SEO Cost: How Much Should Businesses Spend on SEO in 2025?

If you’re here, you already know Organic Search is integral to your digital marketing strategy. You want to include it in your marketing mix, but you aren’t sure about SEO cost.

Depending on your needs, Organic Search can be managed in-house or by an agency. Naturally, that means the cost can span a wide range, from a few hundred dollars to thousands per month.

The good news is once you’ve determined your business needs, goals, and timeline, there's a sweet spot in that range just for you.

Here’s a closer look at what should be included in your Organic Search campaign, what quality work looks like, how it can impact your ROI, and the costs you might reasonably expect.

You might be tempted to pursue Organic Search with an in-house team. Depending on the size of your organization and how you intend to grow in the future, this approach makes sense in certain scenarios.

But quality work will require a team of specialists. You’ll have to recruit them, build the infrastructure, and support them as they grow. Again, for some companies, this might be a beneficial addition, but in most cases, it’s cost-prohibitive.

Can you afford to hire, onboard, and offer benefits for an SEO Strategist, PPC Manager, Content Writer, and other positions? If not, you’re better off hiring a company to handle your Organic Search efforts.

Unless you already have experts on your payroll, it’ll likely cost less to have an outside company do the work for you in the long run. Plus, you might get better results quicker.

As mentioned, the cost of SEO that delivers meaningful results will vary based on your industry, goals, and how fast you want to reach them.

If your business is entering a new market or part of a brand-new industry (think CBD SEO a few years back), Organic Search optimization has to work harder to meet your goals. Although you might hit your goals over time, it could require significant investment.

On that note, there are a lot of factors that go into a comprehensive Organic Search plan.

If you need the whole package, on-site optimization, search engine marketing, PPC, high authority backlink strategies, etc., then your spend will be higher. If you think just a couple of those services will suffice, your costs might be lower.

But how do you know what’s worth a portion of your budget, what isn’t, and how to decide?

Before you can appropriately allocate your marketing spend, it’s imperative that you have a basic understanding of the essential elements of SEO and see how each piece fits into the larger puzzle.

Let’s examine a few Organic Search pillars and how they might drive growth for your brand. Then, we’ll continue to the ROI and cost of SEO.

Optimizing your brand’s online presence and performance requires a healthy and robust backlink profile.

This is why off-page SEO and link building are fundamental parts of any solid SEO strategy and the most important thing you can do off-page to boost your site’s rankings.

A qualified Organic Search agency like VELOX will pair the keywords you want to rank for with your most important landing pages and then create high-quality content featuring those links.

As the content is strategically syndicated across the web, it helps search engine crawlers and algorithms see the value in your landing pages and prioritize them accordingly on SERPs.

On-page SEO encompasses all the steps you can take to improve your site for a better user experience. Done correctly, these optimizations essentially show search engines like Google that you have high-quality, user-friendly pages that should rank highly on SERPs.

The most significant part of on-page SEO, especially after Google’s Helpful Content Update, is publishing world-class content designed to educate and inform the reader. This is the type of content Google wants to rank highly, so it’s the type of content you should prioritize.

Beyond quality content, on-page SEO includes smart keyword placement, avoiding keyword stuffing, as well as optimizing title tags and meta descriptions.

Technical SEO is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the technical aspects of your site that impact its overall performance. This includes mobile-friendliness, page speed, and other ranking factors.

In addition, these same technical elements often play a key role in creating an exceptional user experience, which can only help your rankings.

Performing the technical work to ensure your pages load quickly can help reduce your bounce rate, which keeps your visitors on each page longer and shows Google that it’s a page where searchers find value.

Google’s Helpful Content Update isn’t some minor algorithm tweak. On top of the immediate, tangible effects on rankings, the update provides a preview of how Google will change in the near future.

Google is reinventing itself as a discovery engine, and your content needs to be optimized for discovery and conversion.

A successful content strategy isn’t just about reach but also results, which is why outcome-oriented content is essential to bringing more users into your acquisition funnels.

These are the primary elements of a comprehensive Organic Search campaign. Some sites might need more work in one area over another. Still, every successful campaign should have at least some combination of link building, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and content marketing.

These are the primary elements of a comprehensive SEO campaign. Some sites might need more work in one area over another. Still, every successful campaign should have at least some combination of link building, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and content marketing.

However, as you compare different agencies and costs, you should know the intangible aspects that can greatly affect your campaign’s success.

SEO work can be complex, so it’s important to know what to look for in a digital marketing agency before choosing a partner.

