Lead generation
21. March 2022
How much does SEO cost?
The investment in SEO mainly consists of time, and SEO costs the time it takes to implement various relevant optimizations on and around your website. Depending on how search-engine-optimized your website is, SEO will require more or less time. In other words, we can immediately put the myth that “SEO is free” to rest.
The size of the SEO investment
SEO is a major investment – there is no getting around that – and it must either be invested in time/capacity internally, or purchased externally through consultants or an SEO agency.
Because the work takes the time it takes there is no getting around that.
What should you invest at a minimum in SEO?
At a minimum, you should invest DKK 100,000 per year in your SEO if you want serious output from your efforts. The alternative is to convert it into internal capacity, which at a minimum will be just under 300 hours (294 hours in total).
Note: This is the minimum. If you do not have this capacity or budget, I would consider spending your time on something other than SEO.
Due to the high competition in most industries and constant technological development, SEO is a “high risk, high reward” marketing strategy that requires a major effort if you want serious output. With efforts that are too small, you risk getting absolutely nothing out of SEO meaning your money is wasted.
How SEO is priced
As described above, SEO is priced based on the time required to execute it whether it is you, internal capacity, or external resources that will be involved. It comes down to how many working hours are needed and what your hourly costs are.
Which budget you get the most out of depends on whether internal or external resources are involved.
Internal vs. external resources
A reasonable assumption is that the cost is approx. DKK 340 per hour for an internal resource (salary, pension, lunch scheme, insurance, rent, IT equipment, and cake for the coffee you name it 😉).
DKK 340 per hour is, of course, waaaaay less than DKK 1,050 per hour, which the average consultant charges but let us be careful not to compare apples and oranges.
You can assume that an SEO consultant would be 2.5–3 times as effective as an internal marketing generalist, meaning fewer hours are needed for the project.
This means the financial burden will be close to the same. One is simply “hidden” in internal salary costs; the other must be found in a consultancy budget.
In addition, it is important to remember that SEO is a multifaceted marketing activity that requires you to master:
- Onsite SEO
- Copy
- UX/design
- Link building
- Frontend and backend development
It is extremely rare for internal marketing resources to cover all of these. When you invest in external resources, you gain access to an entire team, which is part of the pricing.
How should you invest in SEO?
My clear point is: Stop viewing SEO as something you just pick up continuously. Think in terms of deliverables instead.
Everyone has been told over and over that SEO is a long-term strategy. What is more, ITP, device shift, and GDPR are killing tracking capabilities, making it difficult for you to 100% substantiate the exact value your SEO activities generate.
So instead of investing in SEO as an ongoing effort that is supposed to deliver rankings, I would invest in deliverables.
A deliverable could be, for example:
- Website speed optimization
- Preparing analyses
- Keyword analysis
- Content gap
- Keyword gap
- Landing page mapping
- Preparing a sitemap
- New content for landing pages
- UX review of the website
- Link-building sprints
- etc.
Whether you use internal or external resources, I would recommend planning and prioritizing sprints and allocating resources to 1–2 initiatives at a time.
That way, you can tick off specific SEO deliverables, making it very clear what you are getting for your money, instead of it becoming a large “ongoing” line item that you do not really know what covers.
It may require several SEO sprints at the beginning to build a strong foundation, and later you can schedule smaller sprints for maintenance in order to continue capturing new rankings.
