Nearly half of teams spend $5k-$10k a month on links

Looking at uSERP's 2024 State of Backlinks report, the largest single budget cluster across surveyed SEO teams sits in the five-to-ten-thousand-dollars-per-month band, capturing roughly half of all teams. A further eighteen per cent spend more than ten thousand dollars monthly, and the long tail under five thousand dollars accounts for the rest. The $5k-$10k cluster is large enough that it functions as the practical industry baseline: at agency average prices, it covers roughly ten to twenty quality placements per month, which is the velocity required to maintain steady ranking pressure in mid-competitiveness niches without overshooting into diminishing returns.