- 50% of consulting costs are funded in the former western states and 80% in the eastern states of Germany, on an assessment basis of no more than €3,500; the grant is therefore a maximum of €1,750 or €2,800.
- Conceptual consulting with analysis and recommendations is funded, not implementation; workshops and seminars are excluded.
- The application must be submitted before the consulting begins: even signing the consulting contract counts as the start.
6:42Search engine advertising like Google Ads brings visitors immediately but works like an ongoing operating expense: as soon as the budget pauses, visibility ends. Organic search engine optimization works more like an investment. It builds a foundation that brings qualified visitors for years without every click having to be paid for again.
Before a website reliably brings in new customers, it needs a clean technical foundation, a thorough market and competitive analysis and a page structure that follows search behavior. This first phase requires specialized knowledge, and the cost keeps many companies from getting started. One lever that is rarely used is the program “Funding of business consulting for SMEs” (Förderung von Unternehmensberatungen für KMU) of the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA). It subsidizes external consulting. In this article, we show who is funded, what is eligible and how the application process works.
The funding is open to companies that meet the EU SME criteria
Eligible applicants are small and medium-sized commercial enterprises and members of the liberal professions with their registered office and business operations or a branch in Germany. The European Commission's SME definition applies:
- Employees: fewer than 250 people, calculated in full-time equivalents (annual work units). A half-time employee counts as 0.5. Trainees and employees on parental leave are generally not counted.
- Finances: annual turnover of no more than 50 million euros or annual balance sheet total of no more than 43 million euros. In addition to the number of employees, one of the two financial criteria is sufficient.
Shareholdings often decide eligibility
In practice, it is above all links with other companies that lead to misjudgments. SME status does not automatically apply to every legally independent GmbH. If your company belongs to a larger group, or itself holds stakes in other companies, their data is included:
- Partner enterprises (significant shareholding without a majority): employees and financial data are added proportionally.
- Linked enterprises (majority shareholding): the data is added in full.
The exact thresholds for shareholdings are set out in the European Commission's user guide to the SME definition.
A subsidiary with 80 employees that belongs entirely to a group with several thousand employees therefore loses its SME status. The same can apply if investment companies hold larger stakes. If your shareholder structure is complex, clarify this point in advance with your tax advisor.
The grant is up to 80 percent of a maximum of 3,500 euros
The amount of the grant depends on the location of the business premises receiving consulting:
| Location of business premises | Funding rate | Maximum grant |
|---|---|---|
| Former western states, including Berlin and the Leipzig region | 50 % | 1.750 € |
| Former eastern states, including the Lüneburg and Trier regions | 80 % | 2.800 € |
Eligible consulting costs are limited to €3,500 per consulting project. The grant does not have to be repaid. Three example calculations:
- Location Frankfurt am Main (50%): An SEO strategy consultation costs €3,500 net. The grant is €1,750, your own contribution is also €1,750.
- Location Dresden (80%): The same consultation costs €3,500 net. The grant is €2,800, your own contribution €700.
- Consulting above the assessment limit: An extensive technical audit for an international online store based in Stuttgart (50%) costs €5,500 net. Only €3,500 is funded; the grant is €1,750, your own contribution €3,750.
For companies entitled to deduct input tax, VAT is a pass-through item. Since November 15, 2025, BAFA has calculated the grant for companies without input tax deduction on the basis of the gross amount paid.
Each company can receive funding for up to five self-contained consulting projects during the term of the guideline, a maximum of two per year. A single consulting project comprises no more than five consulting days. For example, an SEO strategy and a conversion optimization consultation can be funded one after the other, as long as both applications are submitted by the end of 2026.
The strategy is funded, implementation stays with you
The program is called “Funding of business consulting” for a reason. It funds individual consulting on economic, financial, personnel and organizational issues of business management. The consulting must be conceptual: after an analysis, weaknesses are identified and specific recommendations for action are given. It does not fund pure implementation services or ongoing day-to-day business.
For an SEO project, this means:
Content of eligible SEO consulting (analysis, concept, recommendations):
- technical analysis of the website, for example regarding crawling, indexing, rendering and load time,
- market and competitive analysis of search volume, search intent and content gaps,
- concept for the page structure with topic clusters and navigation,
- assessment of the existing link profile and a linking strategy,
- prioritized recommendations for action and technical specifications for your IT or web agency.
Not eligible:
- writing and uploading texts by the consultant,
- programming work and changes in the content management system,
- active link building,
- ongoing monthly support without a completed consulting assignment and report,
- seminars, workshops and group events,
- consulting aimed at the purchase of the consultant's own goods or services.
In the funded phase, we therefore analyze the starting point, create the blueprint and justify it economically. Implementation is carried out by your own team or a service provider of your choice, outside the funding. This separation has a side effect: it forces you to set up SEO on a sound strategic footing before budget flows into implementation.
Example calculation: How a funded SEO strategy pays off
The following example is a model with assumed values, not a client case. It shows how the investment in a strategy relates to the returns it makes possible.
The assumed starting point
A manufacturer of milled parts for the aerospace and automotive industries based in North Rhine-Westphalia meets the SME criteria. It wins new customers almost exclusively through trade fairs, trade media and field sales. A qualified contact from a trade fair costs it €1,450, based on stand rental, stand construction, staff and travel. Because a customer brings in a great deal of revenue over the years, it has accepted these costs so far.
