Whether you’re implementing SEO independently or with an SEO company in Auckland, there are ways to look at ROI for SEO and estimate your strategy’s success. This article explains how to calculate your ROI and reveals some key tips for improving your results.
How do you calculate ROI for SEO?
While an effective and successful SEO strategy is a worthwhile investment that brings results over time, calculating ROI for SEO can be complicated. Unfortunately, there’s no clear-cut way to calculate the returns for an SEO strategy; every revenue-driving action needs to be considered, evaluated, and tracked to calculate the ROI.
But don’t let this discourage you or make you doubt the effectiveness of a well-planned SEO strategy! Improving your website for SEO provides incredible results for businesses of all sizes and is a very worthwhile investment. Below, we discuss how to view your results and calculate your ROI for SEO.
Calculating ROI for SEO
To measure your ROI for SEO, you can track organic traffic through Google Analytics. You must compare the increase in organic search traffic, leads, and revenue with the overall cost of your SEO campaign. However, before considering the results, you must understand how much you’ve invested in SEO.
What have you invested in your SEO?
Whether doing SEO in-house or with an SEO agency, you must consider the total revenue versus expenses. In-house costs include any SEO software and tools your organisation pays for. Businesses that work with experienced SEO companies will have ongoing agency expenses, which can be expensive; the more knowledge and experience a person or team has, the more their services will cost.
An advantage of working with a digital marketing agency specialising in SEO is that you will not only have all their expertise at your fingertips, but you will have a clear view of all SEO strategy costs in your invoices. You will also be able to work with them to optimise your strategy as you go.
How to Calculate the ROI
With your investment determined, you can now calculate the ROI with these steps:
- Find out your average click-through rate by position.
- Pull your conversion rates for each analytics goal.
- Identify the value ($) of each conversion goal.
- Estimate traffic and revenue based on search volume.
- Calculate the estimated ROI.
How long until you see an ROI?
Unlike paid search, SEO is a long-term game. If you’re looking for short-term success and quick results, avoid SEO. Search engine optimisation will never bring instant or guaranteed results—however, if you stick with it, you’ll see success. Many additional factors contribute to ROI, such as your industry, target audience, and business size. With commitment and the help of an SEO company, you will begin to see results anywhere from a couple of months to a year.
How to improve your ROI
Here are some crucial factors to consider when improving your ROI for SEO.
Stick to your strategy
Just because the ROI isn’t immediate doesn’t mean your efforts are going to waste. As mentioned, SEO is a long-term game. The most important part is to stick to the strategy laid out. Look at your results and analytics regularly to keep an eye on performance. Evaluate your strategy quarterly to avoid jumping ship when you’re about to round the corner to success.
Update existing content
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Whether you’re doing SEO in-house or through an agency, there’s no need to invest all your effort into creating new SEO-friendly landing pages. Doing so may lead to duplicate pages offering the same services, which means you are competing with yourself to rank in Google’s search results. Additionally, unnecessary landing pages can make your website more clunky and difficult to navigate, decreasing user experience.
Optimising your existing pages is a great idea before adding new pages to your website. After all, the important information will already be there; it just needs to be optimised for search. We recommend improving your existing content to make it more straightforward, user-friendly, and informative, with a clear path to conversion. While small, these changes make a BIG difference in user experience and increase the chance of them staying on your website for longer.
Rather than creating new websites and landing pages, try working with what you have. That way, you can invest your resources into other parts of SEO, like link building, rather than going through the long process of building new pages or a whole new site. Of course, for some businesses, a new website will work best with their goals and overall strategy. However, it’s best to use what you already have where you can.
Alternatively, blog content is an excellent way to put new content on your website. Internal links used through informative content can improve SEO and encourage readers to click through your website.
Work on your website
You don’t have to build it from the ground up, but your SEO investment will be redundant if you don’t have a good website. Aside from the content, ensure your site is responsive—fast loading, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate. Google’s algorithm favours responsive, optimised websites, and it’s a factor that contributes to rankings.
Aside from the algorithm, users favour an optimised and easy-to-use website. If things take too long to load or users can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll simply move on to a competitor. A responsive, well-built website will see the bounce rate decrease.
Work with the best
The main way to ensure a great ROI for SEO is to work with the best agencies. Yes, there are helpful things your team can do in-house, but industry experts will use their knowledge to create a plan aligning with your goals. Additionally, when you work with a professional agency, they will walk you through your SEO ROI when it’s time to evaluate your contract or strategy.