How much does SEO cost?
Successful SEO is not just about ranking higher in search results—it’s about driving meaningful business results from search
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by the Digital PR agency Search Intelligence, which uses PR methods to grow a link portfolio and North Star Inbound, which is a recommended agency for SEO and content strategy. See their case studies linked in the newsletter.
I will be presenting at Pubcon in Las Vegas (October 15th) and SEO Summit in Sao Paulo (November 6th). Please message me if you will be at either event.
If you haven’t yet seen/heard my podcast with Lenny Rachitsky, check it out here
A click from an organic search result is free, but getting that visibility is not. While SEO’s potential for driving organic traffic and long-term growth is undeniable, understanding the true cost of SEO—and the tradeoffs involved—is essential for making informed marketing decisions.
Too many executives default to spending on SEO without analyzing the costs and alternatives to spending that budget on SEO. In many cases, those tradeoffs are more efficient investments when they are modeled out.
[SPONSORED by Search Intelligence]
Digital PR link building tip:
Use advanced Google search operators to find Digital PR ideas that are most likely to be picked up by popular outlets.
Here is an example:
"site: publisher_domain intitle:revealed intitle:most"
This search will give you the articles that a publication wrote, which contain the words “revealed” and “most” in their title.
The Real Cost of SEO
When discussing SEO costs, it's important to recognize that they are not just about the money you spend directly on optimization efforts. The actual cost encompasses much more.
The financial investment is the most straightforward, but not all the costs are often aggregated as a part of this investment.
Agency or consultant fees
From my experience in both hiring, pitching, and researching, agencies will cost about $10k per month for a good agency and $5k a month for a cheaper agency just on management, but there are extra costs added both internally to support the agency and externally for added services
- In-house SEO team salaries
If an internal employee will be exclusively focused on SEO, then their full salary and benefits should be included in the investment.
- Tools and software subscriptions
These will be relatively cheap, but they are costs nonetheless. (If you spend thousands on a tool, ensure it drives ROI.)
Most tools have similar functionality, and you can’t go wrong with any of the major ones.
- Content creation costs
Please read my post on editorial vs programmatic SEO to determine if programmatic is a fit for your vertical
Time Investment
When calculating an investment into SEO, the time spent on it will also have actual costs that should be factored into a decision. Like the financial cost, which will inevitably take finite resources from elsewhere, time is just as finite.
An executive who spends time on a channel that might not be as efficient as another will have less time to focus on other pressing projects.
Taking on an SEO project means allocating time to each of the following items; ignoring any of these will result in a half-baked effort.
Strategy development: If you are a regular reader of this newsletter, you will already know how important I believe SEO strategy to be. You can’t dabble in SEO; you need a strategic direction in order to be successful. Developing a cohesive and thought-out strategy takes time.
Implementation of optimizations—There may not be a full-time engineering resource for SEO, but any time an engineer (or any other person) spends on implementing SEO will take time away from other projects. At the same time, not dedicating time to SEO once it has been decided to invest in it will mean that SEO never fully ships.
Content creation and optimization—If a strategy has been developed, the resources to implement that strategy also have to be available. This also means that those resources are not available to work on other projects.
Ongoing monitoring and adjustments - SEO is not set it and forget it. Investing in SEO means the company is also signing on to maintain and continuously invest in this channel.
Opportunity Costs and Tradeoffs
Just like financial budgets are available for monetary costs, opportunity budgets are available for opportunity costs. Even companies with billions of dollars in annual marketing spend have opportunity costs from pursuing one channel over another. Still, their scale can absorb the missed opportunities or pivot when they realize their wrong choices.
Errors in allocating and budgeting against opportunity costs could be more fatal or have long-term impacts on smaller companies.
For example, Amazon can afford to promote its hardware in a TV ad blitz and then move on if it discovers it didn’t drive enough sales. Rabbit, which makes an AI hardware device, doesn’t have the same resources or war chest to make a failed bet.
