How should I divide my DIY SEO budget?

Estimate website maintenance, content production and data review separately, and count your own time too. Focus on what you actually produce—not how many reports you create along the way!

One of the easiest SEO mistakes is spending all your time and budget on analysis: buying tools and courses without making any real contribution to the site’s content.

Four SEO costs and my suggested allocation

• Content production: more than 70%. Trust me: publishing more content is the most direct and fastest way to improve SEO. If writing is not your strength, work with outside writers. Do not cut corners on content; it is the foundation of SEO.
• Code improvements: around 15%. A single code change can often help for a long time. First address indexing, basic SEO settings and speed. You can work through the remaining improvements gradually.
• Tracking and optimization tools: around 10%. Tracking gives you information for long-term improvement, but a good tracking tool needs to be affordable. Avoid expensive subscriptions. Use other optimization tools through one-off purchases or a single subscription period, rather than treating every tool as a permanent expense.
• Learning resources and courses: 5% or less. There is already more free material than you can read. Courses may save some time, but their value for money is often poor. If you know nothing, reading one good book can resolve more than 80% of your questions. You can find answers to the rest online and in forums. In my view, courses are more useful for meeting people or adding credentials than for their practical content.