After all, quality SEO work can make an incredible difference for your business, so you shouldn’t trust your Organic Search campaign to just anyone.

Quality campaigns are about results, and leading digital marketing agencies will give you clear projections for the conversion rate, search volume, and revenue you should expect.

That’s something we emphasize at VELOX. Using our cutting-edge business intelligence capabilities and New Revenue Projection Model, we can help you forecast growth, conservatively targeting 400-800% new monthly revenue capture.

Organic Search solutions that drive genuine growth are never one-size-fits-all, and you need a campaign tailored to your business that can scale with you as you grow.

You should expect a digital marketing agency to keep you apprised of your campaign’s performance, roll out new keyword sets, and optimize your campaign once it’s fully underway.

In the meantime, your brand should reap the benefits of expert PPC work, which will help you get off the ground without delay as your Organic Search campaign ramps up.

SEO can be complicated, but the results should be as clear as day. Expect a white-glove approach and clear reporting on ROI to understand the full impact of your campaign.

Any agency that hides behind jargon or isn’t upfront about your rankings month over month might not be the best fit for you.

This leads to an important distinction when calculating SEO cost. Specifically, you should understand the ROI of SEO to gain a better perspective of the cost associated with any campaign.

It’s not uncommon for marketing managers to settle for a top-10 ranking and forgo further Organic Search work. After all, improving by one position increases CTR by just 2.8%, on average. Why keep spending for negligible returns?

Well, you should know that the top organic Google result averages a CTR of 27.6%. It’s also 10 times more likely to receive a click than a link ranked in position 10.

Organic Search campaigns take anywhere from four to six months to gain traction and drive KPI improvements, so you shouldn’t expect to see immediate benefits. When you invest in sound SEO, you’re playing the long game, and you can expect to see exponential results in due time.

By leveraging PPC in the short term, your brand will enjoy a rapid increase in visibility and traffic while your SEO campaign ramps up.

But what should you expect to see after all that time.

Here’s an example: Democracy Clothing partnered with VELOX and saw revenue increase by 400% with an average ROAS of 8.81 over the course of the campaign. They kept scaling their PPC and SEO efforts for a total revenue increase of 1,653%.

Meanwhile, Magliner, the world’s material handling equipment leader, grew their total revenue by 30% year-over-year through their partnership with VELOX. The experts at VELOX drove 10 keywords to the first page of Google’s organic results, which translated into an average e-commerce conversion rate increase of 66%. All told, Magline surpassed their campaign goal of $100,000 in new monthly revenue within only 8 months.

These are just two of many successful client case studies VELOX has seen over the years. It’s evident that no matter the upfront cost of SEO, a successful strategy can produce overwhelming ROI results.

If you’re hoping for a solid dollar figure or set price for results like these two clients have seen, there isn’t one.

This is because the cost of SEO can vary widely based on industry, keyword difficulty, and your internal timelines. That’s why we work closely with every prospective client to understand their needs and estimate what it will take to reach their goals.

Still, it helps to have an idea of what to expect and how much of your marketing budget you should allocate to SEO.

Based on survey results and marketing reports, companies tend to allocate at least 7.7% of their revenue to marketing.

Keep in mind smaller companies tend to spend more on marketing, and some industries are far more competitive than others, so it’s important that you spend enough for your campaign to gain meaningful traction.

Small businesses should be prepared to invest $1,000 to $5,000 monthly in SEO, but expanding your budget beyond this range can unlock exponential growth that endures over the long term.

Remember that while PPC campaigns stop paying dividends as soon as your budget dries up, Organic Search results outlive the campaigns that drive them, especially those oriented around high-quality content.

Some companies can spend up to $100,000 monthly for full-service Organic Search campaigns in extremely competitive industries. But outstanding results are available for far less, often in the $10,000 per month range.

Ultimately, what you spend will be determined by three factors: where you are, where you want to go, and how quickly you want to get there.

At VELOX, we use the latest research and expert strategy to design custom campaigns for our clients. As a Google Partner, we consistently deliver results that exceed client expectations, typically doubling a client’s customer base in 6 to 12 months. Plus, with intuitive business insights, we’ll always keep you apprised of your ROI.

A full-service engagement with VELOX means you’ll get the power of our advanced analytics, on-site technical optimization, and world-class content creation in a made-to-order Organic Search campaign, driving Organic Search dominance for your brand. The coveted top SERP positions are more valuable than ever, and VELOX can take you there.

Contact VELOX today for a campaign strategy centered on your brand and experience exponential growth for yourself.