SEO helps boost your search engine performance, increasing traffic to your website. You use a variety of strategies such as optimizing keyword and backlinking so Google better recognizes your website.
But how do you know if your SEO efforts are working? Another crucial but overlooked SEO aspect is measuring your SEO results. But many SEO beginners don’t know how to do this.
There are a variety of ways to measure your SEO performance and businesses should utilize every method in the book.
When conducting an SEO analysis, start with your ROI. Here are 9 ways to track your SEO ROI.
1. Check Your Backlinks
Linking is one of the best SEO strategies you can use. The website that gets the most backlinks will perform in a Google search.
But how do you know you’re receiving lots of backlinks? The best way to do this is by purchasing SEO analysis software. But some of these products are expensive, costing you thousands every year.
You’ll make your ROI when you can visibly see your website ranking high in Google results.
Still unsure you want to spend the money? There are free ways to measure backlinks before investing in an expensive platform.
2. Check Your Traffic
An increase in website traffic is a good sign. While all fingers may point to improved SEO performance, your website traffic increase may be due to different factors – especially if you’re running multiple website marketing campaigns.
How do you test SEO-specific reasons for a website traffic increase? Start with your keywords. Many services offer keyword analytics that shows how many people search for keywords and how often they land on your website or SERP.
3. Achieving Goals and Campaigns
As a marketer, you probably include goals in your campaign summary. You can look back through your campaigns and compare how many of them were successful.
Did you not detail your goals in past digital marketing campaigns? Try and find other ways you reached success through past campaigns. This can include more social media followers and email marketing conversions.
4. Ranking for Specific Keywords
The best keywords to use in your content have a high search volume and low competition and keyword difficulty (the number of backlinks required to rank).
If you’re already using keywords in this category, it’s time to discover if you’re ranking for them.
Fortunately, many free or cheap keyword tools help view not only the performance of the keyword in general but also how your website is ranking for them.
If you notice you’re one of the top results for a specific keyword, you easily made your ROI.
5. Your SEO Performance Versus Your Competition
Many marketers are so engulfed by their own SEO efforts, they forget about other SEO metrics they need to track, such as their competitor’s.
Comparing your SEO performance to your competition will help identify ways that you’re excelling or areas you need to improve.
You can also find parallels that you and your competitors are using. Let’s say you both use the same keywords in your content. Find other high-performing keywords and step your leg up on your SEO efforts.
6. Create a Google Alert for Your Website
Google Alerts sends you emails when a specific name is mentioned on a website.
This is a great way to check and see who’s backlinking and quoting your page.
You can create as many Google alerts as you want. First, create a Google Alert for your company name. Then, create an alert for any SERP you’re campaigning.
The best part: this service is free! You can easily make your ROI because you’re not spending a penny.
7. Checking Your Sales and Revenue
Ideally, your SEO will impact your revenue stream. While this isn’t always the case, you can still keep tabs on your sales and revenue increases while hosting a major SEO campaign.
Even if your sales aren’t directly linked to your SEO efforts, you can still view how much revenue you’re gaining versus how much you’re spending on your SEO campaigns.
If you want to specifically track revenue from your SEO efforts, first identify your SEO efforts. Compare the buyer’s behavior.
Let’s say you’re trying to target a specific product page. You write a blog that internal links to the product page. You can track how many buyers landed on the blog first, clicked the page, and bought the product.
8. Checking Your Branded Search
We discussed using general high-performing keywords. But what about your branded keywords? Your branded keywords are keywords that include a term related to your company. This can be your company name or a specific product.
Branded search is usually performed by reoccurring customers. This is useful if you’re tailoring your marketing campaign toward customer retention.
Use the same keyword tools to track branded keywords. You can also set up a campaign to promote keyword branding.
If your efforts are falling short, you should take a look at your sales and your branding efforts.
Do you notice customers only buy one product and then stop supporting your business? Maybe this calls for more marketing strategies for customer retention.
9. Tracking Conversions and Conversion Rates
At the end of the day, tracking your conversions is one of the most useful ways to monitor your SEO ROI. These rates measure how many website visitors become buying customers.
To give this metric an SEO-focused approach, first identify the page or keyword you’re targeting. And follow the customer’s journey to see if and how long they take to purchase a product.
Conversions don’t have to point to sales. They can be any desired action. This includes signing up for newsletters or subscribing to your website.
Track Your SEO ROI Today!
There are different ways to track your SEO success. But doing so will ensure you’re making your SEO ROI.
Are you not noticing the SEO results you want? Take a look at our SEO services!
