Return on investment (ROI) is a key metric that every SEO professional should understand and track. ROI measures the amount of return on investment relative to the cost of the investment. In SEO, ROI allows you to quantify the value you get from your efforts and budgets. Tracking ROI over time can help justify SEO expenditures and guide your strategy and tactics. Here’s how to calculate it and find expert white label SEO services for agencies.
How ROI in SEO Works
In its simplest form, SEO ROI is calculated as:
(Revenue from SEO – SEO Costs) / SEO Costs
Revenue from SEO efforts can include direct goals like sales or leads from organic traffic. It can also include indirect value like brand awareness. SEO costs include things like salaries, SEO software/tools, agency fees, content production, etc.
By tracking ROI you can see how much value you are getting for each dollar spent on SEO. This helps optimize budgets and strategies.
How to Measure Your SEO ROI
Here are some tips for measuring SEO ROI:
-
- Use analytics to track organic traffic and conversions over time. Look at trends before and after SEO changes.
- Set up goals and events in your analytics to measure conversions and value from organic traffic.
- Use UTMs and other tracking to attribute revenues to SEO.
- Do periodic assessments of rankings for important keywords. Track how rankings change over time.
- Survey users about whether organic search was an important part of their journey.
- Compare SEO revenue/leads to overall SEO costs for the period.
Why ROI is Important for Marketing
Tracking ROI allows SEOs to:
-
- Identify the most profitable SEO activities to double down on.
- Spot low performing areas of investment that should be changed or stopped.
- Benchmark performance over time and against competitors.
- Justify and provide backing for budgets and resources for SEO.
- Gain insight to guide strategy and improve results over time.
Calculating Overall SEO Costs
When determining SEO ROI you need to look at all costs associated with your SEO efforts. This includes:
-
- Salaries of SEO staff and professionals. Include overhead costs.
- Fees paid to agencies and consultants.
- Costs of SEO tools and software subscriptions.
- Paid advertising costs associated with SEO campaigns.
- Content production, design, and optimization costs.
- IT costs associated with development and optimization.
- Any other costs tied directly to SEO activities and campaigns.
Setting Your ROI Expectations and Goals
ROI expectations and goals will vary dramatically based on your:
-
- Industry – Some industries have higher organic conversion rates.
- Business model – E-commerce vs lead gen vs informational sites.
- Stage of SEO program – Newer efforts take time to build ROI.
- Competition – Industries and keywords with high competition require more investment.
Set realistic ROI goals by researching benchmarks for your industry and business model. Look at historical trends to set targets for your program over time. Adapt your goals as your program matures.
The Factors Affecting ROI in SEO
Many factors influence the ROI you can achieve through SEO. Some key factors include:
-
- Competition – Highly competitive keywords require more investment to rank for.
- Optimization Difficulty – Complex sites like enterprise and e-commerce platforms are harder to optimize.
- Conversion Rates – The conversion rates of your site greatly impact overall SEO ROI.
- Position of Rankings – Ranking #1 for a keyword will have higher ROI than #5.
- Search Volume – Keywords with higher search volume tend to produce higher returns.
- Link Building – ROI improves as the strength of a site’s link profile grows.
Audiences Coming From Multiple Platforms
Today’s consumers use multiple platforms including search, social, email, mobile apps and more. To fully track SEO ROI you must attribute value from users who come to your site through other channels beyond organic search.
Using UTM tracking, analytics and surveys you can better identify SEO’s influence across all visitor touchpoints. This allows you to accurately calculate SEO’s impact on total revenue and ROI.
Local Map Rankings
For local businesses, ranking well in the map pack can be critical for driving store visits and calls from local searchers. Tracking your ROI from local SEO efforts means factoring in value from securing prominent map rankings for relevant keywords.
Tools like Google Analytics and call tracking numbers help attribute conversions driven specifically by local map listings. Measuring these local conversions is key to determining true local SEO ROI.
Impressions and Reach
While not directly revenue driving, SEO can provide value by increasing brand visibility and exposure. Tracking metrics like impressions and reach generated by rankings sheds light on this.
Surveys and analysis of metrics pre and post-campaign can isolate the brand lift and exposure driven specifically by SEO. This brand value should factor into your overall calculation of SEO ROI.
Keyword Ranking
Focusing purely on keyword ranking movements is not enough to determine SEO success and ROI. But tracking ranking changes, especially for priority keywords, does give insight into how your authority in search is changing over time.
Sustained improvements in ranking positions tend to correlate positively with increases in traffic and conversions. Monitoring rankings helps qualify SEO impact and remains important for tracking ROI.
Analytics and Tracking
Robust analytics and conversion tracking are required to accurately measure SEO ROI. Ensure your analytics platform provides data at a granular level – tracking keyword performance, traffic sources, conversions, etc.
Implement tools like call tracking numbers and lead forms to capture all conversions. Use UTMs to specifically track SEO channels. Without proper tracking, you cannot fully quantify SEO’s impact on revenues and ROI.
Contact Digital Marketing Blueprint to Get Started with White Label SEO Services for Agencies
As an agency, outsourcing your SEO to Digital Marketing Blueprint lets you provide high-quality SEO services to clients without added overhead and hiring. Our comprehensive SEO is completely customizable with white-label reporting.
Get started now and we handle all the SEO work, while you focus on client relations and strategy. With our white-label SEO services for agencies, you can see your agency grow while providing outstanding client results.