What is the reason behind your SEO efforts? Let me answer the question for you. The reason behind your following search engine optimization is to make sure that the traffic in your website increases. Whether your SEO efforts are showing result or not can be understood if you track your ranking and the search traffic. Better ranking and more traffic mean better revenue as well.
However, the problem is that you can’t really decide upon a particular amount that will determine your success in SEO. So, how will you get return on investment or ROI from your SEO effort? And how will you understand that you have reached your target?
The simple answer is that you have to calculate the ROI to determine whether your SEO technique is working or not. Here, I have discussed a few steps that you can try out to get an ROI from your SEO effort. So, let us get started.
Ecommerce website vs. lead-based website conversion:
You have to understand that conversion tracking and ROI of an ecommerce website is not similar to a lead-based website. Ecommerce websites are different from lead-based websites. While you can sell products or services directly through an ecommerce website, you can collect potential customer leads through lead-based websites.
So, an ecommerce website will collect customer data from the transaction that is happening on the website. On the contrary, a lead-based website will have to depend on paid tools to find out the conversion rate.
There is simply no doubt that it is easier to determine and increase the ROI of an ecommerce website. However, it is also possible that a lead-based website can determine and increase its ROI. How? Here’s how:
Track conversion:
You have to create a set-up for measuring the conversion rate. The process for measuring is different for lead-based website and ecommerce website.
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Lead-based website
When it comes to lead-based website, tracking the conversion becomes a bit complicated. You don’t really have any transaction happening on your site. However, the approach in this case is different. You have to check out what actions the visitors on your site are taking. So, suppose some of your potential clients are reading your blogs while some are filling up the contact form to get more information.
We will mark each lead having a worth. So, if someone signs up for your newsletters, that person will be worth $50. Someone who wants you to contact him/her is worth $100. There is a simple technique to determine the worth of your clients. Let’s check that out.
Since it is easy to calculate with a round figure, we will assume that you get 100 fresh newsletter subscribers each month. If 20 among them hire you for your service, you can say that the conversion rate is 20%.
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Now, suppose each of these 20 people is spending around $300 to avail your service. So, the average value of each of these 20 sales will be $300. The final step is to determine the value of each of the leads. You have to divide the total number that you make from the amount spent by your converted clients with the total number of leads.
So, the total amount that you get in this example is 20 (people) X 300 (dollar each) = $6000.
Now, divide the total amount with the original number of leads, which are 100 people in this example. So, the average value of each of the 20 clients will be 6000/100 = $60.
So, once you have chosen the worth of each of the potential clients, you have to treat them as your goals. There is a section in Google Analytics, which is named as ‘goals’. Include your ‘goals’ in Google Analytics ‘goals’. You will see a value marker in ‘goal details’. Once you start including each of the ‘goals’, it will become easier for you to calculate the return on your investment because you will get some tangible data with you.
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Ecommerce website
Tracking your ROI for ecommerce website is much easier. You have to take help from Google to track your website. Even if you haven’t invested in SEO and nor do you plan to do so, enlisting your website on Google will help you in measuring your success or failure.
Once you have set your tracking details, all you have to do is check out the information regarding the conversion rate. Follow this by the transactions, the average value of orders and the total amount of revenue.
This process will allow you to find out the exact number as in revenue generated by your SEO efforts. If you need help with the process, Nico Digital is always there to help you out.
Analyzing the data:
It takes a couple of months to track the conversion on your website. Now, you can start examining the collected data to see the ROI that you are getting from your SEO efforts. Google Analytics conversion report will let you know the exact number of conversions that you have gotten from organic search, social media, paid search, referrals, newsletter and any other source.
Google Analytics will not only show you the number of conversions but also the value of the generated revenue. Now that you have a real number, you can compare it with the amount that you have spent on SEO for this particular time span. Even though this will not give you an exact number that you can term as ROI from SEO, you can obviously start to notice the acceleration.
Suppose your total revenue is $100,000. You have spent $25,000 in paid search, keyword research and content generation. So, your ROI is $75,000. Now, you have to find out the revenue that has come from organic search, from social media from paid search, individually.
It’s time to calculate now:
This is the easiest part of the whole process. You just have to follow a simple formula to calculate the percentage of your ROI. Here is the formula that you need to follow:
{(The amount you gained from your investment – The amount you spent as your investment)/ the amount that you have spent as your investment} X 100
So, the equation will look like:
So, the percentage of your return on investment is 300.
While the percentage may or may not be satisfactory to you, it is definitely not the time to stop, right? You have to keep growing and increase the return on your investment. Now the question is how you can increase your ROI from your SEO efforts. We’ve got you covered in that. Here are a few things that we recommend doing:
Location-wise audience targeting:
No matter what type of business you own, you first need to target the local audience. SEO works best when you apply it locally. Even if your target is to go global, you must take baby steps. Believe me most big companies have come to realize that a business can’t grow big without targeting the local audience. When you dedicate your SEO efforts to targeting a specific location, the results of the efforts will show better.
Try and improve the Click-through Rate:
Click-through rate is the proportion of people who click on a particular link on your page in comparison to the total number of people that have viewed the page. The click-through rate determines the success of your website. The better your CTR is the more your SEO efforts will show results.
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So, one of the most effective ways of improving your ROI from SEO efforts is to ensure that the CTR increases. You have to design your SEO efforts in such a way that more and more people, who visit your website, click the links that you share. Try changing the title of your blog; try and make the call-to-action button clearer and understandable; use an updated SERP snippet, etc.
You need to research on what the ways are that can help you improve your SEO efforts.
Where can we help?
Whether the whole process sounded simple or complicated to you, you have to follow the process attentively to get the best possible results. You need to calculate the ROI properly. You also need to conduct a thorough research on how you can improve your CTR. You also have to find out why your SEO efforts are not giving the desired results and act upon that to ensure that you get the best ROI possible.
And that is where we come to help you out. We not only conduct a thorough research but we also make sure that we keep improving the content on your website. We keep your website updated and keep on looking what improvements we can make. The best part is you can rest assured about the success of your SEO efforts when you hire us. Your ROI is our responsibility. So, what are you waiting for? Contact us for more information in this regard.
