How to Determine Your SEO Budget?

In a world where internet users are growing by the minute, businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to stand out. If you want to gain a competitive advantage and cut through the noise, you need to consider effective SEO. 

SEO is an excellent way of driving traffic to your website, but it comes with a price. Here’s a comprehensive guide to curating an SEO budget: 

 A Step-by-Step Guide to Determining Your SEO Budget

Here’s a step-by-step guide to determining your SEO budget:

Looking at Your Digital Marketing Budget 

Analyze your existing marketing budget to identify what percentage you can dedicate to SEO. For instance, if your current budget is as follows:

• 30% Google Ads
• 20% Social Media Ads
• 20% Email 
• 20% Referral Traffic 
• 10% Organic Traffic (SEO)

Ask yourself which channels generate less ROI. For example, if your email marketing and social media ads aren’t performing well, you can decrease your budget from each. 

Moreover, SEO is more likely to generate qualified leads and drive organic traffic than Google Ads so that you can transform your current budget to:

• 25% Google Ads
• 15% Social Media Ads
• 15% Email 
• 15% Referral Traffic
• 30% Organic Traffic (SE0)

If you determine which marketing efforts generate less ROI, allocating more money to your SEO budget won’t sound like a risk. Remember that SEO is more likely to create long-run ROI, given that you do it correctly. 

Optimizing Your SEO Budget 

After allocating 30% of your overall digital marketing budget to SEO, it’s time to explore your budget in detail.

The 70-20-10 rule is a good rule of thumb to create an optimized SEO budget:

For the Now 

The 70-20-10 rule focuses on devoting 70% of your overall SEO budget to improving aspects that drive real-time results. 

You may leverage your SEO budget to update preexisting content, boost page speed, increase load times, etc., to encourage your website to perform better. In addition, you can utilize your budget to enhance user experience, eliminate technical issues, and add backlinks. 

Most small businesses and startups make the mistake of overlooking these SEO efforts. These businesses end up missing the opportunity to rank high on search engine results. 

For the Next

It’s no secret that some SEO trends are evergreen, such as:

• Original Content Creation 
• Keyword Research 
• Voice Search 
• Artificial Intelligence 
• Video Marketing 
• Influencer SEO 

To gain a competitive advantage and stay up-to-date with evolving industry needs, consider allotting 20% of your budget to new technologies.

For the New

Google is constantly seeking new ways to aid customers’ research journey. Thus, ensure that your business and product/service information is easily accessible. 

You may even create your Google My Business account to control your business’s description, opening and closing hours, and include images. 

Since some users are visual learners, consider uploading high-resolution images to offer vital information to potential buyers.

Basing Your SEO on Your Paid Search Spend 

Most marketers prefer Google Ads since it offers quick and tangible results. For this reason, paid-per-click campaigns are ideal for startups seeking targeted traffic to improve ROI.

However, Google Ads is only effective if you know the secrets to run a well-curated Ad campaign. One wrong move and your PPC campaign hinder your business from reaching its total potential ROI. 

So, while Google Ads are integral for your overall digital marketing strategy, avoid it in the first month of launching. Instead, focus on your SEO. 

SEO requires less investment while promising better local traffic, annual revenue, and brand awareness in the long run.

Creating Your SEO on Real Competitor’s Organic Search Value 

Analyzing your competitor’s organic traffic value helps you compare it against your own. Knowing this allows you to identify how much your business must invest to gain a competitive edge. 

A simple yet effective way of estimating organic search value is by leveraging state-of-the-art competitive research tools. You may use SEMrush, SearchMetrics, or Ahrefs to determine your website’s organic value based on various factors, including:

• The cost-per-click of your chosen keywords 
• Estimated organic traffic keyword by keyword 

Beyond organic search value, you can gain a competitive advantage on a page level. 

Using analysis tools such as Moneyball SEO empowers you to identify competitor pages with high organic value and low difficulty. Here difficulty includes keywords, page authority, and URL rating. 

Leveraging this intelligent yet under-appreciated SEO strategy is an excellent way of determining how much more of your budget you should allocate to SEO.

Focusing on Content Marketing 

Driving organic traffic and qualified leads to a sales page can be difficult. It’s rare to spot a product page among the top three Google search results unless it’s a paid ad. 

So, it’s always a wise idea to focus on content creation to direct traffic to your product pages. Let’s discuss the top ways you can achieve this:

Internal Linking 

Out of your products/services, you likely have several bestsellers. Since it’s nearly impossible to rank product pages, consider creating articles that encourage users to take your desired actions. 

How-to articles, listicles, and product reviews are typically the best for adding internal links. Your editor may add an internal link under a header or as a call-to-action.

Guest Blogging

Another excellent way of getting inbound links is through guest blogging. Many industry-leading bloggers enjoy guest blogs since they offer minimal effort and fresh and exciting content.

Pinpoint the top credible blogs within your niche and then send them a pitch on potential guest blog ideas.

Remembering Your Revenue Driving Pages

Scoring backlinks to revenue-generating pages, like lead generation pages and e-commerce product pages, can be challenging. That’s precisely why building backlinks is a common yet effective strategy to drive traffic to your website. 

Moreover, effectively identifying your top revenue-driving pages can help you boost organic traffic. For instance, imagine that you’re a fragrance store with three top-selling scents that perform well in paid search and paid ads but have limited organic traffic. 

So, consider how you can plan your SEO budget to drive substantial traffic to the three top-selling product pages. 

The Bottom Line

According to research, the average business spends between $1000 and $1 million on SEO. Creating the ideal SEO budget can be a challenging task but can help you grow your business. 

Reach out to us at Firestarter SEO to curate the perfect SEO budget to boost your search engine ranking and brand discoverability. Our highly experienced and diligent SEO experts promise quantifiable results by leveraging proven techniques and practices.