Attribut­ing invest­ment is one of marketing’s biggest chal­lenges. With users engag­ing at mul­ti­ple touch points, on mul­ti­ple devices, and on mul­ti­ple plat­forms, effec­tive­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ing your invest­ment in the organ­ic search chan­nel can be a dif­fi­cult – but not impos­si­ble – exer­cise.

We rec­og­nize that search engines are the pri­ma­ry loca­tion for con­sumers to dis­cov­er new brands, sat­is­fy their pur­chase intent, and have their ques­tions answered. Being present in this space is essen­tial.

Before invest­ing in a search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) strat­e­gy, CMOs want to ensure a return on invest­ment. To help you do that, read on for some key ques­tions and use­ful infor­ma­tion to con­sid­er about fore­cast­ing SEO ROI.

What Do You Want To Achieve And At What Cost?

It is com­mon­place that brands will want to appear for huge­ly gener­ic, high vol­ume key­words. For exam­ple, a fash­ion retail­er may want to appear for the query “dress­es”, though due to the huge­ly com­pet­i­tive nature of this key­word this may not be a valu­able invest­ment in terms of direct ROI.

Focus­ing on more prod­uct spe­cif­ic queries, such as “navy pol­ka dot dress”, may be a more suit­able objec­tive. Less resources will be need­ed to rank for this term and peo­ple search­ing it are more like­ly to con­vert because they have a clear­er idea of what they want (i.e., they are fur­ther down the pur­chase fun­nel).

Before invest­ing in SEO, then, you need to con­sid­er: Is this a chan­nel you want to dri­ve con­ver­sions or brand aware­ness? SEO is effec­tive at both, though the pro­posed ROI will be dif­fer­ent accord­ing to objec­tives.

Once objec­tives have been set, then you need to iden­ti­fy how to mea­sure them. Is the pri­ma­ry mea­sure­ment increas­es in organ­ic rev­enue? Increas­es in organ­ic traf­fic? Own­ing your brand results page?

SEO Reporting Isn’t Just About Rankings

There is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that SEO report­ing is about your rank­ings and how these have changed over time. This is impor­tant, though this is only a small part of the puz­zle. You may rank high­er for “dress­es” than you did before, but it is cru­cial to under­stand how this is affect­ing the bot­tom line.

Rank­ings alone aren’t a valu­able report­ing met­ric; they need to be report­ed on against changes in organ­ic traf­fic and rev­enue. A well-posi­tioned rank­ing for a key­word that nobody is search­ing for, or nobody is click­ing on, is ulti­mate­ly mean­ing­less.

Although this will vary by brand, indus­try, and objec­tives, at a min­i­mum you should track:

• Increas­es in organ­ic traf­fic.
• Increas­es in organ­ic revenue/conversions.
• Increas­es in cat­e­go­ry or page improve­ments if your focus is on a par­tic­u­lar cat­e­go­ry or offer­ing.

Report­ing appro­pri­ate­ly allows us to track invest­ments retroac­tive­ly (i.e., cam­paign cost me X and I made Y) how­ev­er it’s com­mon­ly the case that we need to under­stand pro­posed out­come before invest­ments are made.

Forecasting SEO ROI To Secure Investment

Var­i­ous method­olo­gies can be used to fore­cast SEO.

Per­haps the most com­mon way to fore­cast SEO ROI is to look at the tar­get key­word group, tak­ing search vol­ume and aver­age click-through rates and cal­cu­lat­ing pro­ject­ed traf­fic at var­i­ous posi­tions. Alter­na­tive­ly we can look at his­tor­i­cal data and project based on trends.

How­ev­er, as with all fore­cast­ing, these like­ly won’t be com­plete­ly accu­rate. In fact, only 1 in 4 respon­dents of a recent Linkdex sur­vey said that fore­cast results were close to the actu­al out­come.

Regard­less, fore­cast­ing remains a cru­cial aspect of the process, with more than 64 per­cent believ­ing that finan­cial deci­sions are made based upon fore­casts.

Simon Hes­el­tine, Senior Direc­tor at AOL, said:

From a strate­gic per­spec­tive, fore­cast­ing helps you to pre­pare your con­tent plan, and allo­cate your resources as effec­tive­ly as pos­si­ble, so it’s a vital part of the process, how­ev­er one that can sad­ly fall by the way­side if your team is under-resourced.

It seems the case that the indus­try needs to fore­cast in order to secure invest­ment; par­tic­u­lar­ly, as Rus­sell O’Sullivan, Senior Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at Legal & Gen­er­al points out, when sign off is being gen­er­at­ed at a board lev­el and from those who may not be espe­cial­ly close to the gran­u­lar­i­ty of the chan­nel.

I feel fore­cast­ing in SEO is high­ly impor­tant from a client point of view, it’s a met­ric to work towards and under­pins bud­get allo­ca­tion to the chan­nel. From a client side, if you cant fore­cast what traf­fic and esti­mat­ed con­ver­sion rates (sales) are going to come from SEO, then its going to be a hard sell at board lev­el into why you assign, in some case such big bud­gets to the chan­nel. SEO usu­al­ly brings a much low­er CPA than oth­er dig­i­tal chan­nels, so mak­ing sure to fore­cast and mon­i­tor is of key impor­tance.

Fore­cast­ing can be time con­sum­ing (92 per­cent of sur­vey respon­dents agreed) how­ev­er this is broad­ly symp­to­matic of a chan­nel that’s fair­ly in its infan­cy. Fore­cast­ing is an essen­tial part of jus­ti­fy­ing invest­ment; so although it needs to be caveat­ed against vari­ables, it’s an essen­tial pur­suit.

The Process of Understanding SEO ROI

1. Begin by under­stand­ing spe­cif­ic objec­tives and goals. Why are you con­sid­er­ing invest­ing in SEO?
2. Once your objec­tives have been defined, under­stand how these will be mea­sured. Traf­fic? Con­ver­sions? Ensure that goals and ana­lyt­ics prop­er­ties are appro­pri­ate­ly set up.
3. We can then fore­cast against these mea­sures to under­stand pro­ject­ed invest­ment. If we under­stand the size of the oppor­tu­ni­ty then we can jus­ti­fy the opti­mal spend to access it.
4. Report against fore­cast. Ensure that the SEO report­ing is aligned direct­ly to the fore­cast num­bers so all par­ties can under­stand how they are track­ing.

Final­ly remem­ber that impacts will not be seen overnight, SEO is a long-term invest­ment, one that requires input from all areas of the mar­ket­ing spec­trum.

Want to learn more about SEO report­ing? Down­load Linkdex’s free ebook, SEO Now.