Most search marketing agencies don’t have clients with astronomical marketing budgets. It’s a rare day when an agency lands a client like Proctor & Gamble, which in 2013 spent $234 million on Internet marketing. What you could do with a chunk of change like that! Chances are, you get pumped when a client comes in with a few thousand to spend every month. Most small marketing agencies’ clients don’t even have that.

Can Your Clients Afford SEO in 2015?

In December 2014, a survey of small online marketing agencies found that the reality is a client with a search marketing budget of $500 to $1,500 per month. Every client, whether the budget is on the low end or the high end, expects great things. Small budgets are a big challenge — especially when the clients have no idea that their grand expectations don’t match their tiny budgets.

The survey found that small business clients allocated 36 percent of their marketing budgets to SEO. That’s more than twice the amount spent on other online marketing services (12 percent each to PPC, email marketing, and social media marketing).

Generally speaking, a small business should invest in SEO, but many of the most effective tactics covered here on Search Engine Watchare out of reach. SEO is a far more delicate operation than it was when you could almost effortlessly get endless cheap directory listings and not worry about Panda and Penguin. Those days are long gone. Content marketing is now synonymous with SEO and it is a huge undertaking.SEO on $500 per Month

But while the work has become more challenging and time-consuming, according to the survey, search marketing firms don’t expect small business marketing budgets to increase much in 2015. So while the workload, time and effort increase, budgets remain stagnant. So...what can be done with $500?

Optimized Website

Some small businesses actually had the money to spend on a website in 2014. According to the survey, 36 percent of small businesses marketing budgets were allocated to website development. That’s actually a very promising statistic for the future of online marketing. Clients are finally getting it — a shoddy website doesn’t convert. Spending money on search marketing to send traffic to a bad website is not smart. A client with a good website makes our job so much easier.

Of those that did invest in website design and development, 51 percent spent between $1,500 and $4,000 and about 12 percent spent $4,001 to $10,000. Website design and development is a service that any small marketing agency can offer or outsource. Clearly there is demand for it!

Even a client with zero to spend on website development can certainly make some improvements. Spend a little time evaluating the site and make recommendations for the client to do on his or her own. Every website can benefit from adding fresh content, titles, descriptions, fixing typos, broken links, missing images, etc.