You’ve probably already heard that an investment in SEO will help you grow your business. Top rankings in major search engines can provide floods of organic traffic for your website. In addition, search engine optimization relies on taking measures that help improve visitor experiences and let more people know about your brand.
Thus, many businesses enjoy a positive SEO ROI because their optimized website generates extra income and reduces other marketing costs. Still, many companies struggle to measure their SEO return on investment, so they don’t know if their efforts paid off or need improvement.
The Formula for Measuring SEO ROI Success
The formula to calculate SEO ROI looks pretty simple:
SEO NET INCOME / SEO EXPENSES) X 100 = ROI PERCENT
However, many businesses need help applying this formula because they cannot attribute gains or budget reductions to their SEO efforts. Even more, most search engine optimization projects will tackle various aspects of SEO. Each business will find some of these tactics more productive than others, but they lack a way to attribute results to one specific effort.
Thus, data-driven SEO efforts will offer your business several competitive advantages. You’ll clearly understand how well your business website performs now and have a chance to measure progress. You’ll also have the numbers to encourage more funding by demonstrating your goals and metrics. This information will help refine your efforts and uncover more improvement opportunities.
The Benefits of Improving Your SEO ROI
The benefits each unique business may enjoy from better SEO can vary because of the industry, the state of the current digital platform, or the audience the company hopes to reach online. These specific benefits can help you understand what your company can gain from investing in SEO:
- Increase organic search engine traffic to your business site: More visitors will find your site after searching for your products or services online. Attracting more website traffic gives you a better opportunity to transform visitors into customers.
- Boost brand awareness for your company’s mission, products, and services: An essential part of SEO involves attracting links and mentions on other websites, thus allowing you to help more potential customers learn about your company.
- Align your site’s features, content, and design with customer intent: Ensure website visitors find what they’re looking for. That way, they’ll stay engaged long enough to understand your message.
- Attract more leads and sales cost-effectively: Search engines don’t charge businesses for organic search traffic. Thus, increased organic traffic can help stretch your marketing budget. More organic visitors might also let you reduce your budget for expensive ads.
- Develop trust and a connection with your audience: Search engine users gravitate toward the first sites in the search results. When they feel satisfied with the experience those websites provide, they’re more likely to become customers.
How to Improve Your SEO ROI
The steps your company needs to take depend upon the current state of your SEO. However, every company should understand that search engines compete with each other to satisfy and keep their users. Thus, they greatly incentivize businesses to provide excellent user experiences in exchange for high search engine rankings. In other words, optimizing for search engines also means optimizing for people.
Thus, almost all companies can find ways to improve SEO value in one of these areas:
On-Page SEO
Search engines scan the text and other elements of web pages to find search terms that match or have the same meanings as the words search users type into their queries. Thus, SEOs should weave these terms into their content, headings, titles, etc. Therefore, on-page optimization seeks to improve the content and other site features to improve rankings.
Remember that you’re producing content for people, not bots, so never sacrifice content quality for SEO keywords. Today’s search engines are also savvy enough to pick up on synonyms and related terms. Various keyword tools can uncover keywords and suggest related search terms. SEOs can also explore terms the site already ranks for and expand upon the most productive ones.
What to Know About Searcher Intent When Selecting Keywords
Be mindful of starting with a keyword list that’s too broad or competitive because these terms are likely to produce a negative SEO ROI. Also, ranking for keywords that don’t satisfy your audience’s search intent won’t prove helpful.
For instance, some companies optimize for their company’s or industry’s jargon but not for how potential customers search for solutions. In particular, high-tech companies with emerging technologies may need help finding their audiences because they’re introducing new concepts and targets that typical searchers may not know about.
Businesses that introduce cutting-edge products frequently struggle to find their audiences because nobody knows to search for their brand or product. In this case, the most productive keywords to start with might focus on the types of problems that the problem or service can solve.
For instance:
- Content can discuss the issues and demonstrate that the brand offers a solution. The content might also compare the new solution to existing ones and show how the new product works better. Ensure site navigation and a call-to-action lays out the next step interested people can take to get more information or purchase.
- At first, focus on letting the right people know the website and the solution exists. Save optimizing for specific details, like features or prices, for later in the buyer’s journey. That’s when prospects will look for in-depth information to inform purchase decisions.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO covers activities outside the business website to gain attention and search engine authority. Search Engine Journal says creating quality backlinks is especially important for B2B sites with new or less well-known solutions.
