Running a modern business organization means calculating whether you are getting the right returns on your investments. Understanding ROIs and SEO Strategy can help you identify which strategies are working and which ones are simply draining your company’s financial resources.
Let us start by understanding how in normal circumstances we calculate ROIs. You simply take the gain that is generated after a particular strategy is implemented and subtract the same from all the resources you have invested into the same. What is left is your ROI!
While this sounds simple enough, when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, there is more to it than meets the eye. This is because SEO strategies and investments are not as straightforward as they might appear.
In this resource, we are going to help business owners and budding SEO professionals identify ROIs on your SEO strategy and investments.
Conversion Tracking on Ecommerce and Sales/Brand Sites
According to leading digital marketing professionals providing Singapore SEO services, a great way to calculate the ROIs is by setting up conversion tracking.
You can go to Google Analytics and set up Conversion Tracking. For Ecommerce sites, this means direct sales. For sales providers and brand sites, this means contact form submissions.
This means that this is a more definite approach for eCommerce platforms that can directly pull data from their sales and evaluate whether SEO has been able to make an impact.
Brand sites often end up depending on SEO to help them generate leads for their business. You can go to Analytics and set up goals nevertheless. Everything from phone calls, to contact forms, directions, or requesting free quotes can be a measure of lead generation through SEO.
Checking SEO Metrics and Analytics can help with ROI Calculations
If you are a business that is just starting out in terms of SEO and digital presence, you might have to set different priorities from your investments.
In reality, rather than looking at sales outright; you need your SEO strategy to first deliver on helping your business gain online traction. The following are some analytics you should be interested to focus on-
- Looking at the increase in traffic figures from your SEO strategies and efforts
- Checking out SEO metrics like Domain Authority (DA) and Domain Rating (DR)
- Evaluating an increase in page engagement rates and lower bounce rates
- Paying attention to ranking keywords for your brand on the search engines
- Measuring the climb in the SERPs following execution of SEO strategies
According to SEO professionals, the above-mentioned metrics will be able to point out whether your SEO strategies and investments are helping you gain online traction or not. Please understand that if you have just started, this is a great way to measure the ROIs.
How Much Does SEO Cost?
If you thought that calculating SEO ROIs is tough, then you are in for a treat. If you are a business that has been taking quotations from agencies; you would have heard about monthly SEO retainers ranging between $10K to $1K!
To be honest, SEO costs are dependent on multiple factors; which include the kind or results you want and how fast you want them. Ideally, SEO costs fit into three major types-
- Setting up an In-House Team of SEO Professionals
- Hiring an External SEO Agency and paying retainer
- Paying for SEO Tools, Technology, and Software
According to SEO experts, whether you go for an in-house team or hire a professional agency; you will have to pay for SEO tools like MOZ, AHREFS, SEMrush, etc. In most cases, pricing strategies differ on experience, the kind of service being provided, and the guaranteed results.
The Bottom Line
Calculating the ROIs on your SEO strategy and investments is not as simple as you would think it is. There are multiple layers that you will have to navigate. You can ask the SEO agency for some clarifications on prices, but that might not be helpful.
If you have any more questions that you have in terms of how much SEO should cost you; or want to get an idea on how monthly returns should be calculated from SEO; please reach out to us in the comments section below.