A small business should spend enough on SEO to consistently do the work that actually needs to be done, without committing to a monthly number that has no strategy behind it. For some businesses, that may mean a few hundred dollars a month. For others, it may be several thousand. The better question is: What are you paying for?
Because SEO is not one thing.
Start With What Your Website Actually Needs
A brand-new website with no content, no authority, no keyword strategy, and very little visibility online has very different needs from a website that has been around for ten years and already gets traffic.
One may need a full SEO optimization project. Another may need ongoing articles. The next may need local SEO, and another may need someone to come in, figure out why traffic dropped, and fix what is broken.
Those are completely different projects, so they should not all have the same budget.
Your SEO Budget Should Match The Work
If your website has never been properly optimized, your first SEO investment may be a website audit rather than an endless monthly retainer. Someone should be looking at the pages on your website, validating the keywords, understanding what your potential clients are actually searching for, and making sure those pages have a real chance of being found. Once that work is done, the budget can shift.
Maybe now you’re investing in two to four strong articles a month that support your core services. You might want to invest in local SEO. Or maybe you’re tracking rankings and figuring out which parts of the website need more support.
The work should evolve. And your bill should not stay the same forever simply because somebody decided that SEO costs $2,000 a month.
Spend Enough To Be Consistent
Where small businesses get into trouble is spreading the budget so thin that nothing gets enough attention to work. I’d rather see a business write two thoughtful, well-researched articles every month for a year than publish eight generic AI articles one month and disappear for the next four.
The same goes for your overall SEO strategy.
If you can realistically afford a certain amount every month, build a plan around that number and concentrate on your strongest opportunities. It’s better to be a mile deep than a teaspoon deep.
If you’re a therapist who wants to be known for anxiety, trauma, and couples therapy, put your budget into building authority around those areas. You do not need to chase 40 unrelated keywords because somebody handed you a giant spreadsheet.
It’s better to be a mile deep than a teaspoon deep.
Figuring out which areas are worth going deep on is most of the work. If you’re not sure where your budget would do the most good, let’s look at it together.
Schedule a Call →Cheap SEO Can Get Expensive
I’m also cautious when SEO pricing sounds unusually cheap. SEO requires research tools, strategy, writing, editing, technical knowledge, and time. The professional tools alone cost money.
That doesn’t mean the most expensive company is automatically the best company. It means you should understand what is and isn’t included in the price. If someone is charging you $200 a month, what are they actually doing? Equally, if someone is charging you $3,000 a month, don’t assume they’ll do anything more. Ask the same question. You should be able to see the work.
Ask What The Money Is Doing
Before you decide what your SEO budget should be, ask your provider some very basic questions.
Questions to ask and to understand:
- What are you doing every month?
- What part of my website are you working on?
- Are you writing content?
- Are you doing keyword research?
- Are you working on local SEO?
- What are you measuring?
- What should eventually come to an end?
That last question matters. Some SEO work is ongoing. Some of it isn’t.
You have a finite number of pages on your website. Once those pages are optimized, you should not keep paying someone to optimize the same pages forever unless something has changed.
So, What Should You Spend?
Spend what your business can sustain long enough to build momentum, but make sure every dollar is attached to a strategy. For one small business, that might be $500 a month. For another, it might be $1,500 or $3,000.
There is no magic number.
What matters is whether the work matches the needs of the website, whether you understand what you’re paying for, and whether the strategy is building toward something. SEO grows over time. Your budget should give it enough room to do that.
Not sure what your SEO budget should actually be paying for?
If you recognized your situation in this article, let’s talk. We offer every new client a free audit of their website so we can determine what’s working and what would make the most sense next.
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