How to plan and budget for enterprise SEO

Tough to recover from that, right? 

SEO professionals know how difficult it is to tie revenue to SEO, especially if your analytics is broken. 

I often get asked, “If we improve our page speed score by 10 points, how will that impact revenue?” Connecting a page speed to a revenue increase is a long-fetched idea. But we have to back into it somehow. 

Based on the below, you can say the number of good mobile URLs that are indexed impacts our organic traffic, therefore impacting new customers and revenue. 

Now, you can make a statement like:

“Each indexed Good Mobile URL is worth $10. If we improve the number of Good Mobile URLs by 50%, we can estimate a $5 million additional value.” 

Do you smell that? It smells like BS. 💩That’s because it is. 

Yet, this is how executives at enterprise companies operate. With these back-of-the-envelope calculations, you can frame the potential value of a project more strategically. 

Remember, it doesn’t have to be 100% accurate. Executives want to see that you’re looking beyond just the traffic. 

For example, let’s say you want to create a series of buying guides, but you need to expand the resources.

To sell this to the executive team, you would want to lead with something like, “We estimate that our guides are worth $20,000 in incremental revenue.”

Now to get this information to work up to the $20,000, you’ll want to look at historical data. Show a before/after scenario of an uptick in revenue after publishing a guide. 

You can look at categories. Using the example above, you could pull data from the Xbox category sales after launching the buying guide. 

Let’s walk through another example. I was working on a budget request for additional writers for a real estate company. 

Here is how I turned hypotheticals into ROI: 

Here is a link to my example document to give you something to work with. 

Again, it doesn’t have to be accurate. These are simply assumptions based on the data. 

3. Forecast SEO traffic

“Hey, we need a forecast for SEO in 2023.” This is a common ask I get from CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, etc. 

Before you can forecast traffic, you need to understand the business model. 

If you have a solid understanding of the business model, you can segment your forecasting based on the business structure instead of page type. 

For example, I worked on a project from Brother USA. Originally, I started to prioritize by page type.

But once I understood the business model and the different business units, I was able to deliver a better forecast. 

Once you know what areas of the website you are forecasting for, you can begin to build your SEO budget spreadsheet. 

I connected with Jori Ford, CMO at FoodBoss, to better understand how to forecast SEO. Ford shared:

“I outline existing traffic. Then, determine a projected lift based on SEO activities. After, I align that lift to the existing conversion metrics to show projected conversions. Next, I apply the overall value of those conversions as it relates to the business to do a rough range of potential financial gain whether that be revenue or just “value” vs. “cost.””

So you can see it’s all based on hypothetical scenarios. 

That’s why I recommend thinking about four different scenarios to give your executive a decision based on impact. 

• Scenario 1: Baseline (if we do nothing) 
• Scenario 2: Conservative
• Scenario 3: Average
• Scenario 4: Optimistic 

For example, if Best Buy wants to expand its buying guides, you can break down the investment into something like this. 

If you’re interested in learning more about financial models, I recommend Tom Critchlow’s SEO MBA course. Also, Tom Capper’s article on SEO Forecasting in Google Sheets is amazing. 

On the flip side, you can go a different route if you’re an agency. I connected with Will Critchlow, CEO at Searchpilot, and he shared insight into how his agency goes about this for enterprise companies. 

“We start with the trend from Google of on-site SEO being more unpredictable and less rules-driven than ever before, and the growth of their use of AI/ML continuing that trend. That, combined with the biggest problems large organizations face with SEO is in getting it done and proving the results lets us make the case that their on-site strategy should be built around SEO testing. From there, we build a budget case based on an ROI model that assumes a certain testing cadence, percentage of positive tests, and typical uplifts.”

SEO testing is underrated in enterprise companies. If you have the flexibility to A/B test your SEO tactics, you can make a better case for SEO ROI.

Before you present your enterprise SEO budget to your executives

Get eyes on the overall marketing budget

The golden rule of company budgets has always been that 10% of your company revenue goes toward your marketing budget. 

Then, that 10% is split between online and offline channels. 

In 2022, CMOs spend 56% of total marketing budget on online channels, according to Gartner’s 2022 Marketing Budget report. 

That means you’re fighting for a teeny tiny slice of the pie. 

Here’s a hypothetical range of enterprise SEO companies and how much they should spend on online channels. 

Before pitching your budget, you need to have eyes on the marketing budget before you ask for something above the overall marketing budget. 

Compare your SEO budget to your PPC budget

Again, hypothetically, you have 56% of the overall marketing budget going to online channels. Now you’re competing against other online channels for budget. 

In the same Gartner report, CMOs shared how the online channel marketing budget gets allocated: 

• 10.1% to social advertising
• 9.8% to search advertising
• 9.3% to digital display advertising 
• 8.8% to digital video advertising
• 8.1% to partners
• 8.1% to digital audio advertising
• 8.5% to SEO 
• 7.8% to content and messaging

It’s shocking. Out of the 56% of the overall marketing budget for online channels, CMOs are allocating 8.5% to SEO. 

Here is what that could look like for you: 

Then, with your SEO budget, you need to determine what percentage goes to technical, content and link building. 

Having this deep understanding of the marketing budget gives you a rough idea of the budget you could aim for. 

Embrace the suck of enterprise SEO budgets

Proving ROI in SEO may seem like a pointless, unuseful, tedious task made up of lies. 

But as SEO professionals, we must embrace the suck. 

Sure, it might seem like B.S. to you. But to your CMO or CEO, it might sound the alarm that you’ve been screaming. By speaking the business language, you’re speaking the language of your executives. 

The truth is, SEO professionals need to stop talking about traffic and pageviews and start talking about revenue.

Budget spreadsheets aren’t sexy. But assumptions are free.

Remember, it’s not about an accurate scientific method. It’s about giving you something to connect with the C-suite. 

I outline existing traffic, projected lift based on activities, and align that lift to the existing conversion metrics to show projected conversions. I then apply the overall value of those conversions as it relates to the business to do a rough range of potential financial gain, whether that be revenue or just “value” vs. “cost.”

I’d like to propose we increase monthly active users by 20%, which will achieve $ZZZ based on the LTV or first-time purchase value of a user and will cost us $Y to get there over the next ABC time frame.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Anna Crowe is a Frank’s Hot Buffalo sauce advocate (leading with obvious priorities), writer, marketer and SEO nerd. Over the last 12+ years, Anna has successfully run SEO and content programs for brands like Dollar Thrifty Rental, Marriott, Hilton, Hearst Magazine, Mailboat Records, Philip Morris International, Bloomin’ Brands and Brother USA and many more. She enjoys burritos and puppies (in that order) when she’s not moonlighting as a soccer coach. https://annaleacrowe.com/