Welcome to December. Can you believe in month we’ll be ringing in 2018?
A lot of organizations are finalizing their 2018 budgets, and unfortunately many will neglect to budget for search engine optimization (SEO). So, in this post I want to give you some tips to help you with your 2018 SEO budget.
Do I Need to Budget for SEO in 2018?
Great question! You should budget for SEO in 2018 if your organization finds itself in any of these situations:
- You are not getting many visitors to your website
- You are planning to change locations in 2018
- You are planning to open an additional, new location in 2018
- Your organization serves the local community (church, school, local business) and you’ve never setup, claimed or verified your local listings.
- You are planning to launch a new website in 2018
- You have been saying you can do your own SEO in house for more than a year and still haven’t done anything.
- You’ve been doing your own SEO but you’re really busy and your time could be better spent focused on other things.
- You want to grow in 2018
How much should I budget for SEO in 2018
This is a more difficult question because it depends on several things:
- What are your goals?
- Does your website have any technical problems that need to be resolved?
- Has your website been penalized for violating Google’s guidelines (perhaps inadvertently, perhaps you’re not even aware of it), and you need to resolve the issue and get the penalty removed?
- Does your organization have a local focus and need local SEO in addition to general SEO?
- How many other organizations are competing for the keywords you want to target?
- How strong and authoritative is your website now?
- Are you creating your own content (blog posts, images, videos) or do you need someone to help with content creation?
Chances are you don’t know the answer to some of these questions. Therefore, a good first step towards figuring out what SEO services you need and how much they’ll cost is to talk with a professional SEO. Most professional SEOs, including our team at OurChurch.Com, will be happy to do a free phone call with you to help you answer these questions and determine your options.
SEO services and prices vary a great deal from company to company, so I encourage you to consult with a few different SEO firms.
And keep in mind…
Marketing is an investment. Done well you will get more back then you put in. -Kurt Steinbrueck
If you’d like some advice regarding your 2018 SEO budget, request a free SEO consultation. We’d be happy to help in any way we can, regardless of whether we end up helping you with SEO services or not.
Co-founder & CEO, OurChurch.Com
Paul has been the CEO of OurChurch.Com since its founding in 1996, combining his passion for faith and technology to lead the organization.
An accomplished writer, Paul has authored over 2,000 articles on faith and technology, featured on platforms like ChurchLeaders.com, The JoyFM, and his personal blog, LiveIntentionally.org.
Beyond his professional achievements, Paul serves as an elder at Journey Community Church and is deeply engaged in his community through his involvement with the Florida Sheriffs Youth Ranch and the Safety Harbor Chamber of Commerce. He is a contributing author of the book Outspoken! Conversations on Church Communication.
2 Comments
Hi Paul 🙂 Very glad to get your great article again, very useful tips for SEO budget management, yes sometimes I don’t know how to plan the budget for SEO, now after read your tips here, I understood 🙂 Thank you again Paul 🙂
Hi Paul,
Thank you for this article. For SEO marketers, it is easy to accept that SEO expenses are actually investments that take time before the pay-off is felt down the line. In 2018, it is predicted that more companies will allocate their total marketing budget to SEO. That said, how would you address objections from traditional marketing professionals who downplay SEO importance and effectiveness?