Want to know how to measure SEO results? This guide covers the key metrics and methods to measure your SEO performance. You’ll learn how to track revenue, leads, organic traffic, keyword rankings, CTR, conversions and ROI from your SEO.
- Key Takeaways
- Measuring Revenue From SEO
- Asking Customers Directly
- Common Metrics To Measure SEO Results
- Leads
- Tracking Organic Traffic
- Monitoring Keyword Rankings
- Evaluating Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Measuring Conversions from Organic Traffic
- Calculating ROI for SEO Efforts
- How We Measure SEO Results At eWebsites
- Frequently Asked Questions
Key Takeaways
- Revenue tracking for SEO requires strong tools and accurate attribution across multiple touchpoints to see the direct impact on business growth.
- Lead quality and relevance are key for measuring SEO success, especially for service based businesses where lead tracking helps predict ROI and refine strategies.
- Using Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console to track organic traffic and conversions gives you insight into your SEO and helps with data driven decision making and strategy optimisation.
Measuring Revenue From SEO
Measuring the true impact of your SEO requires calculating the revenue generated directly from your SEO efforts. For e-commerce, this is relatively easy.
For service-based businesses, however, it’s more complicated. These business don’t have a tangible product, so working out the direct revenue from services is more complex.
One of the big challenges is revenue attribution.
For example a customer might find your service through an organic search but convert through a different channel. So a system for accurate tracking and attribution of revenue across multiple touchpoints is key.
Some tools that can help with this are:
- Google Analytics 4: a powerful tool to see the journey of your website visitors
- CRM software: to track customer interactions and conversions (we personally use GoHighlevel)
- Marketing automation platforms: to see customer behavior and engagement across different channels
By using these tools you can see your revenue channels and make data driven decisions to optimise your marketing.
However, relying on customer self reporting can be inaccurate. Customers may not always remember how they found your business or they may attribute their discovery to a different source. So multiple tracking tools and methods are required.
For example using UTM parameters with Google Analytics 4 can show you exactly where your traffic and conversions are coming from.
Strong lead tracking tools like CRM systems can bridge the gap between your SEO and revenue. These tools can help you:
- See the progress of leads from organic traffic
- Make sure every potential customer is accounted for
- Understand the correlation between your SEO and revenue
- Make data driven decisions for marketing campaign optimisation
Therefore, for service-based business what we found is the best way to measure leads is tracking the number of people who contacted your business either through submitting a contact form or by calling you.
This will give you a good proportion of how well SEO is doing and it can enable you to determine an ROI for this type of service.
Asking Customers Directly
By asking a question like “How did you hear about us?” in your customer interactions you can gather qualitative data that complements your quantitative tracking. This will help you see which channels are working and refine your SEO accordingly.
However, customer self reporting may not always be accurate. Customers may not always remember the exact source or attribute their discovery to a different channel.
Even if they can correlate that they found your business from ‘Google’, a lot of them will not be able to distinguish between paid and organic results.
Below you can see an example of Google’s SERP which consists of paid, local (google maps) and organic results. If you are an experienced marketer you would easily understand the difference between the three, however, if you are not, it’s unlikely that you know (or care) whether you clicked on an ad or a local map to reach out your business.
So why does this even matter? Well if you are paying for both Google Ads and SEO you want to be able to distinguish which channel is generating more leads so you can determine your overall marketing ROI.
What we found is the best way to get a more accurate picture of where your leads are coming from is to use contact forms and call tracking softwares on your website. These methods are very accurate at tracking the pages that they visited you and made the enquiry or call and what keywords they utilised to find you.
Common Metrics To Measure SEO Results
When evaluating the success of your SEO, there are several key metrics to focus on. These metrics will give you insight into different aspects of your SEO and allow you to make data driven decisions and optimise for better results. Below are the ones we identified as the most important in their perspective order:
- Leads
- Tracking Organic Traffic
- Monitoring Keyword Rankings
- Evaluating Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Measuring Conversions from Organic Traffic
- Calculating ROI for SEO Efforts
Leads
Leads are the lifeblood of service-based businesses. Unlike e-commerce stores that can directly measure sales, service-based businesses rely heavily on lead generation to predict customer acquisition and ROI. As such, tracking leads becomes a vital part of gauging SEO success.
As we mentioned above, by tracking the calls and enquiries to your website we can measure how many people are contacting you and calling you. Assuming you are getting a good quality of leads this should translate in more business and will give you an overview of the performance of your SEO campaign.
This type of measurement is more reliable than tracking your organic traffic or keywords you are ranking for. However, lead relevance is key. Not all leads are created equal and focusing on high value traffic can improve your SEO results.
By targeting keywords that attract potential customers who are genuinely interested in your services you can increase the chances of conversion. This is where lead quality trumps quantity.
