ROI in SEO

[juanmiguelcr]

Hi there! I'm just doing the SEO for a client and I just don't know exactly how could I estimate the ROI associated to the SEO actions that are taking place. Should I only consider the conversions made via organic search? Is there another parameter, metric or item I must measure? . Is there something "formal" to follow'? I think I'm missing something.

Thanks in advanced.

[Diana34]

I really appreciate this answer!  I am new to SEO on top of being the only In-house internet marketing employee with an insurance agency so it helps me to learn what everyone else is using in the real world SEO industry. Organic traffic has increased 65%   in the last three months on my website but actual conversions are coming in much slower.  Measuring ROI has been difficult for me.  I’ll utilize your ideas in the future.

[juanmiguelcr]

Thanks a lot for your answer.

[juanmiguelcr]

thanks Takeshi!

[StreamlineMetrics]

What kind of business does your client do (ecommerce, lead generation, user signups, etc.)? And what are you counting as conversions (ecommerce sales, contact form submissions, phone calls, newsletter signups, user registration, etc)?

Here are the main KPIs I would normally report on for SEO -

Total organic visits - compare month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, year-to-year. Ideally this number will increase each month as a result of your SEO efforts.

Total organic visits from unbranded keywords - usually these are the keywords you are targeting with the SEO campaign. By "unbranded" I mean any keyword excluding those which include the name of the company/product, personnel, address, phone number, etc.

Conversions generated by organic traffic - the specifics of this metric largely depend on whether its ecommerce, lead gen, signups, etc. If you can prove that organic traffic (especially from unbranded keywords) is generating an increase in qualified contact form submissions, then you're golden. Especially if the client is able to provide you with figures on how much they pay per lead from other marketing channels, like if they are used to paying $300 per lead from radio commercials and you are charging $1,000/month for SEO and generating 10 leads a month, then you are cutting their acquisition cost by 66%!

Revenue generated - this is more easily determined for ecommerce sites, but it can be done with lead generation sites. You can use Google Analytics conversion tracking to track the initial conversions but hopefully you and/or the client are keeping track of the leads throughout the sales funnel so you can determine which leads convert into revenue for the client and then you can attribute that number back to the original source. So if you find that your SEO efforts generate 10 leads a month and 3 of those leads result in sales, generating $5,000 in revenue, then you can confidently make the assumption that the ROI of the SEO campaign is 400%!

[TakeshiYoung]

The two main KPIs I would report on would be the amount of organic traffic you are bringing in, compared to what the site was doing before you started your SEO efforts, along with organic conversions. If you have conversions set up in Google Analytics, you will be able to see multi-touch attribution, so sales that didn't originate from organic but were influenced by it.

Basically, if traffic and sales are increasing as a direct result of SEO, that should be a pretty clear indicator of ROI.