One of the main factors that drive SEO costs up is salaries. According to Payscale, an SEO manager in the United States has a median salary of just over US$66, 000 a year. However, it depends on different factors such as geographic location, education, experience, and the company where they work. An SEO manager can be anywhere between 44 and 100K per year.

Apart from their salary, managers should also generate extra income via bonuses, commissions, and profit sharing. This can also affect annual SEO costs by up to 30K.

How about SEO Managers in other countries?

Salaries of SEO Managers in other countries in North America:

In Canada, an SEO manager makes between C$31, 000 and 71, 000 which is equivalent to between US$26, 000 and US$55, 000 per year.

In Mexico, the average salary of an SEO manager is just over 122, 000 Mexican pesos, which is roughly US$ 6, 500. If you live in the U.S., it may seem like a low salary. But it is actually 4.7 times higher than the average median income.

Salaries of SEO Managers in Europe

In the United Kingdom, the annual salary of an SEO manager ranges from £26, 000 to £46, 000. This is the equivalent to a range between US$34, 000 and US$49, 000 per year.

Surprisingly, in Ireland, an SEO manager makes between €32,000 and €70, 000. That would be between $37K and nearly $82K.

In Spain, the median salary for an SEO manager is between €21, 000 and €60, 000. This is about US$24, 000 and US$70, 000 annually.

In Germany, they make just over €36, 000 per year, or US$42, 000.

The salary of an SEO manager worldwide depends on experience, education, skills, and location. This is a position that has a significant increase in pay in the first 5-10 years of my career. However, it reaches a plateau after that, when experience stops making a difference.

Why not mention money spent on Ads or publications as SEO costs?

This is mostly because all other expenses are not really SEO costs. They are investments that should have a clear ROI for them to be considered efficient. If all those elements enter into the SEO cost analysis, then you´re doing it wrong.

But what exactly does an SEO manager do?

An SEO or Search Engine Optimization manager is a marketing manager specializing in digital marketing. Some of the responsibilities of an SEO manager include technical website optimization, community building, creating a backlinking strategy for clients, and overseeing the creation and publishing of content. All of these are only the basic duties of an SEO expert. However, we need to add the regular duties of a manager such as strategic planning, organization, budgeting, etc.

SEO is an area of digital marketing that involves a lot of different professionals: content writers, marketers, web developers, and graphic designers. It is the job of the project manager to oversee all these team members, monitor each project from start to finish, and report to clients on the progress of their SEO efforts. To do the latter, they use different analytics tools that help them determine how effective their marketing campaigns are.

SEO specialists in different fields such as SEO managers, content writers, web developers and graphic designers are now more in demand than ever before, and SEO cost reflects how valued they are.

Many also make extra income from bonuses derived from the campaigns’ performance and getting their clients the results they expected. This depends on the agreements they have with each client upon being hired.