Using SEO To Boost Your ROI

Everything You Need To Know About ROI (return on investment) on SEO (search engine optimisation)

How do you prove the true value of search engine optimisation? In most areas of your business, it’s easy to see a return on investment. You can see which products get the most sales. You can report on which sales events drive more revenue. For other areas, that’s easier said than done. And SEO ROI has historically fallen into that too-hard basket.

Here’s the challenge:

You know that SEO is important for your business. But if you want to get organic search activity and budgets approved, you need to prove it to your bosses.

If you want to build a long-term strategy that drives lead generation, you need to measure the real impact of SEO. That means finding the hard numbers that prove ROI for SEO.

Now for the important part:

Search Engine Optimisation Return on Investment CAN be measured!

It’s simply a matter of understanding how Search Engine Optimisation / SEO generates ROI, tracking the right metrics and seeing how it increases revenues and cuts costs at the same time.

In this article, we’ll reveal how to do all of that and more, so you can explore the revenues SEO can really produce for your business.

What is SEO ROI?

SEO ROI is a calculation that measures the return on investment of search engine optimisation. It answers the fundamental question that every marketer and business owner needs to ask:

Are we getting more out of this than we’re putting in? 

Granted, you can use lots of metrics in Google Analytics, if set up correctly with no mistakes, to determine the success of SEO – monitor traffic, referral sources, conversion rate, and more. (Discover the Top SEO Metrics That Define Your Success).

(Source: Search Engine Journal)

Those metrics provide information you can use to optimise your search campaign. But if you really want to know the true value of SEO to your business, you must pay attention to one thing:

Return on investment.

If you know the return on investment of your SEO activity, you can show the “powers that be” how search engine optimisation has generated more website traffic, sales and revenue, generated more leads and justify spending on long-term online digital marketing campaigns.

Because you know that one of the essential truths of SEO is that you should be in it for the long game.

Calculating SEO ROI (return on investment) isn’t as complicated as people think.

First, you need a clear picture of conversions and goal completions.

Second, you need to know the cost of your investment.

Then, you put these into the SEO ROI formula:

(Gains – Costs) / Cost of Investment = SEO ROI

Ready to work out the ROI of SEO?

Let’s go.

Step 1. Measure the RETURN of SEO

The process for calculating the return in SEO is depends on how you make money from your website.

A). eCommerce websites

eCommerce websites are the easiest to calculate ROI for, because you can report on specific dollar amounts that organic search generates through eCommerce purchases.

Start by setting up eCommerce conversion tracking in Google Analytics.

This allows you to perform conversion tracking on your site and see the conversion that earns revenue. Simply add the tracking ID to your website (or ask your web guru to do it) that sends your eCommerce data to Google Analytics.

This will generate eCommerce tracking.

Once your eCommerce site is connected to Google Analytics, establish which ecommerce goals and behaviours you want to track.

Some examples of goals you can set include:

• Conversions by traffic source
• Lead form subscriptions & email list subscriptions
• Revenue
• Add to cart
• Abandoned cart
• Traffic from organic sources

To set up eCommerce analytics goals, follow these steps

1. Select the Admin panel
2. Select “Goals” from the right column
3. Complete Goal description and Goal details

(Source: Tinuiti)

Now you can go to the overview, which tells you revenue, eCommerce conversion rates, transactions, average order value, marketing campaigns, etc:

Segment this data by channel, including Organic Traffic, to see precisely how much revenue is coming from your SEO activities.

B). Lead generation websites

Lead generation sites need a different approach because while they are used to generate interest online, the actual purchase is made offline.

Not everyone who shows interest will become a customer. Just because someone downloads an ebook or submits a form doesn’t mean they will buy from you.

So how do we adjust our approach and calculate the value of SEO?

Use goals and assign dollar values to those goals.

Here’s how:

In Google Analytics, set up Goals.

For example, if the objective of a page is to get visitors to fill out a form and download an ebook, set that up as a goal.

Or, you can choose to have Google Analytics track any time someone submits a contact form and lands on your “contact thank you” page.

