A regular question I get from small and medium sized business owners is just how much they should be spending on search engine optimization. The reality is that your SEO efforts should be based on the number of sites you’re trying to improve rankings for as well as the number of keywords you are managing. Regardless of the number, SEO requires time and effort.

Whether you are focusing on SEO or pay-per-click marketing, you must make an investment in time, resources, and dollars to achieve you goal. Often times search engine optimization is compared to PPC. This is an unfair comparison because pay per click marketing has an immediate and direct cost. The costs associated with SEO are more indirect but just as expensive. Consider you time, effort, and work associated with any optimization effort.

The costs involved with search engine optimization come in when resources are needed to analyze your web site from an SEO perspective. You may also spend a great deal of time doing keyword research and analyzing your competitors. In each of these scenarios, you are either paying a professional to do the work for you or spending your valuable time managing these tasks. As a result, you are spending money. Even if you are managing a project by yourself, you are experiencing costs. What is your hourly rate? What is your time worth? These factors should be part of your cost calculation.

The expense of doing things on your own are real. A great way to determine actual costs is by dividing your current salary by two thousand labor hours or the equivalent of a full year of work. This gives you an hourly rate. If you are doing much of the heavy lifting for your search engine optimization efforts, this is essentially the price you’re paying. It may not feel like the same as paying someone an hourly fee but the impact is largely the same.

Now that you have completed a thorough review of your website, competitors, and so on, it’s time to start applying search engine optimization techniques. To do so requires labor. You need individuals who can help to implement on page optimization factors and build links to your website. Are you the one doing all the work? Will someone else be performing these tasks? Consider the costs associated with each and make a wise investment in yourself or a third party.

Think about using online search engine optimization tools and resources to help prioritize your tasks. This can help you make the most of your time and save you from hours of meaningless work. Tasks such as article submission and so on can be automated or semi-automated with the right tools. You can even outsource these seemingly repetitive tasks for little or no money. Consider what tasks can be performed at a lower cost and set up a plan to take advantage of more affordable resources.

The practice of SEO is not free. In fact, when you add up all of the time, resources, and money spent on SEO, you might be surprised at the dollars required. This is because the resources needed for an effective search engine optimization campaign can add up. Software, online tools, your time and the time of others committed to your search engine efforts can be significant. Consider all of your options before investing in SEO. Spend your money wisely and only pay for results.