You’ve started a brand new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program; maybe you’ve built the perfect in-house team or partnered with a brand new agency. The next step is to set your KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, for the program.
Sure, we’ve all heard about SEO keywords and links, but there’s more to it, right? How do you know you’re getting the most out of your SEO program and is it actually impacting your bottom line?
Today, I’ll be going over the top 3 SEO KPIs you should be tracking, regardless of whether your SEO is running in-house or with a partner.
1. Revenue from Organic Search & ROI
No matter your business model and current business challenges, you’re here to make money at the end of the day. Whether you’re an eCommerce business or in B2B lead generation, you likely invested in your Organic Search program to impact your business’s bottom line.
Maybe you’re looking to impact customer retention, increase your average order value or drive new customer acquisition. But how do you get from keywords & metadata to dollars?
Seer’s SEO ROI Calculator makes this model simple, and it’s one you can apply no matter what your business model or challenges.
However, if you’re not in an eCommerce business or have clear AOVs, you’ll need to settle on a value of each lead or conversion, which brings me to my next KPI.
2. Conversions & Their Lead Value
On your business’s website, you likely either have a way for a customer to purchase from your site directly, or a contact form to get a user to take the next step and enter into your lead funnel. But what value does that take? The first step is to understand what important actions you want your audience to take on your site, and assigning a dollar value to each of those in your website Analytics platform.
- What value does a contact form submission hold?
- What % chance does that lead form submission turn into a prospect, and further a marketing qualified lead? What dollar value does that take?
- What % chance does that marketing qualified lead turn into an opportunity or closed customer?
- What lifetime value does a closed opportunity present?
Then you’ll be able to say, “In the last 6 months, our organic search channel drove 5 lead form submissions, all worth a potential $100,000 if closed, for a total of $500,000 in the pipeline from organic search.”
At the end of this exercise, you’ll have a clear path from a user who found your business via organic search to what value they present as a closed opportunity. You can then calculate the ROI from your efforts by also taking into consideration the cost of the SEO program.
3. Organic Visibility
While tracking your SEO Revenue and ROI from site conversions are the most important SEO KPIs, keeping an eye on your overall organic visibility is also important.
Results, including conversions, revenue and ultimately seeing an ROI from SEO takes time. It’s a longer-term strategy that could take weeks, months, or even years to see the impact on your bottom line depending on your industry. Monitoring your organic visibility is a way to determine if you’re making progress.
Organic visibility can be made up of the following:
- Organic Traffic
- Organic Impressions from Google Search Console
- Organic Keyword Rankings
As you build a strategy that supports creating quality content that aids your audience in solving their needs, monitoring your growth for appropriate keywords, impressions and traffic can be good leading indicators that you’re on the right track.
However, be careful of only monitoring organic visibility in a bubble. You could see these metrics going up, but could in turn be targeting the wrong audience, who may never convert or become a customer of yours.
Next Steps
Monitoring revenue, ROI, conversions, and organic visibility are all important SEO KPIs to track for your SEO program. Are you ready to discuss your SEO KPIs or just getting started? Reach out to us today to learn more!
