How much SEO budget does a successful domain need?

Everything has a price. Even search engine optimization, better known as SEO. This online marketing channel can be compared to a garden. Only those who take loving care of its growth over the long term will reap the harvest after the busy season - with growing success. Because SEO creates a certain independence from external service providers in the long term. For example, if you focus on the organic ranking of keywords - by creating high-quality content - you can use part of the SEA budget for other purposes.

In the past, the mass, i.e. the number of links and the number of content on a domain was decisive for successful SEO. However, this approach is outdated and search engines, both and users, put much more emphasis on quality than quantity. Of course, es is optimal if you deliver both, because a large quantity, high-quality content will lead to your domain being considered an authority (both by users and search engines).

This is easier said than done, because there are at least 4 components to consider here es :

‍

• Internal expectations within the company, depending on
• Time
• Money
• Resources
• Competition

‍

The objective of this contribution is

• Putting a method in your hands so you can determine how much budget your company needs to do SEO
• Understand that setting the SEO budget is related to other dimensions (time or timing and resources).

‍

‍

Monthly SEO budgets for companies in 2013

You can find more statistics at Statista

‍

Methods to set a monthly SEO budget

‍

Case - Revenue-based budgeting:

They get a monthly budget from the management (usually in the case of start-ups & small companies), from the marketing team (medium-sized companies) or from the global team (corporations), in the case of smaller companies or an annual budget, in the case of multinationals, a budget that is based on the fact that a certain percentage of sales, is set for promotional activities, so in this case for SEO.

Pros and cons of this approach to SEO

‍

Per

• Easy to determine.

‍

‍Contra

• ‍Revenuescan be built up slowly in the SEO area.
• Consider here the start-up time you would need to eventually be able to argue your budget.
• No correlation between future advertising expenses and prior-period earnings.

‍

‍

Case: the "per unit" budgeting:

Each entity has advertising costs that they have. This means that every type of content that you publish to rank better

• Production costs and
• Marketing costs

has.

On the basis of an annual plan, this budgeting can be determined.

‍

Per

• Completely accurate monitoring of your costs

‍

Contra

• ‍Youneed to know exactly what you are going to produce, well in advance.
• This can impact the way you produce content or have content produced.

‍

‍

Competitive budgeting

In this method, the advertising budget of SEO is directly oriented to the competition.

Depending on the industry you are in, this method is extremely unsuitable for SEO.

Large companies have very large budgets, so es can be extremely difficult to compete with. Apart from that, competitors also have a different focus. This may include branding, which may not be the case for you.

In addition, budgets are handled differently in different companies. For example, budgeting for the creation of content is not found within performance marketing, but in content marketing.

‍

Per

• ‍Youhave the opportunity to keep up with the competition.

‍

Contra

• This method is not suitable if you are just starting with SEO measures and your competition is already doing SEO for 10 years. Therefore, you can not base your budget on it.
• If you look to the competition to determine your budget, the budget does not necessarily assure you better rankings, because es also depends on whether you can find suitable and inexpensive sources from which to have your content linked, or create content.

‍

‍

Target-oriented budgeting

The advertising budget is measured according to the targeted goals.

The strategic and operational goals must be defined very precisely.

‍

Per

• ‍Comfortableas you are directly oriented to your goals.
• Cause and effect are not reversed and advertising is viewed in its true function as a sales tool.

‍

Contra

• Long pre-planning is necessary.
• If you look to the competition to determine your budget, the budget does not necessarily assure you better rankings, because es also depends on whether you can find suitable and inexpensive sources from which to have your content linked, or create content.

‍

The method also allows, for example, countercyclical budgeting, which means that if business is sluggish, more funds can be made available for advertising, depending on the objective.

‍

Conclusion for determining your SEO budget

‍

As you can see es does not give a simple answer to the question "How to determine an SEO budget?", however, several methods were presented in the post that you can use, depending on your own personal needs.

How do you determine your SEO budget?

‍