SEO Budget Calculator

How to use the calculator

Five inputs, two minutes, one number your stakeholders will engage with.

1. 01

   Set your revenue goal

   Enter the additional monthly revenue you want organic search to generate, your average deal value, your organic-to-lead conversion rate, and your sales close rate. The calculator works backwards from revenue to sessions.

2. 02

   Enter your current baseline

   Add your current monthly organic sessions and what you're currently spending on SEO. This gives the calculator a gap to bridge – the difference between where you are and where you need to be.

3. 03

   Set your content economics

   Enter your fully-loaded cost per content piece (writing, editing, publishing) and the average monthly sessions your pages generate. Industry benchmark for B2B content: 100–250 sessions per page per month after 6 months.

4. 04

   Add technical and link building budget

   Technical SEO (audits, fixes, schema, Core Web Vitals) and link building (outreach, digital PR, guest posts) are separate budget lines. Add your expected monthly spend on both.

5. 05

   Read the recommended budget

   The calculator outputs: pages needed, content production budget, total recommended monthly SEO budget, and projected ROI at target. Use the recommended budget as your starting anchor in the budget conversation.

Why use this calculator?

Related free tools

Who'll get the most out of this

• Marketing DirectorBuilding the annual content and SEO budget request for the CFO or board.
• Head of SEOTranslating traffic targets into a content production plan and resource ask.
• Content StrategistScoping a content programme based on what the business actually needs from organic.
• Fractional CMOSetting a defensible SEO budget for a new client who has no prior organic baseline.
• Agency Account ManagerShowing a prospect how to size their SEO investment relative to their revenue goals.

Frequently asked questions

• What does this SEO budget calculator model?+

  The SEO budget calculator takes a revenue target and reverse-engineers the SEO budget required to hit it. Starting from your target additional monthly revenue, it works backwards through your deal value, close rate, and conversion rate to calculate sessions needed, traffic gap (additional sessions vs. current), content pages required to close that gap, content production budget, and finally the total recommended monthly SEO budget including technical and link building. It also compares your current SEO ROI against the projected ROI at target.
• How do you calculate SEO budget from a revenue goal?+

  How to calculate SEO budget from a revenue goal: target monthly revenue ÷ deal value = customers needed per month. Customers needed ÷ close rate = leads needed. Leads needed ÷ conversion rate = sessions needed. Sessions needed minus current sessions = traffic gap. Traffic gap ÷ average sessions per page = pages required. Pages required × cost per page = content production budget. Add technical SEO and link building to get total monthly SEO budget.
• What SEO budget benchmarks should I use?+

  SEO budget benchmarks vary significantly by company stage and competitive market. For B2B SaaS, a useful starting benchmark is 10–15% of digital marketing budget allocated to organic. In absolute terms, seed-stage companies typically spend $3k–$8k/mo on SEO; growth-stage $10k–$30k/mo; enterprise $50k–$200k/mo. These are less useful than the revenue-based model in this calculator, which anchors budget to your specific deal economics rather than industry averages.
• How many sessions per page should I use in the SEO budget calculator?+

  Average sessions per page after 6–12 months: 50–100/mo for a new site with no domain authority; 100–200/mo for a mid-authority B2B site with consistent publishing; 200–500/mo for high-authority domains targeting navigational or branded queries. This calculator defaults to 150, which is a reasonable B2B benchmark. If your niche is highly competitive (enterprise SaaS, fintech), use 50–80. If you're targeting long-tail or programmatic SEO at scale, use 80–120 per unique page.
• Should technical SEO and link building be separate budget lines?+

  Yes. Technical SEO, content production, and link acquisition have different cost structures and different time horizons for impact. Technical fixes (Core Web Vitals, crawl efficiency, schema) have immediate impact once deployed. Content compounds over 6–18 months. Links take 3–12 months to move rankings. Keeping them separate lets you adjust the mix: a site with good technical health and strong domain authority needs less link building but more content. The calculator's budget allocation step models this split.
• How do I know if my current SEO ROI is good?+

  The calculator shows your current SEO ROI as (current monthly organic revenue − current monthly SEO spend) ÷ current monthly SEO spend. Above 100% means your organic channel is profitable. Below 100% is common in the first 12–18 months of an investment. If you're several years in and still below 100%, either the spend is too high for your deal volume or your conversion mechanics (landing page quality, lead nurture) are leaking the traffic you're generating.
• What fully-loaded cost per content piece should I enter?+

  Fully-loaded cost per content piece includes: briefing time, research, writing, editing, SEO review, design (if any), and publishing. For outsourced B2B content: $300–$600 for a 1,500-word article from a mid-market freelancer, $800–$1,500 for a specialist, $1,500–$4,000 for a white paper or comparison guide. For in-house content, use team cost divided by pieces produced. Most teams undercount by forgetting editor time and the internal stakeholder review cycle.
• Can this SEO budget calculator model programmatic SEO?+

  The calculator models content pages individually and assumes a uniform cost and traffic yield per page. Programmatic SEO changes both inputs: pages are cheaper per unit (often $10–$50 each for data-driven pages vs. $500 for editorial) and traffic per page is lower but the volume of pages is much higher. To model programmatic SEO in this calculator, drop your cost per page to $20–$50 and set average sessions per page to 30–80. This surfaces the economics of scale that make programmatic viable at 500–5,000 pages.
• How do I account for SEO agency fees in the budget?+

  If you're working with an SEO agency, their retainer covers some combination of strategy, technical fixes, content briefs, link building, and reporting. In the calculator, include the agency retainer as part of your technical SEO and link building budget lines. Content production costs (the actual writing) are often separate from the agency fee and should go in the content production budget. If the agency bundles content production, enter the bundled cost there.
• How is this SEO budget calculator different from others?+

  Most SEO budget calculators use traffic value (equivalent PPC spend) to estimate returns. This calculator uses actual B2B revenue mechanics: your deal value, close rate, and conversion rate. It also models the budget from a revenue goal rather than asking you to set a budget and then predict outcomes – which is the direction that budget conversations actually go. The result is a recommendation grounded in your business model, not a generic industry benchmark.