Here’s what that looks like on Google Analytics:

(Source: Social Media Examiner)

See how a value has not been assigned to the goals, so the Goal Value is $0.00?

Here’s the important part:

You have the option to assign a dollar value to your goals.

It’s this dollar amount that will give you the real ROI of your SEO activities.

But how do you know what dollar value to assign?

Use this formula:

LTV x Close Rate = Goal Value

LTV: Average lifetime value of a customer

Close Rate: Percentage of leads who become customers

For example:

Let’s say the average lifetime value of your customers is $1000 and 25% of everyone who submits an online form becomes a customer. You could set a goal value of $250.

Then, segment by channel to see how much revenue SEO is generating for your business.

Step 2. How much does SEO cost?

Now that we’ve talked about the “R” in SEO ROI, let’s focus on the “I” – the investment.

As you know, your site’s ranking in organic search results is earned and not paid for. So, how do you spend money on SEO? And how much does SEO actually cost?

Your biggest decision affecting the investment comes down to: Do you hire inhouse employees to work on your SEO or do you out source the work?

A). In-house SEO resources

You need to account for this in your costs. This could be a dedicated SEO marketing manager, writers who create SEO content, or web developers and website designers who spend time optimising your website for the best search rankings.

Next, estimate how much time they spend on SEO efforts and multiply that by their salary.

For example, $100K salary x 25% of time on SEO = $25K per year.

Then divide this by the period of time you are tracking, e.g. month, quarter, etc.

B). SEO agency

Do you outsource some or all of their Search Engine Optimisation work to an expert SEO agency? This is easier to work out. If you have an expert online digital marketing agency doing lots of projects, again look at the percentage of time they spend on SEO.

C). SEO technology

Good SEO requires a suite of SEO tools. And while there are some free versions out there, many of the best digital marketing tools require a monthly subscription or small investment, like SEMrush, Moz and Ahrefs.

Tally up how many tools you have and how much they cost. If you share them with other teams, allocate a percentage.

Step 3. Calculate your SEO ROI

Now you’ve determined how much revenue your SEO strategy generated during a specific time period (typically a month or a quarter) and your SEO investment during that time, you need to plug these numbers into the following formula:

(Gain from SEO – Cost) / Cost = SEO ROI

Multiply that number by 100 to calculate the ROI as a percentage.

Some companies calculate the ROI using the net profit from each sale instead of the total revenue. Whatever calculation you use, make sure it’s consistent with how ROI is measured in other parts of the company.

For example:

Gain from SEO: $500K

Cost of SEO: $20K

(Gain from SEO – Cost) / Cost

(100,000 – 20,000) / 20,000

80,000 / 20,000

4 x 100

= 400%

Your return on investment from SEO is 400% — that’s impressive!

Check out our SEO ROI Calculator to discovers yours today!

How long does it take to see actual ROI SEO?

The quick answer? Six months is typically a good length of time to see significant results from SEO efforts.

You’ll see the biggest gains from six to 12 months.

The long answer is that the time it takes before seeing significant results depends on a range of factors, such as the authority of your site, any penalties, where you currently rank in organic search, and the time and effort you invest in SEO services.

Whichever way you look at it, SEO is a long-term investment.

One of the biggest mistakes of SEO is not spending enough time on it. You won’t see the results overnight, like some other digital marketing strategies. It requires maintenance and ongoing attention to see any revenue-shifting, sustainable results.

That effort never truly ends. But, as you’ll see when you measure your ROI, it really does pay off!

Is SEO profitable?

Knowing how to calculate the return on your SEO campaign investment is valuable, but there’s more to it than that. What are some real-life examples of benefits and cost savings you can expect?

1. SEO drives a lot more traffic

More organic traffic doesn’t increase revenues all by itself. After all, if that traffic visits your website without taking any revenue-generating actions (hitting your conversion goals), what’s the point?

But organic search traffic is important.

The simple truth is you can’t sell to someone if…

1. They can’t find you online.
2. They don’t click through to your site.

2. SEO helps you attract the right audiences

It’s not just about the QUANTITY of traffic to your website – it’s about the QUALITY of this traffic.

