Implementing the right SEO strategy leads to increases in the visibility of your brand and the revenue for your business. SEO is essential for achieving and maintaining top rankings in the search engine results pages.
But many businesses struggle—not with understanding the importance of SEO, but with knowing how to allocate valuable resources. Knowing how to build an SEO budget will ensure that your money and time are invested wisely and achieve the best results.
Budget Challenges
The reasons most businesses fail to establish an effective SEO budget strategy are the past experiences that may have proved ineffective and costly. Perhaps a business invested more than was needed and saw little return.
Some businesses may have the financial resources at their disposal, but have not invested the right way. This also leads to loss of their investment with no growth in their business.
Finally, many companies fail to invest enough in their SEO campaigns. Even if they do achieve gains, they may still have missed out on greater returns by not having considered how to invest in the first place.
Establish Your Baseline
The first step in creating your SEO budget is to consider some key information as it pertains to your business.
If you haven’t decided what keywords you would like to focus on, then this is the first place you should start. Knowing what customers are looking for dictates how and where your SEO budget resources should be applied.
Next, consider your results with your current strategy. Even if you don’t have a strategy in place yet, it’s important to know your current performance level by gathering all analytics that relate to your key performance indicators (KPI).
You should also become familiar with the different SEO services that you can utilize. These include pay per click (PPC) advertising, content and social media marketing, as well as conversion and search engine optimization.
One Step At a Time
Budgeting for SEO can only be done once you consider your investment goals. If you have tracked SEO campaigns in the past, you can determine how much of your revenues you’d like to be a direct result of future campaigns.
For most businesses, beginning with PPC is an ideal first step in the SEO process. By refining your targeting efforts and testing various approaches, you can track and grow your returns.
PPC gives you a clear indication of what keywords are valuable and which message leads to greater conversions. But you must test your PPC campaigns to find what works.
The return on your PPC investment can then be applied towards another part of your SEO campaign strategy such as website optimization or content creation.
Done correctly, this approach will lead to consistent gains with each new step. This allows you to invest in testing your site’s design for improved conversion rates.
A more advanced level of investment might include hiring an agency to manage more intensive and long-term SEO activities.
Over time, you’ll have a comprehensive strategy in place. You will have invested in a way that allows for consistent growth with minimal financial risk.
Rather than take a “shotgun” approach that puts your valuable resources into every SEO channel at once, a more strategic approach like this one will give you the feedback to know where to invest your money next.
This will establish a SEO budget strategy that’s tailored to your business needs and goals while ensuring that your money and SEO are working for you.
