How to Calculate and Measure the SEO ROI?

When we choose SEO services rather than PPC we are worried about return on investment (ROI). SEO ROI is hard to calculate. When we are going to choose PPC, then it is easy to measure the ROI. But SEO doesn’t have fixed costs, fixed results, and many other things. That is why SEO ROI is hard to calculate. But there are KPIs that help SEO analysts or online businesses to calculate SEO returns. 

There are two steps included in calculating SEO ROI in digital marketing. The first thing is to set the metrics or KPIs that you want to track. The second thing is to calculate the ROI using a particular formula. So in this post, we will discuss both of these things. We will let you know how you can calculate SEO ROI. 

Why Is It Important To Calculate SEO ROI?

It is important to calculate SEO ROI because as a digital marketing agency you need to tell your clients what you achieved through SEO. If you are not a digital marketing agency, then you need to figure it out for your SEO campaign. Because you want to see whether SEO works for you or not. If there is a high ROI (return on investment) then it is clear that SEO is working for you. And you can go along with SEO.

Steps To Calculate SEO ROI

You have to perform a few steps to calculate SEO ROI. There are no fixed rules to calculate SEO ROI. But there are some proven methods that you can use. These rules are always flexible and easy to use. You can customize them according to your calculations or the SEO goals that you have. We are here with the complete step-by-step guide to calculate SEO ROI. 

Also, Read: How to Know About Best SEO Reseller Program?

STEP 1: Keep Record Of All Costs

The first step is to keep a record of all the costs involved in the SEO campaign. There are some SEO packages available in the market. If you have chosen an SEO package then you can easily calculate the cost. Because most of the time all the SEO packages have fixed costs. But sometimes there are customized or self-dependent SEO campaigns that have different costs included. 

Infrastructure

First of all, see what and how expensive infrastructure you are using to do SEO. SEO campaigns can have infrastructure from basic computers, internet connections to other equipment.

Tools

There are a lot of tools used in SEO campaigns or digital marketing campaigns. You need to buy these tools. In such a situation you have to keep a track of the tools and their cost that you are using.

Manpower

You cannot do anything on your own. You may need keyword researchers, campaign managers, content writers, and a lot of people in your team. All these team members will get paid from your side. So must include the manpower costs. 

Time

Time is also an important thing that you invest in your SEO campaign. Sometimes SEO campaigns can go longer than a few months. In such cases, you have to mention clearly how much time you dedicate to the SEO campaign in a day, week, or month.

STEP 2: Choose A KPI

How will you find out that you have achieved success through an SEO campaign? Is there any method to see if you succeeded? Well, we are here to help you with this. There are many KPIs used to find what goals you can set and how to achieve them in an SEO campaign. Following are the basic goals that people always have for SEO campaigns.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic is one of the major key performance indicators (KPIs). Without organic traffic, no SEO campaign will be complete. So it is the most important and foundation key metric that you need to track. 

Conversions

Sometimes getting only organic traffic is not enough for the online marketers. In such cases, online marketers need conversions. Conversion means more sales and more revenue. SEO gives a good rate of conversions. You can set it as your KPI if you are going to get conversions through SEO packages.

Online Reputation

Some online businesses are buying SEO packages just for online reputation. They want their website to be listed at the top of any search result. They don’t want other companies to go ahead of them. They just need an online reputation in front of the site visitors. In such a situation, SEO works fine for online businesses. The more organic traffic and search engine ranking you get on search engine result pages (SERPs), the more reputation you will build.

Subscriptions

Subscriptions to your newsletters or any other paid publishing service is also a good KPI to track as an online business or marketer. You can easily count the subscribers to your mailing service and track this number to find whether your SEO campaign works or not.

STEP 3: Fix A Deadline To KPI

The third step is to fix a deadline for the KPI. All the KPIs are important, some of the websites focus on multiple KPIs for better results. If you also want to get better results and you want to calculate SEO results in ROI then you must choose at least one KPI for you. 

See If It Is Achieved

After you have chosen a key performance indicator, you need to see if that KPI is achieved before the deadline or not. If it is achieved within the deadline then it means it is under the cost.

STEP 4: Use A Formula

After fixing deadlines and setting goals, you have to use a formula to find out the return on investment (ROI) on your SEO campaign. Your SEO campaign can have various goals, which means it will have different formulas. Following are some major formulas that you can use.

For Conversions/Sales

In case you have conversion and sales as a goal for you. Then you will have to find out the value of conversions. Now the value of the conversions will be subtracted with the cost of SEO investment. The number that you get will be divided with the cost of investment again, now you will find the conversion rate in percentage.

For Organic Traffic

The formula that you have applied to conversion or sales will be applied to organic traffic too. Here you have to subtract the organic traffic or value from the cost of SEO. Now divide the given number with SEO cost again. 

Calculating the cost of an SEO campaign can be a difficult task. But it is still easy if we use formulas to find out the exact return on investment. SEO cost depends upon various factors from manpower to tools and from time to infrastructure. After calculating all the costs you have to set a KPI for your SEO campaign. Now you need to use the formula. The basic formula is to subtract the value of goals with the cost of SEO, and after getting the answer you need to divide it with SEO cost again.