Proving ROI From SEO

July 5th, 2008

SEO Needs To Prove ROI Just Like Any Other Marketing Medium

I spoke to a prospect today day that was with a large SEO firm. Almost 1/3 of the amount their contract paid to the SEO firm was for – account management. “Oh I don’t mind paying for account management”, the prospect said. “I can call them every week if I need to and tell them how angry or concerned I am about my lack of natural rankings and they always pick up the phone. I have designated account rep so I always speak to the same person.”

If this prospect’s Search Engine Optimization campaign was successful why would they need to call someone every week to express anger or concern? Why not put that money toward getting ranked instead of talking with an account rep every week about how you are not ranked? Or put your time and energy toward your business instead of pleading with your SEO firm to do their job. This SEO Firm had customer service but flawed product. They also failed on a core principal that is a land mine for many SEO firm - ROI.

The SEO firm failed to prove ROI

Instead of proving the ROI for the SEO campaign, the SEO firm had invested in account managers to placate clients when they called distressed about the lack of performance for their SEO marketing campaign. This client had been with their SEO firm for 2 years and had never been ranked on Google for any of their key terms. But every week there was a willing ear that told them, “just spend a little more with us and the rankings will come”. Unfortunately this prospect had fallen for this song and dance to the tune of 60 K. I can think of 100 ways they could have use this money to build their business other than complaining to the SEO firm’s account manager.

Six simple steps to prove ROI

It is the job of your SEO to show the value of their work. But here are the steps you can take to make sure you are tracking the ROI of a SEO campaign.

Step 1: Before you sign up with an SEO firm begin using a tracking program such as Google Analytics that will show you the keyword and search engine a visitor arrive from.

Step 2: Place the tracking tags for you tracking program on EVERY page of your website.

Step 3: Place a conversion tag on your “thank you for ordering page”.

Step 4: Bench mark your traffic for 30 days to confirm what rankings and traffic you had before starting the SEO campaign.

Step 5: Using your tracking software carefully observe not just increases in traffic but also increase in conversions.

Step 6: Assign an average “sale value” to each conversion. If you have a lead generation site, assign a “lead value” to each form submit. Using a 180 day evaluation period, multiply the “sale value” times the number of conversions you got – over and above your bench mark period. The amount of revenue generated by the marketing campaign should 7 to 10 times the value of the SEO firms contract.