The results contain many great questions, challenges, and roadblocks that SEOs face today with the difficulty to prove ROI. As I was reading the 2017 Moz Blog readership survey, a common thread stood out to me: there are disconnects on fundamental topics between SEOs and clients and/or bosses. Since I work at an agency, I’ll use “client” through the rest of this article; if you work in-house, replace that with “boss.”

My client doesn’t understand the value of SEO and it’s difficulty to prove ROI in a short term.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and it’s value is unmatched as influence on organic search grows. SEO has become more prominent in 2018 than it has ever been before. While researching some figures from Rand’s write up on the state of organic search at the end of 2017.

• Year after year, from the period of January 2017 – October 2017 has 13% more search volume than the same months in 2016.
• That 13% represents 54 billion more queries, which is just about the total number of searches Google did, worldwide, in 2003.

While looking into the value organic search while judging the difficulty to prove ROI, top organic search rankings bring in the most qualified visitors (targeted customer) than any other digital marketing channel including direct mail, telephone sales, radio advertising, and others. To simplify this more people are searching online for services & products than ever before. How do we as SEOs grow organic traffic you may ask? By making sure our websites are up to date with the current coding techniques and ranking needs which lead to becoming discoverable by Google, Bing, & Yahoo.

When we first started out almost 8 years ago in SEO, we used to think seo was able to be calculated by average CTR X CPC with estimated Conversion Value to show SEO Profitability. However what most companies fail to understand is SEO builds the value of the domain and individual website pages. Not just for the variable “Money Keyword Phrases” at this current time, but actual value for the website itself. This is something that is hard to explain and most have difficulty to prove ROI, especially to someone who is used to calculating lead cost with conversion rates in order to decide in a direction or marketing technique. This is why so many companies online rely on adword, social, influencer campaigns rather than organic SEO.

A seo consultants job is to effect positive change for the client, by DA (domain authority), PA (page authority), LV (link value), Onsite Audits, Keyword Rankings, & Content Quality. We know first and foremost we need to get our clients seen online by ranking for competitive keyword phrases, and then ensure people take action once they land on the page.

But unfortunately what it takes sometimes to get the sign-off from the boss is to predict an ROI for the SEO Campaign. In fact, it’s expected in most cases today, this can be a dead on arrival factor. If your reading this as a SBO (small business owner) please take a moment to understand how this type of request forces the company to guesstimate, and if that company is new to the industry, may cause you to question the value of seo if their benchmarks are missed. Here’s how that conversation process could look simplified:

• Organic Traffic = Search Volume X CTR (click through rate)
• Number of Conversions = Conversion Rate X Organic Traffic
• ($) Dollar Value = Organic Traffic X # Conversions X Avg Conversion Value ($ Value for that client)

Don’t get discouraged if you find yourself receiving an SEO Proposal based on this information from another SEO Company, but understand that if your requesting this to proceed, and experienced company may make very conservative estimates. Or they will try and get the sale by showing you an unrealistic ROI hoping to close the client.

NOTE: Companies with PPC, SMM, & EMAIL marketing can specifically calculate the profitability of a campaign based on the information listed above.

If you find yourself with this outcome above, don’t get frustrated, especially if they take your call and don’t complete any research ahead of time. Just hang up the phone and reach out to another SEO Company that currently ranks on page one.

Most companies use proposals like these to increase the sense of profitability and build trust with your company. This is purely a sales tactic to get you on board with their company, we used to try and articulate value this way years ago. True be told though, proper SEO can’t be simplified into an equation like this. The factors of value stem far beyond the basic functions listed above, some of those are listed below:

• DA = Domain Authority (the estimated value of the domain based on it historical data, trust factors, and relationships)
  • The overall value of the domain and it authority are far more important than the specific keywords it is used towards currently. Your “Money Keywords” can change over time and vary based on Google Trends, or minor changes over the years to your niche market. Having a solid DA will allow you to edit your onsite targeted keywords without large delays.
• PA = Page Authority (the estimated value of the specific page based on it historical data, trust factors, and relationships)
  • Like with Domain Authority your “Money Keywords” may change over time within your niche market. Having a solid PA will allow you to edit your onsite targeted keywords on category pages without large delays in rank changes within your niche.

Contact a reputable SEO Firm for a complete Website Audit. If you are finding it hard to pin point the source, don’t waste valuable time. Especially if you may have made the changes, and are unsure of the solution. Every crawl by the search engine will hinder your ranking abilities. Click Here to submit your details and receive a call from us at SEO Gazelle a local Florida SEO Company!