To get a good SEO ROI, you want a large proportion of that search traffic to be your target customer.

If they land on your website and find a user-friendly and conversion optimised design with all the right calls to action, that’s where the magic happens and your conversion rate grows.

3. SEO can increase sales

Optimised content is the key to increasing sales through SEO.

Here’s how SEO content can work to increase sales:

When prospects search on Google or other search engines for information about a product or service similar to what you offer, they are shown all sorts of content that’s designed to answer their questions. Social media posts, web pages, blogs and other content – it’s all there to educate them and lead them to make a purchase decision.

Let’s say you want to work out which mobile phone to buy:

When your content is the best quality, most relevant, and most authoritative, it gets shown by Google before the others and drives clicks from organic traffic. We’re talking highly qualified clicks, because your content directly answers their question and they are more likely to buy from you.

4. SEO strengthens your brand equity

How does SEO strengthen brand equity? Because SEO is all about improving user experience. Website speed, web design, high quality written content, mobile friendliness – all these factors are used by Google to decide where you should rank.

They also help you build and manage a strong brand reputation. Because if someone visits your website and finds it is easy to navigate, with no broken links, and useful content, they are more likely to come back. That’s when your conversion rate soars.

5. SEO can cut your paid ad spend

Pay per click (PPC) or paid advertising is a powerful digital marketing strategy. No question. Whether it’s social media advertising or paid search advertising, with the right know-how, you can put hyper-targeted ads in front of your audience in just a few hours and drive qualified traffic to your website instantly.

But there’s a catch – you have to pay for every single one of those visitors.

And there’s no guarantee how much you’re going to pay from one week to the next. It all comes down to how many people are bidding on those keywords, how much they’re bidding, and more.

Investing in SEO can actually help you minimise your spend on paid advertising. You just need to play to their strengths at different stages of your digital marketing campaign.

Do you have a very strong SEO presence for high cost keywords?

If you’re already ranking well for high cost keywords, reduce your PPC spend on them.

You could wind up with the same amount of conversions without investing in PPC, meaning a lower cost per conversion, and a better conversion rate. Your conversion tracking metrics will soon prove this – make sure your checking them per month, or even more frequently.

6. SEO can lower your customer acquisition costs

With PPC, you pay for every website visitor and then lose that traffic the minute your campaign ends.

Now compare that to traffic earned through good white hat SEO practices which is free AND it keeps going.

So long as you continue to optimise your website and content marketing, and invest in good SEO services, you can increase your website traffic from search engines without increasing your costs (it’s the long game, remember).

Over time, this will lower your customer acquisition costs per month and improve the ROI of SEO.

7. SEO can increase profits from existing content

Let’s say you already have a library of awesome content on your website before you start SEO efforts.

There’s a good chance that content holds untapped potential to improve our SEO ROI.

You’ve already invested in content marketing and paid for the content to be produced (either in dollars or hours). You’ve probably shared it all over social media too.

But Google might only be seeing a small percentage of those pages – which means your target audience isn’t finding them either.

Even if Google has found them, they won’t be ranking as high as they could in organic search. So, to get some quick wins for your ROI, you can apply SEO strategies to those web pages.

8. SEO can protect your revenue and traffic against losses

One thing that SEO requires is proactive monitoring and management. You can only get results if you consistently check and optimise your website. It’s just good marketing.

If you don’t, you can expect unexpected events and issues to damage your site usability, ranking, revenue and reputation.

What kind of events and issues?

The number one event is algorithm changes from Google. For example, several times a year, Google rolls out a “Core Update”, a regular update to ensure it is presenting relevant and authoritative content to users.

Example of Google announcing May 2020 core update:

The fact is, if you aren’t regularly monitoring your website for SEO, it will slide down the rankings before you can say “Goodbye traffic”.

The simple act of checking your site on a regular basis – the fundamentals of SEO marketing – can save you money and increase the ROI of SEO.

10 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes To Keep An Eye Out For

SEO can prove insanely profitable for businesses of literally every size, type and industry. As long as your customer base is even remotely connected to the internet, you’ll find enormous value and revenue impact with high-performing SEO. But SEO mistakes can undo all of that.

