How much should I spend on SEO?

What is the best level of spend for effective seo?

This is a good question. You might expect us to answer "as much as you can afford" but that doesn't really help you so here is a more useful way of thinking.

Most businesses have a marketing budget. In 2007, the average across all business sectors was that 32% of that budget is now being directed into online advertising.

The average split of that online budget is 60% advertising and 30% SEO

So, you will stay broadly in line with global trends if you invest 10% of your marketing budget into Search Engine Optimisation.

According to Anne Holland of MarketingSherpa

" The average Web site gets 73% more total traffic within six months of optimization."

So a quick calculation

ROI = 10% of marketing budget / current web sales * 1.73

of should show you your six month return on investment from a good SEO strategy.

Choosing a provider. An SEO service provider should be able to show you websites which they have performed SEO work on. This can even be the SEO service provider's personal website, they should be able to point you to their rankings in the search engine as well as some result driven SEO work within the site or across the web.

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