As with all forms of contract labor, it is better to hire an agency through referrals. In this manner, you can be sure that there is an existing proof that the marketer has a proven track record.

In case you lack a referred hire, be sure to check customer reviews about the services of the agency you are about to entrust your website.

How to Accurately Estimate the SEO Budget

Understanding how much to allocate to SEO is one thing while knowing how much is enough is another. Typically, a small business may discern that they need a monthly budget of $5000 – $50000 to hire and maintain a digital marketing agency. But the range is too wide, and it is helpful to know the exact average price of SEO an individual firm should meet.

The rule of the thumb is, “do not spend more than you can afford.” But to narrow it down, you can use three primary techniques to determine the precise SEO services cost applicable to your business. Since one of most of the rampant mistakes SMEs make is ignoring SEO budget allocations, you can set your business apart by being cost-conscious.

You can calculate your SEO budget using the following methods:

Look at the Value of a Competitor’s Organic Search

One of the surest ways to estimate a small business’s SEO budget is looking at what its competitors are paying for organic search. After all, you are trying to be better than them. For SEO purposes, keep in mind that a competitor is not a business that happens to be selling the same products as you. Instead, it is a website ranking higher for the keywords you want.

The first task to carry out is calculating the value of organic traffic. How do you do this?

• Visit a website like SEMRush to determine the keywords your competitor has a top ranking. Remember to check the keyword ranking and search volume. There are tens of research websites to use in this step. Be sure to examine the best tools for the job. Here is the SEMRush competitor keyword tool:

(Image credit: SEMRush)

• Find the cost-per-click (CPC) of the keywords you found in step one. Again, numerous websites allow you to accomplish this task. Be sure to use a reputable resource such as Google.
• Calculate the product of the values from task one and task two. The answer you arrive at is an approximate amount of money a competitor is spending on organic traffic.

So, what do you do with it?

Ideally, you need to send as much as the competitor to equal them. To outdo them, your average monthly price for SEO needs to be higher than the competition.

Look at Your PPC Budget

It is usual for small businesses to over-invest in paid ads while ignoring the SEO budget. If you have already started with pay-per-click (PPC), you can use your current expenditure to estimate how much money to commit to organic traffic. Here is a breakdown of the potential costs:

For most businesses, it is best to match the PPC budget with the SEO one. The minimum amount you should spend on SEO is half of your PPC expenditures. Therefore, if you spend $20000 on paid ads monthly, the SEO average monthly price is $20000. If you want to keep SEO costs at their lowest, you can go as low as $10000.

Some businesses should spend more on SEO than they do on PPC. Such SMEs include those whose CPC is relatively high. However, be sure not to exceed four times your current PPC budget. In our example earlier, the business’s monthly SEO budget should not be more than $80000.

Website owners that should spend as little as half their PPC budgets include start-ups. Paid ads can sky-rocket a site’s traffic in a short time. In so doing, they lay the foundation for on-term strategies such as SEO.

We hope that you found this article useful.

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Looking at Your Marketing Budget

This method starts by making a small or medium business decide on their annual marketing budget. The set expenditure is a gross amount, and it covers every marketing activity, including SEO.

If you are not sure how much to allocate to marketing, it is advisable to hire an expert. However, you can chop a percentage off your revenues and set it aside for advertising purposes. According to the US Small Business Administration, a budget of 8% of revenues is sufficient for a small business raking in less than $5 million a year in gross revenues.

However, calculating the overall marketing expenditure is only the start. You need to analyze the sources of your site’s traffic. Once you determine the exact percentage of traffic SEO drives to your website, you can go ahead to set an accurate budget.

Practically speaking, if a business grosses $3 million in revenues, its total marketing budget should top $240000. After analyzing the traffic sources, the firm may realize that SEO accounts for 45% of traffic. Therefore, the SEO budget should be 45% of the total marketing budget ($10800 per annum or $9000 monthly).

If your business wishes to improve SEO, you can keep increasing the budget without taking too much from the other sources. All the while, keep a keen eye on the ROI to make sure you are getting your money’s worth.

As mentioned earlier, these are just three ways to calculate the SEO budget accurately. There are other methods of calculating SEO services cost. For example, SMEs can look at the Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). Once they determine it, they can decide how many more customers they want to gain. If the CLTV is $400, and an SME wants twenty more customers in a month, it would be fair to spend $8000 on SEO in the target month.

Before rounding up, it essential to see what a small to medium-sized businesses SEO budget should be. The figures are heavily dependent upon the revenues earned by a business. Here is a breakdown.

Annual revenue – SEO annual budget (15% 0f sales budget)

• $1 billion – $15 million
• $50 million – $3 million
• $30 million – $1.5 million
• $10 million – $ 500000
• $5 million – $ 200000
• $1 million – $ 60000

SMEs can use the figures above to compute the average price of SEO they need to meet every month. The distribution need not be equal. Depending on the strategy in use, a business can allocate more cash to certain months.

Tips on Getting the SEO Budget Right

Getting the budget right goes beyond asking yourself, “how much do SEO services cost” and knowing how to calculate a budget. The SEO needs of every SME are unique, and so be the process that the business uses to allocate the SEO budget.

You can customize your process of setting the budget using some tips such as:

Set Clear Objectives

The clearer your goals are, the easier it is to know exactly how much SEO will cost you. Avoid vague SEO objectives such as “increase traffic in two months.” Be a little more specific by giving a metric. For example, intents like “increase the subscriptions by 10% in a certain month” are better. They may even inform what strategy is best for your business, which takes you a step closer to estimating SEO services cost. Here is a budget worksheet:

Choose the Right SEO Partner

It is crucial that you select a person or firm to implement your SEO strategy after adequate sleuthing. Reputable firms and people may not overcharge you, and they keep your SEO expenditures at appropriate levels.

Choose a Method to Measure Success

The way you ascertain the achievement of SEO objectives is quite essential. Some businesses go with how well they are ranking, other with conversion rates, and some with ROI. Without a measure of success, your budget may sky-rocket to excessive levels as you are never aware of whether you have realized your SEO goals.

Diib®: The Best SEO Tool For Your Budget

The secret to knowing the average cost of SEO lies in continually educating yourself. The internet is always changing, and so should what you know about SEO’s costs and benefits. Armed with knowledge, you can better understand what budget is optimum for different SEO strategies. Diib Digital can give you many of the tools necessary for SEO success for one low price. Some of the features we know you’ll love are:

• Customized Objectives give you simple tasks designed to optimize your website
• User dashboard, website and support for one low price
• Alerts that tell you about your Domain Authority other technical SEO issues
• Bounce rate monitoring
• Post performance
• Broken pages where you have backlinks (404 checker)
• Keyword, backlink, and indexing monitoring and tracking tools
• User experience and mobile speed optimization

Click here for your free scan or simply call 800-303-3510 to speak to one of our growth experts.