How much did you spend on SEO last year and was it worth it?

[Mike Anthony]

In a couple of debates (me get into debates? of course not ) on here in the last two months theres been a lot of talk about costs of this technique versus that.

One of the things I realized is that people spend A LOT Of money on SEO and most don't even add the costs up. Some often argue this technique or that service is too much and then they use some service that when you add it up COSTS MORE for the year than what they are calling expensive.

Have you added up what you spent last year (2011) on SEO?

Its very important to figure that out since it gives you hints about what to do or change for 2012.

here are some examples of some of the popular services and software costs that might help you to figure out what you really spent- these will be retail not discount or bootleg pricing (like where software is concerned.)

SEE IF you can add up your expenses and whether what you did last year REALLY worked for you

Software -

Magic submitter which I tend to like - $804 per year
SenukeX - $1764 per year

Some other monthly software cost? Make sure to add it -

Network Services ANNUALLY

Average home page backlink service - $840 (more for additional keywords)

BMR - $708 (more if more than 5 domains)

Myarticle network - $800 per year.

Other services make sure to add them up over the year -

Ranking services

Averaged out first page placement - $79 per keyword X (times) the keywords you went after this year. So ten keywords for the year would be $800 or more.

LINK BLASTS = Average $47 times the amount of blasts you did for the year

Add

fiverr gigs
link packs
any SEO services you hired.

AFTER you have added up heres the first question

DID YOU MAKE A PROFIT and did that money become an investment in a resource (like your site) that will make you money going forward into 2012?

Heres the second question

How if any at all would you spend your SEO money better for 2012?

[BigNorm]

Last year was a bit of a do **** year. I began to look at outsourcing opposed to trying to do everything myself and definitely ran into some duds. Fortunately this year has been a polar effect.

VA - $1200 - Ended up firing both my VA's.
Backlinking campaigns - $4-500 mixed results with these.
SEO Link Robot - Forget how much I paid - worked ok but didn't get the results I was hoping for.

I guess I was one of the lucky ones though as I didn't put a lot of effort into it last year so even though I didn't make a profit I didn't lose alot either.

[DynoMutt]

I lost money, but of course I only have myself to blame. I wasn't focused enough. I jumped from niche to niche and didn't put the effort into my sites that I should have. The SEO service is great and it still has me ranked well, so definitely no complaints about that.

My money in 2012 will be for my own network.

I will initially be targeting 1 keyword where the #1 spot is hanging on to the top position by an incredibly thin thread , the search volume is high, and it's a buying keyword.

With the money I can hopefully make in Adsense with that site, I intend to use that to build networks for affiliate sites. I checked the backlinks for the competitors and it looks like easy pickings

Edited to add:

I have yet to receive money from Adsense because I'm only at $89. But that amount informs me that this is possible. As lame as it sounds, that money is my silver lining.

[yukon]

I think I'm in a bit of a different situation compared to most others on this forum.

I do my best to never let Google be more than 50% of my traffic, being that If Google brings in 2k traffic I promote outside of the SERPs (targeted niche forums, email list, etc..).

Not saying it always works out to exactly 50% SERP traffic but I do my best to diversify traffic.

That non-SERP traffic builds a cushion that I can work with, I still earn $$ any day of the year no matter If the SERP rankings are fluctuating or not (it happens).

I also treat my income that was generated by the SERPs as my only source of income for any type of paid backlinks or anything directly related to SEO. I treat my sites as 2 sources of income:

• social traffic income
• SEO income

It doesn't matter that both traffic sources are earning $$ with Adsense, I still track it all down to the page level with referring traffic (I'm a freak about data, lol).

Bottom line is, SEO has to payout at least double what I put into it.

I sleep at nights knowing the social traffic will keep my sites alive & kicking. I still SEO like a mad man but I've learned that diversifying traffic is a must have for me.

[Mike Anthony]

Interesting poll so far. Seems like people either made a decent chunk or none at all. Unfortunately 50% at this point either lost or made no money

[webworm]

I have spended about $1000 for the SEO purpose and have gain three times more then i have spent.I had expected more but it is not so bad.

[JeremiahSay]

I've spend about 1k - mostly on content on my website for SEO now but have yet to see any results. My website is still new so i guess it prolly takes time.

Do you have any tips and suggestion for a newbie like me?

Looking forward to hear from you

May God bless you,
Jeremiah

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by JeremiahSay

Do you have any tips and suggestion for a newbie like me?

Looking forward to hear from you

Nice looking website but now you need to concentrate on getting traffic. Start with on page factors like changing you page titles to target your keywords. Then do some quality link building.