The only hurdle?

So often, businesses see SEO campaigns fall flat.

Failure is not only disappointing after all that time and energy you poured in, but it’s also a huge money waster. That makes it harder to reinvest again.

Skip all the heartache and stick to the winning strategies by dodging these most common SEO mistakes.

Top SEO Mistakes To Avoid

Mistake 1: Not investing enough time into SEO.

People who flake out of a full campaign within a month or two of trying aren’t going to see the results they want.

Here’s the reality:

SEO campaigns need time to mature if you want to get a super high return on investment.

As a rule of thumb, allow AT LEAST 6 months to start seeing uplifts in traffic, leads and sales.

To mature a high-ROI SEO campaign, you’ll need an average of 8 to 12 months — if not more.

At the end of the day, it depends on how competitive your industry is and where you’re starting from.

If you’ve been carrying out SEO for less than six months and are asking yourself why nothing is changing, the answer is simple:

You haven’t given it enough time.

The longer you wait, the better the results you’ll see.

Mistake 2. Shooting for the wrong keywords

One of the biggest mistakes in search engine optimisation is that you’re not using the right keywords in the first place.

Keywords are the foundation of SEO.

Yet, finding the right keywords is something that many site owners stumble over.

A common mistake is that your target keywords are too generic.

Say you’re trying to rank for “kitchen renovations”.

You’ll wind up competing with every kitchen renovation company – not just those in your local area.

You need to be more specific.

The longer and more specific your keywords, the higher your chances of ranking.

Okay, the search volume for this keyword also decreased, but the relevance is higher, which means the chances of conversion are higher too.

So how do you find the right keywords?

Use these keyword research tips:

• Build buyer personas so you understand how your potential customers think and search.
• Start with keyword suggestion tools (like Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush’s keyword generator) for relevant ideas.
• Then, narrow the list to niche keywords by asking: Does the keyword align with my site’s content? Will searchers find something useful on my site when they use that keyword? Will this lead to a conversion?
• Use long tail keywords: These are longer and more specific keywords which target people in the buying stages. For example, rather than “kitchen table”, a long-tail keyword would be “how much should I pay for a custom made kitchen table?”

Mistake 3. Neglecting metadata

Are you optimising the data that lies underneath your website’s content and images?

This data is called “metadata” and it’s a vital part of SEO.

Optimising metadata doesn’t matter to humans – they won’t see it. But it does matter to search engines.

It tells search engine crawlers what your website is about and the quality of your site and content.

Without optimising the metadata, search engines will struggle to index your site properly.

There are tonnes of metadata.

Here are the ones you should focus on:

A. Image alt tags

Search engines can’t “read” images as they can text. So, the alt tags tell the search engines what the images are, so they can index and return them in relevant searches.

Obviously, it pays to include the relevant keywords in your alt tags.

B. Page titles

Always have a unique title tag on every page and make sure it describes the page.

Google usually displays the first 50–60 characters of a page title. So, try to keep your title under 60 characters and don’t overdo the keywords.

Moz has some great tips on best practices for title tag, and its own title tag is a great example:

C. Meta description

Meta descriptions are used by search engines and humans. It’s the description that searchers see as they read through the search results.

In other words, it’s what will determine whether users click onto your result over your competitors.

Use the meta description to sell your page and entice them to click.

For example, check out our meta description for our link building services page:

It’s short and to the point, focusing on telling the searcher why they should click on our page over the competition.

Mistake 4. Playing with black hat tricks

We’re going to be brutally honest here.

If you’re using black hat tricks as part of your SEO strategy, you’re destined to fail.

Black hat SEO includes tactics like:

• Buying links or submitting to link farms
• Keyword stuffing
• Content plagiarism
• Spammy content

Black hat techniques might help you rank higher in the very short term, but Google will inevitably catch you.

The result?

Site penalties.

Your site may even be blacklisted.

Either way, your rankings will plummet, which means your conversions and sales will suffer too.

It’s hard to recover from that.

The only way to achieve long-term SEO results is to use white hat strategies. That is, honest SEO strategies that play by the rules.

Mistake 5. You’ve neglected your link profile

Neglect your link profile, and you might as well say goodbye to SEO success.

Backlinks are the main way to build authority for your site and prove to Google that you have highly relevant, quality content.

Even though Google has over 200 factors that affect rankings, backlinks are believed to affect Google rankings more than any other factor.

A backlink is a link from another site to your site:

Source: Moz

But you can’t just build any backlinks and expect your rankings to soar.

The fact is, not all backlinks help your site.

Low-quality links pointing to your website can actually hurt your rankings and trigger a penalty from search engines.

Good backlinks are:

• Quality. Aim for backlinks from authoritative sites that people trust and respect. Look for sites that have a high domain authority score (out of 100).
• Relevant. Aim for backlinks that are related to your site and make sense. Use anchor text (visible, clickable text of a link) to tell the user what to expect if they click on the link.
• Natural. Do not buy links. Google looks for how many backlinks you’re getting over time. You need to earn it.

To track your backlinks, use tools like Google Search Console and Moz:

Source: Moz

Mistake 6. You don’t audit your website

How do you know if your site is getting indexed and ranked?

There could be a hundred little things wrong with your site that are stopping it from ranking as it should be.

The only way to find out is to audit your site on a regular basis and fix any errors.

This could be things like:

• Broken links
• Duplicate content
• URL parameter errors
• Slow site speed
• Missing meta tags

There are a few tools you can use to audit your site.

The first tool is Ahrefs Site Audit:

Source: Ahrefs

Another one is Google Search Console.

Go into Search Console to see the Crawl Stats.

The crawl rate tells you how fast and search-bot friendly your site is. Track this over time to see how your site is performing:

Mistake 7. Your content is far from awesome

Ever come across a site that has poor content?

Of course you have.

What happened next? Did you stick around to find out more and buy the product?

Not likely!

Chances are you did what most people do – you left the site faster than we can say “bad SEO”.

Poor content is one of the biggest digital marketing fails.

Yet many site owners don’t realise the impact it can have on SEO.

Fact: SEO and content go hand in hand.

To get in front of people who are searching for what you have to offer, you must combine your content marketing with your SEO efforts.

The more useful and relevant your content, the higher your site will rank in the SERPs.

The reverse is true too – poor content turns users away from your site and sends warning signs to search engines that your site is not relevant to users.

The result?

Google ranks your pages lower.

Here’s how to create killer content:

A. Know your target audience

Great content starts with knowing your ideal customer. Create buyer personas to find out exactly who your customers are and what they want – this helps you answer their needs using your content.

B. Create targeted content for each stage of the buyer’s journey

Target your content for each stage of the journey: awareness, consideration, decision, retention and advocacy. This ensures your content is returned in the SERPs whether people are just starting to look or ready to buy.

C. Create long-form content

Research shows long-form content (between 3000 -10,000 words) gets an average of 77.2% more links than shorter content.

Remember, Google looks at your link profile when ranking your web pages. So if you are earning quality backlinks from your long-form content, you’re onto a winner.

Another reason long-form content performs well in search rankings?

Visitors spend longer on your site reading it – and Google factors “time spent” into its ranking algorithm.

D. Make your content useful

Publishing “thin” content doesn’t provide any real value to your target audience. Your headline might get them onto your site, but if they don’t find any value when they get there, they won’t stick around or come back.

Need help with your content?

Start by using a tool like Buzzsumo.

This tool is popular with content marketers as it helps you search for keywords to see who’s writing about what in your area, and how people are engaging with that content.

There’s also a handy Content Analysis feature which helps you discover the types of content that work best in your niche (e.g. video, blog post, infographic etc.)

Mistake 8. Your site is not mobile friendly

If you only need one reason to invest in a mobile friendly website, this is it:

60% of Google searches are done using mobile devices (Statista)

If you want to get in front of people exactly when they need your products and services, you need to show up in their mobile search.

Google has made this non-negotiable for site owners.