Lead measurement trumps traffic and rankings. Having a lot of site visitors is good but it’s the quality of those visitors that drives business growth. Using tools like Google Analytics you can track your site visitors behaviour and identify leads with a higher chance of conversion. This allows for a more targeted approach to your SEO.
High-value traffic is the backbone of successful search engine optimization campaigns. By focusing on attracting and nurturing leads that are more likely to turn into paying customers, you can maximize the return on your SEO investments.
This involves not only optimizing your website for search engines but also ensuring that the content resonates with your target audience through technical SEO.
In summary tracking leads is not just about numbers but about understanding the journey of your potential customers. By focusing on lead relevance and high value traffic you can forecast ROI better and optimise your SEO for better results. This holistic approach means your SEO is not just driving traffic but contributing to real business growth.
Tracking Organic Traffic
Tracking organic traffic is like having a window into your SEO success. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is your best friend in this, you can track website visits from unpaid search results across multiple search engines including Google and Bing. This is key to measuring the effectiveness of your SEO in driving traffic to your site.
One of the benefits of GA4 is it can track daily organic searches. Go to ‘Audience > Overview’ and select the ‘Organic Traffic’ segment to see how many users are finding your site through organic search. Daily tracking helps you to spot trends and make timely adjustments to your SEO.
GA4 also allows you to measure the impact of organic traffic on conversions. By setting the secondary dimension to ‘Landing page + query string’ and looking at the ‘Conversions’ column you can see how organic traffic is contributing to your overall conversion rates. This data is super valuable to see which pages and keywords are driving the most conversions.
In addition, GA4 also allows you to compare organic traffic data across different periods. This means you can measure your SEO performance over time and make changes. Also filtering organic traffic by location can help you see where your visitors are coming from and potential new markets.
Connecting GA4 with the free Google Search Console offers the following benefits:
- Track organic traffic and see which keywords are driving traffic to your site
- Refine your keyword strategy and improve your search engine rankings
- Continuously monitor and analyze your organic traffic to ensure your SEO efforts are aligned with your business goals and delivering the desired results.
Although organic traffic is a good way to measure your SEO campaign, keep in mind that this can sometimes not lead to conversions. Hence, measuring leads tends to give you always a more robust picture.
Monitoring Keyword Rankings
Monitoring keyword rankings is important to understand your website’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). High keyword rankings means your website is relevant to specific search queries and visible and can drive traffic. So monitoring keyword rankings is a key part of any SEO strategy.
Keep in mind that initially, your business may not be ranking for any keywords at all. Then over time and as part of your SEO efforts you should see an improvement in this KPI.
Using third-party rank tracking tools like Semrush Position Tracking can provide detailed insights into your keyword performance. These tools allow you to:
- Set up campaigns that track your keyword rankings daily and automatically
- Get a clear picture of your SEO progress over time
- Keep an eye on the shifts in search positions for your target keywords
- Spot both opportunities and challenges in your SEO endeavors
Keyword rankings are directly correlated to SEO and search rankings. The higher you rank for relevant keywords the more traffic you will get. This in turn can lead to more leads and conversions. Using tools like SEMrush Keyword Research you can see what keywords your competitors are ranking for and refine your own keyword strategy.
Tracking both long-tail and short-tail keywords is important to get a holistic view of your SEO performance. Long-tail keywords are more specific and have lower search volume but higher conversion rates.
Short-tail keywords can drive a lot of traffic but have lower conversion rates because they are broader. Balancing both types of keywords ensures you cover your target audience comprehensively.
However, it’s important to note that ranking for irrelevant keywords or ones that don’t have a strong commercial intent are not going to really impact your overall revenue so this metric alone should be worth considering.
Evaluating Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a key metric in SEO, it’s the percentage of users who click on your website from the search engine results page (SERP). A high CTR means your titles and meta descriptions are doing a good job of grabbing users attention and enticing them to visit your site.
CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions and multiplying by 100. Google Search Console is a great tool to track CTR, it gives you data on the percentage of clicks from search results to a specific page. This data will help you see which pages are doing well and which need improvement.
A low CTR can negatively impact your search engine rankings, it’s a signal to search engines that your site might not be meeting user expectations. To increase your CTR you need to optimize your title tags and meta descriptions. This means following the character count guidelines to avoid truncation in search results and adding call to actions (CTAs).
Looking at the top ranking SERPs can give you ideas on how to optimize your meta tags with call to actions. Split testing different versions of title tags and meta descriptions can help you find the best combination to increase CTR. Including keywords in your meta tags can also attract more users to click on your page over competitors.
In summary, evaluating and optimizing CTR is an ongoing process that requires attention to detail and strategy. Using tools like Google Search Console and following best practices you can increase user engagement and drive more traffic to your site and ultimately your SEO.