That article also quoted Google’s John Mueller when he emphasized the importance of backlinks because they’re the signposts search engine bots use to find new content. Naturally, external links and citations also help people find websites, so backlinks from popular, relevant sites also help websites attract direct visitors.
At the same time, many SEOs consider obtaining external backlinks challenging because they can’t control the behaviour of other websites. Some tactics to get valuable backlinks include:
- Look for relevant sites that appeal to your audience and write the type of content that gets their attention. Indeed, you can increase the odds of getting noticed by tagging them on social sites or emailing the editors.
- Use sites like HARO to gain the attention of reporters and editors looking for stories. Offer interviews, quotes, and resources to make your appeal more valuable.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO has emerged as one of the most important aspects of improving ranking. Fixing technical SEO issues also improves the user’s experience. Improved experiences will keep people engaged longer and make them more likely to trust your company. Thus, technical SEO can often provide quick wins, improving SEO ROI for multiple reasons.
Various website auditors can identify many technical SEO issues, and this kind of software is especially beneficial for monitoring large, complex websites. Common technical SEO issues may include:
- Improving page speed
- Adding trust factors
- Optimizing for mobile users
- Deleting duplicate pages
- Improving site navigation
Important SEO KPIs for Measuring Success
Key performance indicators, usually called KPIs, provide critical information that businesses need to measure the success of their SEO investments. Just as important, these measures also uncover SEO areas that could use improvement or don’t contribute to the company’s goals. Thus, KPIs can help drive profits and reduce wasted efforts.
Organic Search Traffic
Almost every website should track organic visitors, landing pages, referral sources, and search terms. You can use this information to measure the progress of your efforts. In addition, referral sources and search terms can help improve further enhancements. For instance, ensure the searcher intent reflected by the search terms matches the content on the landing page.
Google Analytics offers a popular, free version that many websites rely on for tracking these metrics. Google also has an advanced, paid version called Google 360.
Search Rankings
The websites with the first few positions on the front page attract the most traffic. Thus, your business will need to attain better ranks for search terms to achieve almost any business goals you may have set for your SEO project.
Obtaining high search rankings for just any keywords won’t help. For instance, if your company markets medical imaging devices for doctors, ranking well for “local imaging services for patients” won’t attract the right audience. Instead, you need to ensure you’re ranking for keywords that people who might patronize your business would use.
Visibility
Your business can enjoy some quicker wins by targeting longtail and less-competitive keywords. However, for your project to bear fruit, you will also want to work on obtaining higher ranks for more popular terms that can deliver massive traffic. Sometimes, you may rank well but not achieve a high CTR because your title and description don’t engage searchers.
You can measure search visibility to see how often searchers have an opportunity to click through to your website. Google Search Console displays impressions, clicks, and CTR by the website and search terms.
Backlinks and Mentions
Search engines still use backlinks to measure a website’s authority. That’s why most SEOs consider obtaining these external site links one of the most critical tasks. At the same time, too many low-quality or irrelevant links won’t improve rankings. In the worst case, links from “bad neighbourhoods” may earn penalties that drop your search position dramatically. Several popular tools can help you monitor your backlinks, including Ahrefs, Moz Links Explorer, and Majestic.
Conversions
Attracting more backlinks, enhancing your website content, and improving your website’s performance should help your company achieve higher search engine ranks and attract more organic search traffic. At the same time, the real driver behind your SEO ROI comes from converting website visitors into leads and paying customers.
Other Important SEO KPIs
Other critical KPIs include bounce rate, time spent on the site, and brand mentions. Google Search Console offers excellent insight into the first two. Popular tools that track brand mentions and citations include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Buzzsumo.
Overcoming Obstacles to Improving Your SEO ROI
Your business can improve your SEO ROI by following these few steps:
- Begin improving your SEO ROI by understanding the current state of your website’s search engine optimization.
- Document goals for improvement based on your company’s overall goals and set KPIs to measure progress.
- Implement analytics tools that track KPIs and measure progress.
- Improve SEO in the most critical areas.
- Keep tracking your progress and adjust accordingly.
Naturally, enjoying the highest returns from these straightforward steps will take some investment in learning about SEO, performance tests, metrics, and tools. In particular, businesses that have already tried SEO may feel frustrated because they need help understanding the results of their efforts or figuring out how to improve them.
Professional SEOs with industry experience can save money and time with every optimization aspect. At Lemon Pulse, we work with our clients during every step of the process, from setting goals to increasing profits with high-performance websites. Contact us now to tell us about your growing business, and we’ll show you exactly how we deliver a competitive advantage.
