How To Budget For SEO And GEO In 2026

About This Episode

Organic traffic is falling while revenue holds steady, so where should the GEO money actually come from in 2026?

In this episode of SEO On-Air, host Koa Kauwe sits down with Andrew Seidman (Digital Reach) and Jeff Carrier (Restoration Digital Marketing) to discuss how agencies should price, structure, and sell search in a year where traffic and revenue stopped agreeing with each other.

The panel explores whether GEO deserves its own line item or belongs inside existing search spend, with Jeff stacking AI search work on top of retainers because it takes different personnel, and Andrew scrapping channel budgets entirely in favor of one pipeline budget. He also draws the time horizon line: plan to be in business more than a year and you fund GEO, but if you need to raise money before December, spend on ads instead.

They also discuss why narrowing your focus wins more clients, the bridge analogy for cracks that turn fatal at scale, knowing when to make your first hire, what broke when everyone started shouting that SEO was dead, and why phone calls kept ringing even as organic traffic dropped.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

– Whether GEO belongs in its own budget or inside the search budget
– Why one pipeline budget beats five separate channel line items
-The time horizon test for when SEO is the wrong investment
– Why AI search work gets stacked on a retainer instead of swapped in
– Why staffing, not strategy, drives how the budget gets split
– How narrowing your service list makes you easier to buy from
– The scaling cracks that only show up after you grow
– How to know when your agency is ready for its first hire
– Why interest rates, not AI, are moving client expectations
– Why phone calls, not traffic, are the KPI that survived the shift

Whether you’re an agency owner, SEO professional, digital marketer, or business leader, this episode provides actionable insights into structuring search budgets, pricing GEO work, and deciding what to fund as organic traffic keeps sliding.

Because in 2026, the agencies that win won’t be the ones adding a GEO line to the invoice.

They’ll be the ones who know whether that line should exist at all.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Introduction to SEO On-Air & the 2026 Budget Question

01:33 Meet Andrew Seidman & Jeff Carrier

04:09 What Made Them Crazy Enough to Start an Agency

13:12 Why Narrowing Your Focus Wins More Clients

21:04 The Bridge Analogy for Scaling an Agency

23:38 Knowing When to Make Your First Hire

27:03 When AI Hit & Everyone Said SEO Was Dead

37:08 Business Priorities for 2026

41:53 Organic Traffic Down, Phone Calls Still Ringing

44:48 SEO Budget vs GEO Budget: Two Different Answers