Measuring Your SEO ROI: Digital Marketing ROI Series

In the previous article of our digital marketing ROI series, we talked about how you can measure your email marketing return on investment (ROI). We also discussed why it is a critical component in your overall digital marketing strategy for many reasons. Today, we are going to discuss the benefits of SEO, how to analyze SEO ROI in an SEO campaign, and why SEO is the key to a successful digital marketing campaign.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing solution aimed at bringing organic visibility to websites through search engine results. It is not just about creating a search engine friendly website; it is about making sites that draw an audience by having high quality, relevant, and well-presented content.  SEO is a critical marketing discipline that can bring in much traffic to your online business, but only if it is used properly.

Why Measure Your SEO ROI?

Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business success. A good SEO strategy is necessary for driving that traffic to your company’s website. The majority of this traffic will come from search engines such as Google, and Bing. However, social media networks like Facebook and Twitter are also great for increasing traffic from your target audience. Measuring the success of an SEO campaign is important for determining whether the time, money, and resources allocated for a campaign is bringing in any significant returns. Calculating ROI is one of the many facets of SEO, but how is it measured?

Watch For a Rise in Organic Traffic

An increase of traffic is one of the easiest ways of measuring SEO. Google Analytics is a phenomenal tool you can use to view the changes in traffic over the course of your campaign. By looking at specific data inside of analytics you can understand what you need to watch to validate the rise in Organic Traffic.

Inside of Google Analytics, using the menu on the left, Acquisition -> Overview to see how much traffic is coming from Organic Search.  As you track more data over time, you can watch your efforts payoff as the numbers increase.

Measuring Your SEO ROI: Digital Marketing ROI Series

Monitor Inbound Links

Inbound links are important for SEO. The more your website is linked in different places on the Internet, the more visibility you’ll gain in search engines. That increased visibility will lead to better rankings and more organic traffic.

You can track your links through Google Webmaster, using the menu on the left, Search Traffic -> Links to Your Site.

Review Your Organic Rankings

The primary purpose of SEO is to increase your ranking on the major search engines for particular keywords and phrases. You want your website to be among the top results when users perform searches using keywords relevant to your service. It is a known fact that digital marketers agree; users typically only look at the first three search engine results. The further down your website is on the page, the fewer clicks you’ll get.

To get a rough understanding for your rankings, you can do the following:

  1. Inside of Google Chrome (or your favorite browser) do a private or incognito search.
  2. Do a search for a specific set of Keywords, for example “Digital Marketing St Cloud MN”.
    1. If you want to change your current location when doing a search you can click on the “Search Tools” to change your current location to another state or country.
  3. Scroll down past the ads and the local results to see where you are listed in the search results.
  4. Now, change the Keywords to various scenarios to get a rough estimation of how you are ranking*

Organic Local Search on Google

*This is only a rough estimation, many factors come into play for rankings.

Increased Revenue

Whether your website brings in revenue through ads, affiliate links or the sale of products and services, an increase in revenue is a clear indicator of the success of an SEO campaign. Monitor the revenues closely once you begin a campaign. This is the most obvious way of measuring your ROI.

Monitoring all these activities should give you a fairly confident idea of how well an SEO campaign is doing. However, it is important to remember that there is no magical formula for SEO that will work ideally for each specific company. Consistency and patience are also necessary. When working through organic SEO campaigns we have seen it take up to 9 months for terms to start ranking.

At Cohlab, we fully understand the importance of knowing your digital marketing ROI. That is why we do take the time to ensure you understand both the tangible and intangible results of your digital marketing efforts. We “cohlaborate” with you on proving out your marketing ROI, and our strategy has been greatly successful for digital marketing clients. Use our complimentary Digital Marketing Scorecard to gain valuable insight on how your website rank compares to others. Our team would love to speak with you and answer any questions you may have. Our mission is to provide you with Cohlaborative digital marketing solutions to meet your organization’s needs.