We get this question a lot. The short answer is: it depends on 2 things:
1.) Your Budget
2.) Your Goals
Like most marketing, you get what you put into SEO. If you have a larger budget ($2,000+/month) you can definitely get a healthy return in a reasonable amount of time (4-6 months), but with a smaller budget ($500-1,000/month), I usually recommend my clients look into other marketing channels that offer quicker returns for a lower upfront investment (eg Google, Facebook and/or Yelp ads).
Unfortunately, SEO done correctly isn't incredibly cheap and if you're paying less than $1,000/month for "SEO", you're probably wasting your money. SEO requires a budget to write quality content, pay for local citations and directories, and link outreach. Not every business can afford it and in some cases, you might not even need it. The lower the budget a SEO team has to work with the longer it will take to rank for your target keywords, so you not only end up spending more in the long-run in hard costs but you also suffer from a rising opportunity cost. It also works the opposite way, the most money you put into SEO, the quicker or bigger your returns will be. For example, instead of just targeting a set of keywords around a single product or service, with a larger SEO budget, you can target multiple sets of keywords or office locations with your campaign.
So if you don't quite have the budget for a legit SEO campaign, you're not helpless, paid advertising is your solution. It works almost immediately. You launch a campaign today, you start getting increased website traffic or calls tomorrow. The catch? You aren't building a sustainable digital brand and are instead paying for temporary placement in front of the eyes of your potential customers. You pause your campaign or Facebook changes their ad policy, you shut off the lead faucet. Depending on your industry, you can be effective with a $1,000 ad spend per month as long as you're tracking the metrics regularly.
The other consideration is your goals. If you need to move product or get clients in the door immediately, SEO is simply not the solution. Paid digital advertising would be first place we look to achieve those immediate goals. If your priority is instead building a sustainable brand and consistent inbound lead funnel over time, SEO might be the route we choose for your business.
Ideally, budget allowing, we'd implement a two pronged approach where we have an ad campaign running over the short term (4-6 months) while the SEO campaign grows in velocity and return. Eventually there will be an inflection point where you're getting more inbound leads from organic search results than you are from paid advertising and you as a business owner can choose to pause the paid ads and reinvest that money back into SEO or some other part of your business while SEO continues to snowball.
If you have questions about any of the above, please let us know. You can contact us by filling out our form here:
