Semalt: How To Measure SEO ROI Right
As a website owner, you'll often have to talk about SEO return on investment (ROI) when deciding how to allocate resources and budget.
It is the desire of every website to gain traffic from organic search and rank high on search engines. As such, it is important to keep up with the latest SEO best practices and industry trends.
According to studies, 53% of website traffic results from organic search. And in 2021, 69% of marketers made search engine optimization (SEO) the main marketing strategy.
And after every SEO campaign, you need to be able to measure your SEO ROI correctly. But a lot of websites need help to do that.
That is why you need an SEO company like Semalt. With us, you are assured of a complete analysis showing which SEO campaign is successful and brings in more revenue than the other.
In this blog post though, we will be showing you how to measure SEO ROI and the challenges one may face while doing that.
Meaning of SEO ROI
SEO ROI is a way to measure how profitable your website is. And it is a key performance indicator that shows how much profit a website gets from investing in SEO.
ROI here simply means the amount realized from investing in SEO minus the cost of the SEO campaign. When you look at your search engine rankings and your website's organic traffic, you will be able to find out how much your SEO investment is worth. This makes it easy to know how much revenue you've made.
Your website will have a good return on investment (ROI) if the income from your SEO campaign is more than its costs.
Importance Of Measuring Your SEO ROI
Search engine optimization strategies are always changing, and if your brand doesn't have an online presence, it may face challenges in a world where almost everything is going digital.
Digital marketing has become a common term in today's world. And businesses are employing its strategies for their business growth, and your website shouldn't be left out. That is why you need professionals like Semalt to handle your SEO ROI.
Here are the top reasons why your business needs to measure your SEO ROI:
1. It is one of the most important ways to calculate the success of a digital marketing plan
Once your content makes it to the first search engine results pages (SERP) page, each new search reinforces its relevance.
As a result, it becomes more attractive to potential customers long after it is published. By using sales and conversion, you can measure standard SEO performance indicators.
2. It provides an understanding of your customer's behaviour
When you know your SEO ROI, you can look at the numbers from your SEO campaigns and see which strategy works best for your audience. And also which campaign generates more revenue on the investment.
With SEO's ROI as a key metric for generating leads, you can make better business decisions.
3. SEO ROI shows your business growth
Once you know your SEO campaign's ROI, tracking and replicating the advertising strategy that led to success is easy.
You'll also be able to know the marketing channel that is worthwhile and also improve the customer experience.
Measuring SEO ROI (How To Calculate SEO ROI)
With the ROI metric, you can measure how much revenue your business makes from your SEO investment.
And while each site has its own way of measuring the SEO ROI, most use the standard formula: SEO revenue minus the cost of SEO investment divided by the cost of SEO investment.
But if you are a newbie in this industry, you should get experts like Semalt to handle everything concerning SEO. This is because SEO is like a battleground that only devours the weak. Here is a guide on how to measure your business's ROI.
Step one
First, you need to calculate how much you've invested in SEO. Identify all the costs that will be incurred during the SEO campaign.
These costs include SEO tools, in-house employees, freelance SEO workers, and agencies, content distribution, and building links. We will look at them one after the other.
SEO tools
When measuring your SEO ROI, you need to calculate every subscription you make. This includes SEO tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, etc.
In House employees
Count all of your SEO and content creation workers, as well as designers, developers, and others who do SEO work. Then, break these costs down into hourly or daily rates based on how much time is spent on them.
SEO freelancers and agencies
If you hire an SEO agency or a freelancer, they will often be the ones to measure the SEO ROI. So, you should include the SEO campaign's daily or monthly costs in your investment calculation.
Content distribution and link building
SEO is more than just publishing content. Here, you need to include the costs of promoting your content. And if you engage in link building, you need to include them before measuring your ROI.
When you add up all these costs over a certain period, like one month, you'll realize that these costs vary.
Step two
Track and analyze conversion
After knowing how much it costs to invest in SEO, you need to track and calculate what your organic traffic conversions are worth. Google Analytics can be used to find out how much money your business makes quickly.
Adding GA Connector to Google Analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) is another good idea. And to calculate your SEO's ROI, you need to use the organic conversion filter to separate the data.
For instance, if you want to keep track of your eCommerce sales, you can go to your Google Analytics account and find the eCommerce setup. Use this guide below to set up the tracking for eCommerce.
Turn on the eCommerce report and choose your data under the "Conversions" tab. Here, the most important metric for organic traffic is revenue.
At this point, you will be able to know your SEO cost and how much revenue it brought in, so you can measure the ROI of your SEO campaign.
Step three
Calculate the ROI of your SEO
Once you have the necessary information, you can use the formula below to determine your ROI.
Total SEO income minus the total cost of SEO investments, divided by the total cost of SEO investments.
Challenges One can Face When Calculating SEO ROI
Below are the challenges you can face when measuring your SEO ROI. However, some of them could be properly managed when you let professionals like Semalt handle your SEO.
1. There are inherent problems with marketing and advertising attribution
There have been many discussions on marketing and advertising. The journey of a customer through the sales funnel is complex and, therefore, can be likened to a spider web rather than the straight line that analytics software makes it out to be.
So, it can be difficult to determine how much revenue a tool like SEO brings in. The answer to this is data-driven attribution (DDA).
2. There are time discrepancies between investments and return periods
Returns on investment from SEO can take several months. Sometimes you will have quick returns, but that may not always be the case. It is almost impossible to link specific SEO expenditures to particular ROI.
Therefore, comparing the SEO investment and ROI is technically invalid. Start your calculation of SEO ROI at the page level, category, or keyword for the most accurate results.
By so doing, you can know how much you invested and then measure the ROI for particular pages.
3. The connection between SEO and brand building
When brand strategy and SEO overlap, it can be hard to tell which marketing tool brought in money.
Let's look at this scenario: You are watching videos on YouTube when you come across an intriguing product. You then go to Google, conduct a search for that brand or product, and make the purchase.
Who is given credit for that conversion? Your response is probably organic traffic. In this instance, SEO is given credit for that sale rather than Youtube brand building.
Search and show ads, ads on social media, and searches, are more prevalent and have a greater potential to increase conversion.
4. It is difficult to measure the retention impact of SEO
The retention effect of SEO is classified into two. They are:
- Reduced churn charges are the result of users interacting and using the products.
- Some individuals are motivated to upgrade their monthly subscriptions by the content of the tools and features in higher packages.
These two categories have proven over time that SEO is powerful. And this power can increase a customer's lifetime value because content items can be found in the marketing funnel's nurturing and retention stages.
However, this makes it difficult to account for SEO influence when measuring SEO ROI.
5. Forecasting future ROI
Forecasting future ROI depends on setting up SEO goals and objectives and ensuring you're on the right track. Forecasting is sophisticated, and therefore it requires discipline. This is done even before generating numbers.
And to be able to make accurate ROI predictions, you need to remove all forms of bias and engage in extensive research.
6. There are limited capabilities with SEO testing
If you want to understand the role SEO plays in your business, you need to stop conducting campaigns on your marketing channel for a while.
The issue with SEO is that you can't simply decide to turn it off. SEO, Although you may, no sane business will intentionally ruin its SEO efforts. This is because it may have long-term negative impacts on your website.
Conclusion
From this blog post, measuring your website's SEO ROI is important and needs to be done properly. This is because it is proof of your SEO success.
Semalt is the go-to person for anything related to SEO. Having been in this industry for years and with the best professionals at our disposal, you can rely on us to provide you with the best service.
We will continuously monitor and analyze your SEO performance to make the best data-driven decisions and improve your SEO ROI.