
SEO ROI: Measuring the Returns of Your Off-Page SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is multi-faceted and complex. Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of an SEO campaign is even more daunting, especially when direct results cannot always easily be tied to specific inputs. It’s the old John Wanamaker conundrum: Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. Fortunately in today’s paid marketing, it’s much easier to target waste and bloat by knowing how your PPC ad spend is working (or not). But not when it comes to organic search traffic. In SEO, correlation is often inappropriately tied to causation, which may not always be the case. In this guide we discuss the specifics of measuring the ROI of your SEO campaigns, particularly your off-page SEO in building links and promoting content. In doing so, we assume your site passes the table stakes metrics required for optimal on-page SEO including quality content, Core Web Vitals, internal linking, proper title/meta/h1, etc. In the next several sections, we’re going to teach you how to measure both the costs and the value of your link building (and link outreach) campaign, and determine which of your links and offsite content are making the biggest impact. From there, you’ll be able to optimize your link building campaign for a higher return on investment, or ROI—and much more impressive long-term results. SEO Link Building Value: More Than Higher Search Engine Rankings Understand that the true value of your link building campaign is about more than just higher search engine rankings. It can’t be tied to any single variable. Instead, your link building outreach campaign must be considered in a variety of different performance areas: Organic rankings (and traffic). Though not the only barometer for value you’ll use, there’s no denying the importance of search engine rankings and the organic traffic they generate. Google and other search engines measure the relative “trustworthiness” of a site in terms of domain authority, or DA, which is calculated with a complex formula that heavily depends on existing links pointing to various sites. Generally, the more links a site has pointing to it, and the higher-authority those links are, the higher its DA will be. Referral traffic. Organic traffic isn’t the only source of traffic generated by links. Depending on the publisher you use, the audience to whom you’re writing, and the positioning of your link, it’s easily possible to generate more visitors in referral traffic than you generate in organic traffic—especially early on in your campaign. User behavior. Traffic is always nice to earn, but the value of that traffic can vary. For example, if you’re running an SEO or PPC campaign on an eCommerce site, your conversion rate will be directly linked to sales, and it’s going to play a massive role in your eventual success. In scenario 1, you’ll get 35,000 visitors a month with a conversion rate of 1 percent, resulting in 350 conversions total. In scenario 2, you’ll get 25,000 visitors a month and a conversion rate of 2 percent, resulting in 500 conversions total. Scenario 2, despite lower traffic, is the favored option. This is important to consider because the nature of your link building campaign can influence user behavior once they’re onsite. Secondary effects. SEO also has a host of secondary effects, most of which are much harder to measure than the primary benefits preceding this list item. For example, if you have a guest author profile on a publication site, you could generate referral traffic from this blurb. If you mention your brand name consistently enough in your links, you’re going to improve your search visibility and reputation—even for people who don’t click your links. Plus, building authority on small- to mid-sized publishers can set you up for even bigger opportunities, resulting in a kind of ladder-climb; in this way, every link you build carries value in supporting the future of your campaign. Some of these impact variables will matter more to you than others. For example, your brand may be especially eager to outrank your top competitors in search engines. However, it’s hard to argue with objective outcomes; if it’s possible to generate more total traffic, as well as traffic more likely to convert, from referrals than organic traffic, it will benefit you to optimize your approach accordingly. The Big Picture of SEO ROI Let’s turn our attention to the main premise of this piece: SEO ROI. The high-level view is that SEO ROI is a function of two variables: costs and profits. If you spend $500 on a campaign and you generate $600 in revenue from it, that’s an ROI of $100, or 20 percent, depending on how you want to measure it. In the realm of link building, costs can be tricky to measure, since you’ll need to factor in both time and money. If you’re working with a link building agency, things get a bit simpler, since you’re only dealing with one cost variable. In the next section, we’ll explain how to accurately project your costs. And as you can see from the previous section, outcomes can also be difficult to measure; there are many benefits of link building, both direct and indirect, and you’ll need to factor all of them into your final SEO ROI equation. In several sections that follow, we’ll explore how to measure the impact of your links, including how much traffic they’re generating, how they’re improving your search engine rankings, and how they’re influencing user behavior on your site. For both costs and value, you’ll need to consider both your overall SEO strategy and each individual link; for example, if your strategy is performing well, but a certain type of link seems to be underperforming compared to the others, you can weed out whatever strategy is producing that link in favor of something more in line with what’s generating your results. Some publishers will outperform others, and some pieces of onsite content will be more rewarding as link destinations than others. Measuring Your Off-site