How much should SEO cost my business?

Now that SEO is becoming standard practice for most websites, the question is no longer if you should do it, but how much of your budget should you spend on it?

Spending thousands of pounds on SEO isn’t going to be an option for the majority of companies out there, and so search engine sales teams and SEO specialists have created content optimisation plans to suit every budget.

So what should it cost me

Here’s a look at what your budget will get you on a monthly basis, bearing in mind that what you get for your budget depends largely on who you choose to do the SEO for you:

• £150 – £500 a month, For this fee you’d expect your business to be listed on many directories relevant to your field. You should also receive the right keyword implementation into your sites Meta tags, some blog posts and some backlinks. The affect that this budget will have on your website search engine ranking will depend mainly on the amount of competition you have and how much content you have.

• £1000 – £2500. This budget would probably lead to some great content generation that is well adapted to the company. You should also see improvements in social media presence in terms of more followers, more conversation, and more links. However, if you face fierce competition and want to be ranking at the top spot on the SERPs, then you’re probably looking at a higher budget.

• £2500 – £5000- With this budget you’re hoping to recruit someone who’s highly talented in content generation, is an analytics expert and has great editorial and PR skills. A skill set of that caliber could lead to news coverage or backlinks to your company from reputable organisations, well written engaging and conversational content, as well as a great reputation among your profession.

• £5000 – £15000- This fee region would be for more of a larger company. Investing such amounts in SEO is for the sole purpose of crushing your competition and getting the word out there by any means possible. SEO pros will create engaging and attractive company campaigns that lead to great customer engagement. They will write professional content that is well focused and well targeted at your customer base and they will also be able to carry out analytics, press engagement and ROI with great precision.

Yes, SEO can be costly, but not investing has the potential to cost you even more in the long run. If you have the budget for an annual wage you could hire an in-house SEO specialist, or alternatively, make use of an SEO agency with a proven track record of delivering results. Hiring a company can be cheaper because they’ll already have a number of clients and so are able to keep costs down, but this could also mean that as your website won’t be their sole focus you may need to wait your turn for any changes to be implemented.

not investing effectively in SEO has the potential to cost you even more in the long run

Therefore it comes down to choosing the best option for your business by weighing up the positives and negatives of in-house specialists VS an SEO company and deciding where’s best to spend your SEO budget.

For more tailored advice, contact our team today to find out how we can help.