In meetings with prospective consulting clients, I always apply the same approach to SEO budget allocations. If the SEO opportunity is not immediate and big enough to drive near-term revenue, the opportunity cost of not using the budget on a more efficient channel could lead to dramatic and unfavorable outcomes.
Paid Advertising vs. SEO
Paid advertising (e.g., Google/Bing Ads, social media ads) can deliver immediate results, while SEO is a long-term play. Every dollar invested in SEO today is a dollar that will not be invested in paid channels. Paid campaigns might feel like extortion, but they work to acquire users, and when there is a near-term need for revenue, spending the money on a long-term bet like SEO might not be a good idea.
(If paid hasn’t worked for you, it could be an implementation issue rather than the channel. Reply if I can help you find a better solution to paid marketing.)
In many cases, when I meet companies that have not yet invested in paid, I recommend that they invest in those channels first because then they could develop an economic model and product market fit that could be deployed to SEO.
Influencer vs SEO
Influencer budgets could range from podcast or YouTube advertising to paid social media promotion. Essentially, it’s anything related to a person using their own brand to promote a product to their following. Some of this exposure could be captured with ad networks, but a personal endorsement can be much stronger.
The idea of influencer marketing gets a bad rap, but for the right category, it’s a channel worth exploring. From my experience, SaaS businesses can do better with the right influencer campaigns on Linkedin than on SEO. Many of the newsletters you read are sponsored in a similar format, and it is worthwhile to explore what this channel can do for you.
Content Marketing vs. SEO
This might seem contradictory to some, but I think of content as different from SEO. The SEO projects I usually work on are focused on attracting in-market, in-funnel search users who will convert to a company’s products and services.
Content could serve this outcome, but it doesn’t have to. Every online brand, even if it doesn’t have a huge search audience, should have content that guides and helps its users. As an example, TurboTax produces an inordinate amount of content on everything tax-related, and many of the readers of that content will use those insights on another tax preparation platform.
The investment into content might be effective for brand building but not SEO conversions. In considering an SEO investment, the company should consider its expected outcomes and not just automatically assume it will be conversions.
Brand vs. SEO
SEO is far more effective when a company has brand awareness in its category. Investing in a brand first before SEO can be a wise decision, so for a company without a brand, choosing to invest in SEO could be both an opportunity cost and an unnecessary overpayment.
Investments in brand for SEO could include PR campaigns, TV or radio commercials, and even billboards. It will all depend on where a product’s audience lives and how best to build that brand.
Product Development vs. SEO
Marketing usually shouldn’t come at the cost of product features. Having SEO as a part of the product team helps decision-makers take this 100-foot view of where the best use of budgets should be. Marketing a subpar product is like filling a leaky bucket.
I always recommend putting SEO efforts on a RICE prioritization doc alongside product efforts. The best projects can then be funded.
Outbound vs SEO
Outbound sales efforts like cold calling or tradeshow participation aren’t for every company and product, but neither is SEO. I once met a company that wanted to pull $100k from a highly successful tradeshow channel to fund an SEO bet. Together, we analyzed the expectations of leads and revenue. The tradeshow channel was going to drive thousands of leads from that same $100k budget, while in their best-case scenario, that budget would drive only a couple hundred leads from SEO.
How much does SEO cost?
Ultimately, the cost of SEO—both in terms of direct investment and opportunity costs—must be weighed against its potential long-term benefits. While other marketing channels might offer quicker returns, SEO provides the foundation for sustainable organic growth and reduced reliance on paid channels over time.
The key is approaching SEO as part of a holistic marketing strategy rather than viewing it in isolation. By understanding the actual costs and tradeoffs involved, you can effectively make informed decisions about allocating your marketing budget and resources.
Successful SEO is not just about ranking higher in search results—it’s about driving meaningful business results from search. That investment and the returns of that investment should be fully calculated and weighed against other fully calculated investments.
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