Measuring Conversions from Organic Traffic
Measuring conversions from organic traffic is key to understanding how your SEO is driving revenue. Setting up conversion tracking in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) allows you to track all conversions on your site that earn revenue, giving you a clear view of SEO ROI.
This involves tagging specific events as conversions and using filters to view organic search traffic.
To track conversions in GA4, you need to:
- Create custom conversion events
- Specify conditions for these events
- These events can include actions like purchases, lead generation, and form submissions, each tied to business goals
Tracking these conversion events will give you insights on how organic traffic is driving business growth.
Organic conversions are the range of actions visitors can take on your site, like checking out, signing up or subscribing to a service.
These actions are key to business growth and engagement. Using the ‘Conversions’ report in Google Analytics you can track these conversions and compare organic search traffic to other channels. Combine this with data from Google Search Console and you have a full view of your SEO.
Tracking new and returning user conversion rates will help you optimize your landing pages and overall SEO conversion rates. Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by unique visits. By looking at this data you can see which pages are doing well and which need optimization.
In summary, setting up and tracking conversions from organic traffic is key to tying your SEO efforts to revenue. Using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console you can get valuable insights to your SEO and make data driven decisions to optimize and succeed.
Calculating ROI for SEO Efforts
Calculating ROI for SEO is key to measuring campaign profitability and making informed decisions. ROI measures the total profit from your SEO investment and justifies the resources you’re allocating to SEO. But calculating SEO ROI has its challenges:
- the time lag between the investment period and the return period
- the difficulty in accurately attributing conversions and revenue to specific SEO efforts
- the need to consider both short-term and long-term impacts of SEO on business performance
Despite the challenges, you should track and measure SEO ROI to optimize your SEO and get the most out of your investment.
One way of doing is as per the chart we included above to take the following metrics into account. First include a primary keyword (in that case we used ‘how to lose weight’). Use a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs to find the total search volume.
Once you have that metric you should have the AOV or average lead value. With that information in mind we can proceed to our calculation. Let’s use the example from below:
AOV: $50
The average CTR depending on how well you are tracking for that specific keyword is as per the chart. So let’s say you are ranking #1.
You would get 30% of the total search volume as clicks (177,150). From there you have to include the PTL (prospect to lead conversion rate) which for most websites ranges from 1-5%. In this example to be conservative we used a 2.9%.
Then we track your ILC (Inbound to Lead Conversion) which will depend on your sales conversion. And the final month is to multiply your AOV to the ILC which in that first example gets you $13,250 monthly revenue.
This tends to be quite a pretty accurate formula.
User engagement is a key factor that affects ROI metrics. High user engagement means visitors are finding value in your content, resulting in higher conversion rates and better ROI. You can also track cost per acquisition (CPA) using Google Analytics to see the total cost of acquiring new customers via organic search.
Businesses typically measure SEO ROI on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis due to the long-term nature of SEO strategies. This helps in understanding the cumulative impact of SEO efforts over time.
In summary, calculating ROI for SEO efforts is crucial for understanding the profitability of your campaigns. Measuring the impact of SEO strategies and measure SEO performance become possible by monitoring user engagement and utilizing tools such as Google Analytics, justifying investments, and making informed decisions towards greater success.
How We Measure SEO Results At eWebsites
At eWebsites we believe in always using call tracking software and the best in class tools to track the ROI of your SEO efforts. We consider a lead when someone either submits a contact form, calls you or books an appointment.
With some of the latest trends with AI we are now able to sync with the business owner and let us tell us what a ‘good lead is’ so the machine can use it when tracking the conversions.
Unlike most other agencies out there that just track vanity kpi’s and numbers, we ensure to give you the holistic picture so you have a clear understanding of your SEO efforts and overall ROI. If you’re wondering how to measure SEO results effectively, our comprehensive approach ensures that every aspect of your SEO campaign is accounted for and optimised.
To see how we have helped business generate more qualified leads and increase their sales, check out some of our case studies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is measuring revenue important for SEO?
Measuring revenue is important for SEO because it connects SEO efforts to business growth, demonstrating the tangible benefits of SEO strategies and justifying the investment.
How can service-based businesses track leads effectively?
To track leads effectively, service-based businesses can utilize CRM systems and tools such as Google Analytics to monitor lead relevance and high-value traffic, ensuring that no potential customer goes unnoticed.
What tools can be used to track organic traffic?
You can use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Google Search Console to track organic traffic and gain detailed insights into website visits from unpaid search results. These tools are powerful and essential for understanding your website’s performance.
Why is monitoring keyword rankings crucial for SEO?
Monitoring keyword rankings is crucial for SEO because it helps assess website visibility, identify opportunities and challenges, and refine content strategies for improved performance.
How is ROI for SEO efforts calculated?
ROI for SEO efforts is calculated by subtracting the cost of investment from the gain and dividing the result by the cost of investment. This formula helps assess the profitability of SEO campaigns and justifies the resources used.
