What is SEO ROI?
SEO ROI (Return on Investment) is the amount of money generated by an SEO campaign.
A positive SEO ROI means the site is returning more money than the money being invested in the site SEO strategy.
By calculating the ROI, you can make the decision to either continue with the current strategy or if your strategy needs improvement.
But sometimes the calculation of the SEO ROI campaigns can be challenging because there are multiple factors involved in every organic search campaign.
So here’s a quick formula that you can use to calculate the ROI of SEO campaigns…
How to Calculate Your ROI from SEO
To calculate the ROI of your SEO campaign, you will need these two numbers:
- Total Value of Conversions — This is the amount generated from conversions from organic traffic only.
- Cost of SEO Campaign — The amount of money spent on the SEO strategy, including the cost of content writing, content optimization, etc.
But first let’s see the basic fomula of ROI:
ROI = (Revenue – Cost) / Cost
Now for calculating ROI from SEO, the formula is:
ROI of SEO = (Total Value of Conversions – Cost of SEO Campaign) / Cost of SEO Campaign
You can also simply use our calculator to quickly find out the ROI of your SEO strategy.
Example of SEO ROI Calculation
Let’s assume you have an affiliate site where your SEO investment is $5,000, and the affiliate revenue from organic traffic is $20,000.
Now you can calculate your SEO ROI by putting your SEO costs and the affiliate revenue in the formula.
ROI of SEO = (20,000 – 5000) / 5000 = 300%
So the total ROI from your SEO campaign is 300%. This means for every $1 spent on SEO gets you a return of $3.
Note that the accuracy of the final ROI numbers will depend on how accurate your input numbers are.
The Importance of Measuring SEO ROI
When you’re investing in marketing for your business, one of the most important things to measure is the return on investment (ROI) you get from all the marketing efforts.
This is why measuring SEO ROI is essential because if you cannot determine the amount of money returned for every dollar invested in SEO strategy, you can’t identify if SEO is the best-performing channel for your business or not.
By calculating the ROI of your SEO strategy at regular intervals of 3 to 6 months, you can analyze the incremental gains in organic keyword rankings, traffic, and revenue — which will help further improve the SEO campaign.
The Challenges of Calculating SEO ROI
According to a Search Engine Journal survey, SEO brings the highest ROI in digital marketing, according to 49% of the respondents.
So while SEO is one of the best investments in marketing for businesses, unfortunately, many marketers and business owners struggle in calculating the ROI of SEO campaigns.
This is because SEO ROI is usually dependent on many factors like the site age, content, type of business, SEO strategy used, and the budget involved.
To get accurate ROI numbers, you will have to factor in the costs of content, links, PR, outreach, SEO tools, and everything involved in an SEO strategy.
How Long Does it Take to See SEO ROI?
Depending on the SEO campaign, it can take anywhere from three to six months to get a positive ROI.
Many factors are involved in every SEO campaign that can affect how long an SEO strategy takes, like the age of the website, link profile, content quality, keyword strategy, and on-page optimization.
But it’s better to take action before you see any SEO results. And the sooner you start optimizing your website’s visibility, the more progress you’ll see towards achieving your goals.
The key is to continually track metrics that will help you determine how long it takes for your content to see an improvement in search results.
Note that SEO campaigns can also sometimes take many months to produce significant ROI, but the results usually have a compound effect over the years of the site’s life.
How do I improve SEO ROI?
Here are a few strategies you can use to improve your SEO ROI quickly…
- Make sure your website is fully responsive — Your site should follow all the mobile-friendly best practices like readable font and easy to navigate menu.
- Target long-tail keywords — Writing on long-tail keywords will help avoid competition and get you better conversion rates.
- Strategically use internal links — Use internal links to link all your high-priority pages with the supporting content to establish topical authority in Google effectively.
- Optimize for SERP features — SERP features like featured snippets and other rich results can boost overall search traffic.
- Optimize the site for faster performance — Use performance optimization like image compression, caching, and good hosting to keep your site fast for search engines and users.
These optimization tips will help you get higher rankings in Google, which will result in improved return on investment from your SEO campaigns.
FAQs Related to ROI of SEO
How do I calculate ROI?
ROI stands for Return on Investment. It’s generally used to measure how much money a company or product will bring in over its lifetime relative to its cost. ROI is calculated by dividing net profit by total expenses.
How do you calculate ROI for SEO?
You can calculate the ROI of your SEO campaign with this formula:
ROI of SEO = (Total Value of Conversions – Cost of SEO Campaign) / Cost of SEO Campaign
You will need two numbers to use this formula: the value of conversions you get from the organic traffic and the total money spent on the SEO campaign.
What is a good ROI for SEO?
It depends on the business. Some businesses invest more, and so the ROI is high, while low investments usually give low ROI only.
Is SEO worth the money?
Yes, SEO is worth the money. While it may take a few months to see the results of SEO campaigns, organic traffic is still the best way to increase sales and revenue. And in the long term, SEO is the more profitable marketing channel than paid advertising.
