Most probably you are aware of Search Engine Optimization, heard about it, or maybe you’re an expert in it. If you don’t know what is Search Engine Optimization yet, let’s explain it shortly. Basically, SEO is the act of ranking your website on top of an organic search results page (SERP) with a specific search term (one or more keywords) in a search engine; such as Google.
Now you would say that is cool, but what’s in it for me. Why website owners, business owners, and most companies are so obsessed about it? Is it a prestigious thing or do they make real money out of it?
Before you start your SEO journey, we should tell you no it’s not a prestigious thing; it’s a real money-making investment for your business or website. Whether you are selling a product, providing a service, or you’re an affiliate.
But, you must know first, is it worth it to my business or website to invest my time to start SEO or invest my money by hiring an agency or an expert? If you are wondering “Yes“, sometimes SEO is not the best practice. Sometimes you need to go on a different route.
Any business offering a low-end/high-volume product or service; (such as stationary, emergency plumbers, or could be personal assistants) will be generating a better ROI with a paid search campaign through Google Ads than SEO. For the simple reason that under these scenarios, users want the fastest and most prominent search results. Which will always be the ads on the top of results.
People use search engines to find things quickly or to find a reliable source. In other words, quickly means paid ads on top of results; and trustworthy sources mean top organic search results.
So you now can figure out whether or not SEO is a great tool for your business to multiply your sales.
Let’s get to the point of how to calculate the SEO worth to your business.
6 Easy steps to translate the value of SEO to your business
Take an example. Let’s say:
- You’re a construction company serving the London area.
- From each new customer you bring on board, you expect to make about £10,000 in revenue.
- You’ve decided to target the “money-making” keywords in your sector.
Step 1 – Pick a keyword
You need to choose one or two keywords, we are talking about attractive ones. This means you need to find out which are the most related keywords to your business, in specific the ones that are used in most questions related to your business.
These are straightforward keywords, If you have been running your business for a while, you may easily locate them. In our example, it would be something like ‘construction london’.
Step 2 – Find the BIG fish
Google your keyword and identify which competitor website appears most prominently in the organic search results.
Here we are not talking about the ads on the top or “The Top 10” websites. We need to lookup for the very first competitor website in the construction industry. As it appears below:
Step 3 – Start inspecting using SEMRush
Enter the website of that competitor at www.semrush.com in the domain overview box. Most probably you will be using the free version of SEMRush, which allows you to use this feature, or you can subscribe for a 7-day trial, but make sure to stop your subscription before it ends to avoid the extra charges.
Click the “View details” button located just below the “Top Organic Keywords” section of the results.
Now this will allow us to see which search terms or keywords that this website that we’ve put in the search bar is currently ranking for in Google, in which positions of those keywords, and what’s the volume or the monthly traffic searching for those keywords. Where our keyword appears as below.
Keeping a note of the amount of total traffic coming to this website on a monthly basis. In this case, the direct competitor’s total traffic is 440, and that is out of all the keywords.
Step 4 – Estimate the Monthly Traffic Volume for the Keyword
The total traffic number doesn’t reflect our chosen keyword traffic. Therefore, we need to find out how much traffic our keyword get this website on a monthly basis.
Take a look over the Traffic. (Traffic Percentage) column, and take note of the keyword traffic percentage which in our case is 14.54; this is a percentage of total traffic. With a simple calculation you can get the actual traffic from this keyword:
Total traffic multiplied by keyword traffic percentage = keyword actual organic traffic
In our example, it is as below:
440 X 14.54% = 64
Step 5 – Calculate how many additional clients you’d get if you were Google’s top result.
Another calculation is required here with the use of your actual conversion rate; if you don’t know your conversion rate yet, you can use 5% as an average.
Multiply the number of potential clients you would get from that keyword after being number 1 in Google by your conversion rate.
In our scenario, 5% of 64 = 3 assured new customers to your service, if you can beat the competitor website to the number one Google organic result for just this keyword.
Step 6 – Determine Additional Revenue from Ranking First in Google for the Keyword
Multiply the number of new customers by the average customer lifetime value. This is what you get from a solid SEO plan for just one keyword.
In our example of a construction company in London – you will get 3 multiplied by £10,000 that’s an extra £30,000 / month for just a single keyword.
Now implement the same process on your own keywords and competitors for you to see if SEO is worth it or not for your business. You should be salivating by this point since, with an effective SEO plan, you can expect to rank first for dozens, if not hundreds, of profitable keywords, increasing your return on investment in SEO massively.