Budgeting for SEO Guide 2024

Why budgeting for SEO is a must for your digital strategy in 2025. 

SEO continues to be a critical marketing channel for B2B marketers tasked with driving performance through demand generation and lead generation activities. Going into a new FY, many CMOs and Heads of Marketing will be reviewing previous performances in order to budget ahead.  

This guide aims to provide marketers with full consideration of all aspects that you should budget for from an SEO perspective if you want to maximise your return from the channel and marketing overall. 

As you will see and probably know, marketing channels no longer work in isolation. The more that user journeys become fragmented by device, session, and location, the more all channels have to work together to keep your prospects travelling through your funnel.  

Many of the considerations in this guide fall outside of the traditional SEO campaign investment you may be costing out. If this is the case, that’s fine. This guide will help you to understand related activities you need to budget for to be successful in 2025.  

The value of SEO for B2B companies 

However, competition is fierce, and the SERP is fierce, with leading technology companies dominating the results for a variety of verticals.  

Nurturing B2B prospects through your marketing and sales funnel takes a considered approach. Ensuring you track touchpoints and engagement from the beginning at awareness right through to conversion will help you to ascertain as true a picture as possible of return on investment.  

“SEO and Content marketing activity was responsible for 43% of our pipeline in 2023.” – Chief Marketing Officer, Cyber Security  

To maximise the value of SEO for your business in 2025, you need to budget across  

• Ongoing SEO activity per month  

• Content marketing strategy and execution 

• Website development and enhancements 

• Conversion rate optimisation & user experience analysis. 

Measuring success – metrics to evaluate to budget effectively 

With the introduction of GDPR policy and 3rd party cookie abolishment comes about a significant requirement to ensure users have the ability to consent to submitting their data when using your site.  

With complex settings and tracking options, many cookie consent installations are set up incorrectly, causing major tracking errors that deliver incorrect data to marketers.  

The outcome, incorrect data driving incorrect decisions.  

To track the performance of your investment into any channel, not just SEO, marketers require a tracking solution that has complete integrity.  

If data looks skewed, get it checked, and if required, rebuild your tracking solution. This will require additional costs that you may not have budgeted for, but it is business critical in being able to evaluate marketing performance and keep your lead generation strategy on track in 2025.  

“our cookie compliance tech meant our data was completely inaccurate. Once we went through a reimplementation, we then started collecting more accurate data.”  – Senior digital manager, Fintech Scale up  

POLARIS has driven an average ROI of 2400%, working with global organisations like Reachdesk and Liquidline to increase leads, sales, and overall digital performance. With 14 years of experience and over 400 campaigns delivered, POLARIS is trusted to deliver results across multiple industries.

Data led budget planning for SEO.  

When it comes to data-led budget planning for SEO, leveraging Google Analytics is crucial. Smart marketers dive deep into historical performance data, examining traffic sources, conversion rates, and user behavior patterns. This analysis helps identify high-potential keywords and content types, allowing for more effective resource allocation in your SEO strategy. 

Simultaneously, studying customer acquisition data is a game-changer. By analysing your current customer mix, you can define ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and gain insights into their online habits. Where do they spend their time? What are their specific use cases? This information is gold when it comes to tailoring your SEO efforts. 

Don’t overlook the importance of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) in your analysis, they are the hidden gems in your SEO strategy. These are prospects more likely to become customers based on their engagement. MQLs typically interact with your website by attending webinars, downloading content, filling forms, or subscribing to newsletters. Track MQL conversion rates to refine your SEO strategies and focus budget on channels generating the most valuable leads.” 

Demand generation calculator for SEO  

Demand generation calculators are a strategic tool used by marketers to project ROI based on marketing efforts, help with estimations regarding how many leads need to be generated to reach your ROI goals.  

With our automated demand gen calculator, you can easily assess your business’ marketing strategy. All you need is data regarding: 

• Budget  

• Website traffic (total and organic)  

• Leeds 

• Estimated revenue.  