The website is a digital business card with around 450 organic visits per month, almost exclusively via searches for the company name. For technical terms like “contract manufacturing 5-axis milling automotive”, the company is not visible, and there are hardly any inquiries via the website.
Investment and grant
The company commissions funded strategy consulting with a technical analysis, market and competitive analysis and a content concept for twelve months.
- Consulting fee: €3,500 net
- Funding rate North Rhine-Westphalia: 50%
- Grant: €1,750
- Own contribution for the strategy: €1,750
The company initially pays the invoice in full, i.e. €4,165 gross, and receives the grant after the proof of use has been reviewed. It recovers the €665 VAT through input tax.
Findings and implementation
The consulting report shows three starting points:
- Technology: Faulty language versions generate endless URL variants that take up a large share of crawling. An overloaded Tag Manager worsens the page's response time.
- Structure: The pages use internal model numbers instead of the terms buyers search for.
- Content: There are no pages for the individual application industries that design engineers search for early in their research.
The internal IT team fixes the technical errors according to the specifications within four weeks. A technical writer creates six detailed pages on the application industries in three months. We estimate the internal personnel costs for this at around €5,500; they are not eligible for funding. The total costs are therefore around €7,250.
The assumed impact after twelve months
- Visitors: Organic visits rise from 450 to 2,600 per month, an increase of 2,150 visits.
- Equivalent value in ads: At an assumed cost per click of €4.80, the company would have to invest around €10,320 per month in Google Ads for these visitors, around €123,840 per year. This is an equivalent value, not a saving, unless the company would have run these ads anyway.
- Inquiries: At an assumed conversion rate of 0.6%, this produces around 13 qualified inquiries per month, 156 per year.
- Cost per inquiry: Via trade fairs, 156 contacts at €1,450 would have cost around €226,200. If every tenth inquiry becomes a customer, the company wins around 15 new customers a year through search.
What matters is the contribution margin of these new customers relative to around €7,250 in project costs; the traffic equivalent only serves as context. The funding above all lowers the hurdle for the first step: the strategy on which everything else builds.
Five steps to a safe payout
The application is fully digital and clearly structured. It does, however, require formal precision: a mistake in the order of steps costs you the funding entitlement, even if the consulting itself was good.
Step 1: Choose an approved consultant
Only consulting by consultants who meet the requirements of the guideline is funded. They must be self-employed or work as a consulting firm, have the necessary qualifications and provide a recognized certificate or a documented quality manual. The coordinating office (Leitstelle) and BAFA check this during the application process. So clarify in the very first conversation whether your consultant meets these requirements. UnitedAds meets them and carries out funded SEO strategy consulting; more on this on our page on SEO funding.
Step 2: Submit the application before the contract
This is the most important rule of the entire procedure: Do not sign a contract, confirm an offer or make a down payment before the application has been submitted and the information letter has been received. Even concluding the consulting contract counts as the start of the consulting. An email saying “We accept the offer” can therefore be enough to lose the entitlement.
Preliminary talks to clarify needs and an offer are permitted. You submit the application online via BAFA's application platform; only your company's data is required.
Step 3: Wait for the information letter
After the application, a coordinating office and BAFA check your eligibility and the consultant's qualifications. You then receive an information letter. It is not yet an approval, but only from this point on may you sign the consulting contract and start the project. The letter also states the deadline for the proof of use: six months.
Companies that have been on the market for no more than one year at the time of application also hold an information meeting with a regional contact, for example at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) or the Chamber of Crafts. It takes place no earlier than three months before the application and no later than before the proof of use.
Step 4: Carry out the consulting and prepare the report
The consultant documents the approach and results in a consulting report. It is the central document for the payout and is signed by both parties. An automatically generated export from an SEO tool is not sufficient. The guideline requires analysis, weaknesses and specific recommendations for action; we add an economic assessment:
- Analysis of the starting point: the company's economic situation and digital market environment.
- Weaknesses: the technical, structural and content-related reasons why the website brings too little visibility and too few inquiries.
- Recommendations for action: a prioritized action plan in which every technical measure is economically justified, for example: switching to server-side rendering makes the product pages readable for search engines and thus lowers the cost per inquiry compared to trade fairs.
- Economic assessment: what implementation can be expected to mean for inquiries, costs and profit.
Preparing this report is an integral part of our funded consulting.
Step 5: Pay, submit proof of use, receive the grant
After the consulting, the consultant invoices the fee. The funding is a reimbursement: you initially pay the invoice in full yourself, by bank transfer from your business account.
You then submit the proof of use via the portal. This includes:
- the signed proof of use form,
- the declaration on SME status and de minimis aid,
- the consulting report signed by both parties,
- the consulting firm's invoice,
- the bank statement proving full payment,
- the questionnaire on the principles of the European Social Fund Plus.
The coordinating office checks the documents and forwards them to BAFA, which decides on approval and payout. The grant is then paid into your business account.
Conclusion: The blueprint before implementation is funded
The BAFA consulting subsidy cuts the cost of getting started with a well-thought-out SEO strategy in half, and by up to 80 percent in the eastern states. It funds exactly the part where many projects fail: the analysis and the blueprint before money flows into implementation.
