Yesterday, someone posted the question, “How much should I budget for SEO?” Here was my response:

That’s a very open ended question.

To bring this down to earth, you should look at SEO, or really your entire online marketing budget, as a percentage of your overall marketing spend.

For example:

For clients who have been using traditional media for some time, and are about to make their first investment into online marketing (including SEO), we recommend aiming to devote at least 25% of your marketing spend to online marketing. After some time, you’re likely to increase that percentage when SEO and online marketing prove to be the more efficient spend. So, if you’re grossing $2MM/year, for example, and your marketing budget is 10% of your revenue, then you should look to spend roughly $50k on online marketing. If that spend is all devoted to SEO, that’s about $4k/month, which is a realistic number.

If your business is all online, you’re probably going to want to allocate a larger percentage of your marketing budget to the web. Suffices to say, it’s important to start with your budget and not with a “what it is going to cost?”

I’m quite sure that whomever posted that question isn’t the only person pondering the same.  If you have other questions, send them to us and we’ll post answers. Thanks.