Tired of constantly defending your SEO budget to the C-suite? This new approach can help you attribute your company’s revenue growth to your SEO efforts.
Convert SEO From a Cost Center Into a Measurable Revenue Generator
I want to receive the latest search news and updates from SEJ. Send me actionable insights from some of the SEO industry’s leading experts.
By clicking the “Sign Up” button, I agree and accept the Content Agreement and Privacy Policy of Alpha Brand Media. Please check your inbox for our confirmation email.
Are you tired of constantly defending your SEO budget to the C-suite?
On November 4, I moderated a Search Engine Journal webinar presented by Andreas Dzumla, CEO and Co-founder, Longtail UX.
He walked through a new approach to attributing your company’s revenue growth to your SEO efforts.
Here’s a recap of the presentation.
One of the biggest challenges for SEO professionals is measuring your return on investment.
If you can’t demonstrate your ROI, your budget and your role are at risk. It doesn’t have to be that way.
In uncertain times like these, your company’s C-suite wants to hear new insights and achieve quick wins.
You should be able to:
For many companies, SEO still seems to get little to no respect compared to other marketing channels – especially paid search.
There’s a huge pot of money in PPC advertising.
In 2019, total worldwide search advertising amounted to $136 billion.
It is easier for paid search teams to use lots of automation tools for optimizing and managing paid search campaigns.
Because of the full transparency in measuring ROI down to search query level, efficient budget decisions can be made.
But what about organic search?
While the majority of clicks on SERPs go to organic listings, proving its value has proven to be a challenge.
Historically, SEO lacks reliable automation tools for managing large-scale campaigns.
It is also hard to measure its ROI which then leads to constrained budgets.
Since Google took away keyword-level analytics data in 2013, SEO pros had found work-arounds to calculating SEO ROI.
Here are just some a few of them.
Comparing your organic traffic from the current year to the previous year in Google Analytics is one of the options that SEO pros resorted to.
The downside is that:
You can also do a year-on-year comparison in GSC, however:
Subscribing to SEO platforms is often costly and the data is not the most reliable either.
It also takes a lot of work to separate brand and non-brand keyword data.
In this approach, you’d create landing pages and:
But how fast can you create 100,000 dynamic landing pages?
Here are a few steps you can take to measure SEO ROI.
This unlocks the real value of organic search that’s not related to brand searches.
It also serves as a basis for calculating ROI over time (i.e., Investment vs. YoY changes).
Say you already have a strong brand with loyal customers, what about the customers that are ready-to-buy the products you sell, but aren’t looking for you?
Look beyond your branded market share and tap into a new revenue opportunity in your uncaptured category.
Hundreds of thousands of specific organic search keyword opportunities are hidden in plain sight in Google Ad Search term reports, with:
And for most of these, Google Keyword Planner tells you there is zero search volume.
When you create new pages addressing your keyword gaps, you are providing a halo into your product categories.
Doing this will help your brand:
You will need to create new landing pages to address your keyword gaps.
Doing this at scale is possible using solutions available in the market which enable you to:
A solution like Longtail UX allows you to do all this and more.
Here’s how it works.
Creating ‘Smart Pages’
Longtail UX creates “Smart Pages” that organize your content in the way new customers expect to find it:
These pages also work within your existing website structure.
Creating ‘Smart Links’
Longtail UX then dynamically interlinks your “Smart Pages” within the website.
It is calculated and updated based on the platform’s proprietary algorithms.
This further enhances total website SEO performance through improved contextual interlinking of website topics.
Check out the SlideShare below.
Have you checked your website’s health lately? Your website might look great on the surface, but have you checked deeper? Join our upcoming webinar on Wednesday, October 20 at 2 p.m. ET and learn how you can optimize your website health beyond the classic SEO tactics.
Image Credits
All screenshots taken by author, November 2020
Managing Partner / Owner at Search Engine Journal with over 15 years experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social … [Read full bio]
Get our daily newsletter from SEJ’s Founder Loren Baker about the latest news in the industry!