How Much Does SEO Cost?

“How much does SEO cost?”

SO many people in small to medium sized businesses are asking themselves this exact question!

It may seem like a simple question to ask, but the answer is complex…

REPHRASE.

“How much do I need to spend on SEO to get a great return on my investment (ROI) for my business AND to beat my competitors?

First thing you need to recognise is that SEO is not a sprint race – It’s a marathon.

Let’s say you decide to spend $500 a month on SEO.
BUT
Your main competitor is spending 3 times as much – $1500.
Chances are your main competitor has hired a reputable SEO company so, they will draw ahead of you because their agency has got a lot more time and resource available to master their campaign.
They WILL get to Page 1 on Google faster than you do and you will never catch up.

At $500 a month, you could be spending way too little to ever get to Page 1, which (in case you don’t know) is exactly where you want/need to be!
FACT: Studies show something like 72% of people NEVER scroll past the first page of Google.

Don’t just spend money on SEO for the sake of it!

Your SEO strategy should be based on getting more back than you spend.
For example:
If you are spending $500 but it only returns you $50 in sales – you are losing.
But if you are spending $1500 and it is producing $15,000 in sales – then you are winning.

Our research has revealed that 50% of businesses don’t have a budget for SEO and of those that do, around 71% are spending less than $1000 a month!

Trust me when I tell you that this is a waste of money.
It just won’t get you anywhere, particularly if you are in a competitive market fighting it out with lots of other players!

Great, where to from here?

In a world full of SEO spammers ending emails “guaranteeing to rank you on page 1 of Google”, Who do you trust?

Well, for one, if they are promising to do it for $99, they are guaranteed to be using tactics that could ultimately harm your business!

Some promise to rank you for X number of keywords on Page 1, before you pay them. That’s easy, they just choose obscure keywords no one else is interested in and bang you are ranking on Page 1 for those keywords only.
The trouble is those words that aren’t of any value to your business because no one uses them to search with…

Others use link “schemes” which link your site to their private network of bloggers to artificially boost your rankings.
Problem is Google hates this and will penalise you once they discover that’s what you are doing, so you could lose months worth of hard work and money.

Ultimately a successful SEO strategy is not just about spend.

First, your website needs to be built so its SEO-friendly in the way its constructed.

Secondly, the content on your website needs to be created in line with best-practice standards for SEO.

Thirdly, the links to your website should be of good quality and natural, not from “backlink” farms.

If you do these things and then employ the right SEO strategy, with the right budget, your ROI can be fantastic. I’ve seen cases of people getting back 10-20X what they are spending on SEO right back into their business back-pocket.

A smart SEO strategy is not a fixed thing.
You don’t set the budget and the goals and let it run for 12 months.
You learn as you go.
You spend, test and measure.
Then spend some more and test and measure that.

What you are constantly looking for are 3 key things that indicate you are on the right path to success…

*Que the 3 key things*

How much is the organic traffic to your website increasing by each month?
How much are you increasing your conversions by each month?
How much are your revenues increasing by each month?

I can tell you how much you should be spending, but more importantly, I can tell you how you should be spending it AND what return you should be expecting from every dollar spent.

Want to know how much your business should be spending on SEO? Apply for a free SEO Audit here and we let you know EXACTLY how much you should be spending.