How Much Does SEO Cost Per Month?

SEO – or search engine optimisation – is a vital tool every website owner should use. When used properly good SEO practices can lead to more traffic, higher conversions and more income for the business website it is applied to, but how much does SEO cost per month?

Good SEO is not a short-term plan. Getting the best results from your SEO efforts can only be done if you have a realistic idea of what needs to be done right from the start.

What is the minimum you should invest each month?

If you want to see results from your SEO campaign you should be prepared to spend a minimum cost of £500 per month. In addition to this you should fix down a campaign lasting 3-6 months. Many business owners stop too soon and assume their SEO campaign – even if professionally managed – is a failure because they haven’t yet seen any results.

How long does it take to start seeing results?

Realistically you should start to see results after around 3 months for a brand new campaign. This is why you need to allocate the budget for your campaign prior to starting it, so you know what to expect and exactly how long it needs to run for. You shouldn’t expect to see results overnight.

It’s not all about number one rankings either. There is only one number one spot for each search term so even if you achieve it at some point you can’t expect to stay there. The things that do matter are the amount of traffic your website is getting and the conversion rate you are achieving. You can get lots of traffic but if none of it is being converted into leads, sales or whatever your target happens to be in this sense, you won’t succeed in your campaign.

Targeting niche keywords

The most popular keywords will be the most expensive when considering keywords to base your campaign around. You want to get the best value for money so it makes sense to focus on niche keywords instead. They will be easier to rank well for and will cost less per click if you use paid search methods to generate instant traffic.

Niche keywords can also be used in appropriate content on your website. This will also ensure your website starts appearing in relevant searches that may not have too much competition.

Seeking traffic that converts

A successful SEO campaign has a defined purpose from the start. Traffic should convert into either sales or enquiries. A purpose might mean increasing traffic by a specific percentage. It may mean increasing the size of your mailing list by a certain amount. Perhaps you want to increase overall sales by, say, 10%.

Bigger volumes of traffic are just one part of the quotation though. A proper campaign will also target the desired outcome of that traffic, whether it be increased sales or signups.

What does a good SEO strategy include?

A strong SEO strategy consists of more than one thing. You can make good use of content marketing, brand building, reporting, social media, competitions, conversion optimisation and so on.

Strong content can be used both on your website and in other places, to help draw in more relevant traffic. Social media profiles are ideal for helping you build and promote your brand, not to mention open up the chance to run competitions to attract more interest on sites such as Facebook. Building a brand isn’t easy but a good campaign can assist you in this area as well as in strengthening your SEO efforts in other ways.

A good strategy may also include local search if your business reaches a local audience. Locally relevant keywords can make all the difference in this area. Furthermore a professional service should include conversion optimisation too. This identifies your current conversion rate of traffic into sales or enquiries and looks at ways in which you can enhance it. Testing and analysis of the results will determine why the conversion rate isn’t higher and identify ways in which to change that. You’ll also discover how to retain more customers once they have bought something from you, in order to make the most of every penny you sink into your SEO campaign.

As you can see, investing in an SEO campaign over the space of 3-6 months at a minimum will deliver strong returns in more than one area. These returns have the capability to keep on delivering too, although a long-term SEO campaign is the best bet if you want to continue reaching your business goals. This type of campaign is a learning process and it will start bringing in information very early on that can be used to enhance the overall results you achieve. This is why seeking professional assistance with such a campaign makes so much sense.