What does your budget actually buy?
Slide your budget, pick your business type, and see the expert hours it buys, where each dollar should go first, and what another six months of waiting could cost.
Every dollar gets a job.
An SEO budget is the monthly amount a business sets aside for search optimization work. How far it goes depends on the hourly cost of expert work and how the budget is split across technical fixes, local optimization, content, links, AI search readiness and conversion improvements. Smaller budgets work best when focused on a few high-impact tasks.
How the planner works
It divides your budget by the rate you choose to estimate monthly expert hours, then applies a starting split based on business type and website condition. Weak websites shift money toward technical and conversion fixes, because traffic to a leaky site is wasted. The waiting figure multiplies your own estimate of monthly SEO leads by customer value and months.
Rules of thumb
- Under a few hundred dollars a month: focus on Google Business Profile, reviews and a one-time technical cleanup.
- Local SEO range: steady profile, listings, pages and conversion work.
- Growth range: add content clusters, PR-driven links and AI search.
- Always: fix conversion before buying more traffic.
Related on this site
Straight answers
How much should I budget for SEO?
It depends on competition, goals and how much of the work you can do yourself. Many small local businesses start in the hundreds of dollars a month. Use the planner to see how a given budget splits across the work.
How should an SEO budget be split?
A common starting split puts money into technical fixes, local optimization, content, links, AI search readiness and conversion. Weak websites should get more technical and conversion work first.
Is my data saved?
No. The planner runs entirely in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.
Small budget? Good. Let us spend it wisely.
The right first move beats spreading money across everything.