Compare SEO against advertising costs including radio, television, and billboards.

Search engine optimization is one of the most affordable forms of advertising and produces an exceptionally high return on investment (ROI). The chart below aggregates core advertising costs to provide you with a comparison of the total cost of a search engine optimization campaign. You can easily see that SEO, while not always the least expensive form of marketing, is often the most effective, giving you a much lower cost per conversion compared to other ad formats.

Other considerations when comparing SEO versus traditional advertising. SEO works for you when potential customers search for your products and services 24/7. For example, billboard ads work well if you get the right visibility in a time of need. This doesn’t quite fit into the advertising cost comparison chart, but it’s something you should consider. 

Here’s a great video showing how much advertisers pay to get their message across to people. We think you’ll agree that SEO provides a much better ROI than the popular alternatives to traditional advertising.

There is no doubt that search engine optimization, when done right, requires a bit more effort than traditional advertising. Buying a billboard for example requires a little more than some cash and signing a contract. Certainly, radio and television advertising requires more effort because you have to create a more creative message. It takes SEO time to find the right content topics, write that content and get it on your website in a usable, fast and consistent way. This will likely require effort from your team and the SEO agency. 

Our point of view in this post doesn’t mean that a healthy business shouldn’t use a good marketing mix, just as 101 Marketing Lessons taught us . Traditional ads definitely work. We simply want to make sure that we help our audience compare SEO vs. advertising costs so that you have the opportunity to make the most of your advertising dollars. 

Need help getting the most out of your marketing budget by taking advantage of SEO? Contact us today.