Measuring the return on investment for SEO is one of the most important business aspects of optimization. It’s what keeps you from focusing on vanity metrics and instead concentrating on the aspects that matter.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to directly measure the effects of SEO on your bottom line. Traffic and rankings are the easiest to measure but they rarely tell the whole story. Good performance in search results doesn’t always translate to more leads or sales.
This is not to say they’re not important. They can help enhance brand recognition and with that, the sales process itself. But, at the end of the day, they won’t matter much if they’re not bringing a return on your investment. After all, you’re spending money to make money. So how can you measure the actual return on your investment?
Understanding SEO Return on Investment
SEO isn’t just about climbing up the Google ladder or getting more clicks. Sure, those are nice, but SEO ROI goes deeper. Why? Because your business (likely) doesn’t run on clicks and traffic. It runs on sales (whether you’re selling products or services). So while getting more clicks might be a confidence booster, if those clicks are irrelevant in the long run, that won’t help your business grow.
This is where measuring SEO ROI enters the scene. It’s not a glamorous process. In fact, it can be quite boring. But it also needs to be done so that everyone involved knows the business is moving in the right direction. Otherwise, you might end up in a situation where things look good in theory, but in practice, your business is struggling. And we don’t want that.
The good news is there are usually correlations that allow us to make a connection between different metrics or KPIs. We keep in touch with our clients to make sure that the information on our dashboards translates to their accounting. And we love it when we get a call or a text saying, “Keep doing what you’re doing!” Or, “I’m booked for the next 2 months thanks to you!” Let’s dive a bit deeper into what we can actually measure.
Key Metrics to Measure SEO Performance
We keep close tabs on your SEO performance and watch for a few key metrics.
- Organic Search Traffic – This is how many people are going to your website though organic search rankings. We exclude PPC from this because that’s a separate service and works differently from organic SEO.
- Conversion Tracking – Getting lots of visitors is good, but it doesn’t matter if no one’s buying your products, booking a service, downloading your PDFs, or whatever else you want them to do.
- Unless you’re specifically trying to build brand awareness, conversion rate is extremely important. It’s the number of people who are taking the aforementioned actions. This is why we’re always looking for ways to improve it.
- Keyword Rankings – To get traffic and consequently – conversions, people have to see your website when they search. This is where rankings come in. You want to rank well for relevant search queries. You also want to be in a good position where they can see your content and click on it.
Here’s where it gets tricky. If we look at the metrics as dials, they’re not always interconnected. Yes, in most cases, turning the traffic dial will also increase conversions, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes, increasing rankings lead to more irrelevant traffic and lower conversion rates.
Sometimes, rankings and traffic fall while conversions increase because search engines are bringing more traffic to the website through relevant keywords. This is why we’re very careful and deliberate about measuring these metrics. Things aren’t always as they seem.
How to Measure SEO ROI Effectively
Now, let’s get practical with a step-by-step guide on the best way to measure SEO ROI.
Step 1: Set up goals
If you don’t know what your goals are, you’ll get nowhere. Setting up proper and measurable goals is the first step people usually miss when we talk about ROI, yet it’s possibly the most crucial. We usually help our clients if they’re unsure what business objectives to set.
Step 2: Set up measurement for KPIs
We use tools such as SEMRush, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and others to see how your website is performing. We gather website traffic data, keyword data, search volume, and a lot more. This allows us to track the important metrics and map out SEO success on the business side.
Step 3: Calculate revenue generated from organic traffic
This is where it gets tricky. How much revenue is SEO actually generating? Sometimes it’s obvious that a sale has come from SEO. We’ve had clients landing huge sales that came directly from organic search.
However, sometimes it’s not that simple to tell. We have clients for whom most sales come from PPC, yet more than 50% of prospects go through the blog or organic pages before they purchase. Therefore, not having the “organic side” of the equation would likely mean a loss of sales.
Step 4: Consider the customer’s lifetime value
Since organic results are associated with higher trust (it’s easier to trust someone who seems to have earned their place rather than paid to be there), they’re more likely to provide higher CLV.
In other words, if you’re looking to make more quick sales, engage your target audience with PPC. However, if you want to ramp up your branding efforts and increase the CLV, you need a robust SEO strategy. This should be accounted for when we’re talking about marketing efforts or marketing ROI.
Step 5: Compare against costs
Are you paying more for SEO than the revenue it’s generating? The answer is likely “no”, but it also depends on the time.
If you’ve just started out, you need to invest a lot of time, money, and effort into SEO before it starts paying off. However, once it does, it pays off big time.
Here’s a pretty straightforward formula to calculate ROI:
ROI = [(Net Profit from SEO – SEO Costs) / SEO Costs] × 100
This formula is only as good as the information you plug into it. If you can measure the total revenue that SEO has brought you and have enough data, this formula works great. Of course, you should also look at other metrics, not just revenue. But at the end of the day, this is what makes the most sense for informed decisions.
Measuring SEO results isn’t an exact science. We’ve had clients who’ve paid a year’s worth of services with one client they got from their SEO.
Search engine optimization can have an incredibly high return on investment due to the compounding effect. The moment you stop paying for PPC, the well dries up. However, SEO is the gift that keeps on giving.
If you’re patient enough in the beginning for SEO to start doing its thing (which usually takes about a year), then the compounding effect should make for an impressive bank statement (assuming other aspects of your business run well).
The Challenges of Measuring ROI for SEO and How We Overcome Them
We’ve already showcased some of the challenges in measuring ROI for SEO. It’s not always easy to put a number on things you don’t have direct control over. Even so, we try to overcome these challenges to the best of our ability. And we like to remind our clients a few things along the way.
- SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Be patient and think big picture.
- Celebrate small wins. Every step forward is progress. Slow and steady wins the race.
- We use a holistic approach and try to give you the full story, not just a chapter.
It’s always important to keep things in perspective. This is why transparency is one of our main values here at Uptick.
Bottom Line
Measuring the return on investment (ROI) for SEO isn’t always straightforward, but it’s absolutely crucial for understanding the true impact of your efforts. Sure, traffic and rankings give us a nice snapshot, but they’re just part of the story. The real magic happens when those metrics translate into actual leads and sales.
To get there, we need to set clear goals, track the right KPIs, and appreciate the subtleties of how SEO drives revenue. Remember, SEO is a long game. It might not offer instant gratification, but with time and patience, it can deliver massive results. Even the biggest oak was once an acorn.
So, stay patient, keep your eyes on the prize, and watch as your SEO efforts compound into long-term success. Because at the end of the day, we’re not just climbing the Google ladder for the sake of it—we’re here to grow your business. And that’s what makes all the effort worth it.
Ready to start your digital marketing journey? Contact us today!