Other costs to consider when budgeting for B2B SEO  

When budgeting for B2B SEO, consider these often-overlooked costs: 

• Development for technical SEO and site maintenance  

• Content production by subject experts 

• Google Analytics setup and maintenance 

• Market-specific localisation 

• Digital PR and B2B profile building  

• Ongoing web optimisation 

Each element contributes to a comprehensive SEO strategy. 

Development costs 

Many marketers underestimate the knock-on effect of SEO on website maintenance and development costs. Considering there are three pillars to SEO, the most significant that always requires changes to a websites code is the technical SEO pillar.  

As soon as your SEO agency starts talking about page speed issues, get ready to get your developers on the case. Ongoing monthly retainers work fine as long as they have been planned with SEO scope in mind. If you have a web development retainer but no real consideration over the amount of resources you need every month, you will soon end up sacrificing scope due to budget limitations. This is not helpful when it comes to achieving your lead generation targets and you should calculate your web development costs based on activity and requirements for all marketing channels and a 20% buffer per quarter. Typical development costs you need to budget for include. 

• Page template updates 

• Site structure and hierarchy optimization 

• Code optimization, particularly speed. 

• Mobile layout changes  

• Cookie consent integration 

• Local market website setup  

Content production costs 

Content is the biggest driver of a B2B SEO strategy. When it comes to B2B SEO, developing content that targets ICPs based on their individual use cases is critical as it aligns your business proposition with their business challenge.  

B2B Content marketing strategies require a two-fold approach; expert content produced by product owners and product managers inside the business, which is then beautified for reading by content marketers. Technical jargon and internal brand language means nothing to prospects. Typical product owners will lace content with words that will be refined in order to be better absorbed and have impact. This needs to be budgeted for. 

“On average, start up and scale up B2B companies have 1.5 content writers budgeted for within their annual strategies. In reality, a minimum of 3 would be a more accurate forecast” – Sharon Thind, Content Manager, POLARIS 

Content production will be required for SEO campaigns, but also for other marketing campaigns and needs. The business itself will also likely require sales collateral and other communications that will also fall on the shoulders of the same resource, so budget effectively and consider demand from all departments within the business.  

 Tracking costs 

As mentioned previously, the setup of marketing analytics is critical to measuring success. Too often tracking solutions are set up without planning from marketers on the data that needs reporting on.  

Budget for a one-off tracking investment every year to ensure that you are tracking performance as efficiently as possible to determine RoI from marketing investments.  

Localization costs 

To target multiple markets, you will need a website that’s localized to each market’s target audience. This requires careful planning from a technical setup point of view, but then also requires ongoing budget to develop each local market website as your marketing strategy develops and matures.  

Consider budgeting for technical implementation to set up local market sites, but also the ongoing need you will have to create localized content.  

To create localized content, you’ll need a marketing expert that’s native to the target market and understands the nuances of those you are targeting in the region.  

This engagement could be on an informal basis or not, but budgeting for it would be considered on your part and position you for success.  

Digital PR and B2B Profile building costs 

If you’re a tech company, you will have a desire to be featured in Gartner or G2.com. The benefits of being featured in such b2b directories are not just brand awareness, but also supporting any SEO initiative you are investing in.  

By budgeting for a partnership with Gartner or paid listing on G2.com, you are giving search engines the opportunity to read third party reviews and features of your product which (if positive) will enhance your reputation, and SEO rankings.  

Smart marketers will budget for at least 2 digital PR campaigns per year, starting with the harvesting of 1st party data from within the business, production of assets for distribution, and the outreach to media editors and outlets.  

This activity strengthens your position as a contender within your B2B niche and against other competitors can give you a significant advantage when it comes to nurturing prospects on and offsite over time.  

Conclusion

SEO remains a critical component for B2B marketers in 2024, driving demand generation and lead acquisition. This comprehensive guide explores the nuances of SEO budgeting, highlighting the pivotal role of demand generation calculators in projecting ROI and optimising resource allocation. We delve into often-overlooked costs, from technical development to content production and localisation. With user journeys becoming increasingly fragmented, a holistic approach to SEO is essential. By leveraging data-driven insights and considering these key factors, marketers can craft robust strategies that maximise return on investment and support overarching business objectives.