One of Google’s most impactful algorithm updates is the Mobile-Friendly Update of 2015, AKA “Mobilegeddon”.

Since that update, Google has rewarded mobile-friendly websites in search rankings and lowered visibility for non-responsive websites.

Then, Google launched its Mobile First Index.

This means it crawls and indexes web pages based ONLY on the mobile version of a page – not the desktop version.

The good news?

Optimising your website for mobile is not as difficult as you might think.

Follow this checklist:

A. Give users an easy, seamless experience visiting your site on mobile.

Use the Mobile Friendly Test on the Google Search Console to check if your site has any issues.

If your site doesn’t pass, Google tells you why so it’s easy to fix.

B. Speed up your site

How fast does your site load? Google recommends for sites to load in under one second for mobile.

Check how your load speed on Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Again, it provides tips on how to speed things up if needed.

C. Make content easy to access and read on mobile

This is all about creating a brilliant user experience.

Here are some easy tips:

• Make fonts big and readable, at least 16pt font
• Break up text into paragraphs of just a couple of sentences
• Use contrast between text and background

Mistake 9. Your internal link structure is shoddy

Here’s the problem – as your website grows in size with all that great content you’re

creating, unless you’re careful, its internal link structure will soon end up in disarray.

We’re talking about broken links, pages that link to nowhere, duplicate content, and a structure that makes no sense.

Many site owners neglect their internal link structure because they simply don’t realise how important it is.

Internal links have a very important job to do. They connect pages within your site to create clear crawling paths for search bots and an easy navigational path for your users.

A solid internal link structure has clear benefits:

• Helps Google understand your site architecture for indexing.
• Keeps users on your site for longer, which helps Google rank you higher.
• Improves the value of your content.

Using your internal link structure, you can give the most important content more link value (aka “link juice”) than other pages.

The more links you give a page, the more “link juice” it has:

Source: Search Engine Journal

Here’s what you can do:

• Make links relevant. Find clusters of pages focused on particular topic and link between them.
• Delve deep into your site structure. Main navigational pages, like Contact Us and Home, tend to have lots of internal links already. So, delve deeper into your site to other pages and blogs – so long as they are relevant.
• Make links natural. Never link for the sake of linking. Internal linking should always add value for the reader, whether that’s expanding on a topic or providing other helpful resources.
• Audit old content. Do your older posts have enough internal links? Audit your content using a tool like SEMrush Site Audit. Look for opportunities to add link juice to valuable pages.

Source: SEMrush

Mistake 10. User Experience is not your #1 priority

By now, you might have noticed a theme running through these mistakes.

User experience. 

If you do not put user experience first, you will never succeed in your SEO efforts.

Harsh, but true.

Google wants you to put your users first.

Whether it’s your site structure, content, social media or link building, everything you do with SEO should be for the users first.

Over recent years, that’s what Google’s updates have been focusing on.

The search engine’s algorithms are designed to reward sites that provide a seamless and valuable user experience.

And it’s not just Google that looks for a great user experience (UX).

A massive 88% of users are unlikely to return to a website after one bad experience.

This goes all the way to your bottom line – companies with highly effective UX have increased their revenue by 37%, according to UXpassion.

Follow the tips above and you will create a user experience that will not only get your ranking higher, you’ll see revenue-smashing results over the long term.

Ready to fire up your SEO ROI?

Truth time: SEO can produce the lion’s share of the qualified, revenue-driving traffic to your website. But squeezing the best ROI in SEO efforts won’t happen overnight. To get sustainable results, you need an evidence-based strategy and the right tools tailored to your marketing goals.

If you’re looking for an experienced SEO agency to partner with, claim our FREE offer today — get your Free Digital Audit and find out exactly how to unlock digital growth.

About the Author

Andrew Raso

Andrew Raso, Co-founder and Global CEO of Online Marketing Gurus, has been instrumental in transforming the agency from a start-up into a $15 million global powerhouse. Since co-founding OMG in 2012 with colleague Mehrdad Hedayati, Andrew has leveraged his deep expertise in SEO and digital marketing to drive OMG’s expansion across Australia, the US, and Singapore.