SEO Step-By-Step Guide – 186. Dealing with your SEO Budget

Some of us try to stay away from SEO because the first thing that comes to our mind with regard to SEO is the expenses involved. Ironically, all of us want to have good ranking in Google and other top search engines but we would not like to take the necessary steps to get the required ranking. Often we consider SEO as an expense rather than investment. In fact, spending money on SEO will be the most worthwhile investment you can make on your website’s promotion.
Today we have various SEO services and the cost of the services ranges from few dollars to few thousands of dollars depending on what you are looking for. Besides that there are different pricing models available as well. You can channel your funds by choosing the pricing model. One of the best pricing model that is suitable for medium and large websites is monthly retainer model. You can choose an SEO package that includes monthly maintenance as well. When you choose monthly retainer model, you don’t have to spend a huge amounts of money at a single go. You will be able to circulate funds from the profits you make.
For smaller websites project based pricing would work out to be best. Depending on your requirement you can choose project based packages. For example, you can choose article submission project, directory submission project or social book marking project. These are relatively low budget SEO efforts which you will certainly be able to afford. When you invest a little every month, you will soon start enjoying the cumulative effect of those efforts. You can also hire these services on contract basis which works more or less like project based pricing.
You must plan in such a way that a certain portion of your profits is set aside for your SEO efforts. This will ensure that you don’t dig into your own pocket for your SEO spending. You may choose to spend the amount you set aside on monthly basis or annual or biannual basis. The point is you set aside a certain portion of your profit for your website’s SEO so that it does not suffer constantly of insufficient funds.
You must also include PPC spending in your budget. While we say that you should set aside a specific budget for your PPC, what should not happen is a complete dependence on PPC. If your website’s traffic should depend 100% on PPC, then you are most likely to drain most of your profit in the promotional efforts. So you must balance your PPC and organic SEO spending. A major portion of the budget should be set aside for organic SEO.

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