SEO Budget Planner
Build a realistic monthly SEO budget from its components.
Inputs
Results
Adjust the inputs to see your forecast.
What this number means
Total monthly budget is the sum of all five components: content production, link building, SEO tools, agency or freelancer retainer, and in-house time valued at your hourly rate. With the defaults — 4 articles at $250, $1,000 for links, $200 for tools, a $1,500 retainer, and 20 in-house hours at $75 — the plan totals $5,200/month ($62,400/year).
The tier labels the ambition of the plan: Lean (under $2,000/month — founder-led, mostly sweat equity), Standard ($2,000–$8,000/month — a serious small-team program), Aggressive ($8,000+/month — agency-scale content and link velocity). Cost per piece isolates what each article truly costs before any distribution spend.
The formula
In plain English: every line item is converted to a monthly dollar amount and added up. In-house time is converted with your hourly rate so internal effort is priced honestly instead of treated as free.
- Content cost = Articles per month x Cost per article
- In-house cost = In-house hours x Hourly rate
- Monthly total = Content cost + Link building + SEO tools + Retainer + In-house cost
- Annual total = Monthly total x 12
- Cost per article = Content cost / Articles per month (zero articles means $0)
Worked example
A 12-person SaaS startup plans 4 articles a month at $250 each ($1,000), spends $1,000 on digital PR and link building, $200 on its SEO tool stack, keeps a $1,500/month freelancer retainer for technical work, and allocates 20 founder hours at a $75 internal rate ($1,500). Total: $5,200/month, $62,400/year — a Standard tier plan.
The component chart immediately reveals the two largest lines (retainer and in-house time at $1,500 each). Cutting one article a month saves only $250, while renegotiating the retainer or trimming internal hours moves the needle far more. That is the real value of the breakdown: it shows which lever actually matters.
Assumptions and limitations
- Budgets are inputs, not outcomes. Spending $5,200/month does not buy a fixed amount of traffic; results depend on execution quality and competition.
- In-house time is priced, not free. Internal hours are valued at your stated rate — the true economic cost of the plan.
- No ramp or ROI modeling. This planner sizes the investment. Pair it with the SEO ROI and Breakeven Calculator to model the return on that investment.
- One-time costs are excluded. Site migrations, technical audits, and initial tooling setup do not belong in a monthly run-rate.
- All figures are planning estimates.