You’ve kick-started your local SEO plans.

It’s been a couple of months, and everything seems to be on track.

You’re getting more calls, your sales are going up, your SERP rankings are improving.

Sounds like everything’s going well, right?

Seemingly.

Everything’s going well seemingly because you haven’t crunched the most critical numbers that confirm whether you’re doing as well in practice as you think you are on paper.

Many businesses have a habit of routinely calculating their ROI for important projects.

Somehow, they forget that local SEO campaigns also need to be monitored similarly.

It’s possible that you’re overestimating how well your plans are doing.

In actuality, your return on investment (ROI) on local SEO may not be what you want.

In this blog, we’ll dig deeper.

Our local SEO specialists will walk you through

1. How to calculate the ROI of SEO,
2. How to set up conversion tracking to measure ROI, and
3. How to get a higher ROI from SEO.

Grab some coffee, microwave a quick snack, pull out your notes app, and start typing away.

This is your how-to guide for local SEO ROI calculation.

The SEO ROI: The Basics

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of ROI calculation, let’s understand the basics. SEO ROI is a percentage that tells you the amount of return on your local SEO investment.

Think about it. You’re investing in local SEO to improve your rankings, generate more traffic, turn visitors into leads, and grow your business. If you’re pouring more money into your local SEO plans than you’re getting in return, you’re in trouble.

This means that your local SEO efforts aren’t yielding the intended results. The payoff is less than what you’re investing in the campaign. You’re in trouble. There’s a clear imbalance that’s affecting your bottom line.

If you don’t undo the damage, you could easily get into a financial pickle pretty soon.

Calculating the ROI of your local SEO campaign will help you understand exactly how much $$$ is being returned for every cent you’re putting into your strategy.

Using this insight, you can restructure your local SEO campaign, partner with a different company, or start from scratch. And if your SEO ROI is high, consider this a green light. You’re on track!

How to Calculate the ROI on SEO

Alright, let’s get into it. You want to figure out whether you’re making a profit or loss on your local SEO campaign.

What should be your first step?

Start by setting up conversion tracking to measure your ROI.

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that helps track every possible conversion pulling in revenue. Simply put, it’s your best friend. If you run an eCommerce store, use eCommerce tracking to obtain a complete picture of your online transactions and their precise online revenue.

Google Analytics provides comprehensive and accurate data for online returns, so you don’t have to worry about any deviations. If you’re a service provider or run any lead-based business, we recommend setting up conversion goals.

Let’s take a closer look at both of these approaches:

Ecommerce Store

If you want to track revenue from your eCommerce business, follow Google’s guidelines to add eCommerce tracking to your website or app.

Follow the instructions closely and carefully.  Once you turn eCommerce tracking on, you’ll gain access to all the data regarding your online sales.

This includes the following:

• Ecommerce Conversion Rate
• Transactions
• Revenue
• Average Order Value
• Unique Purchases
• Quantity

Use this powerful report to determine how well your eCommerce site is performing.

Collecting this essential data is imperative. It’ll help you calculate your SEO ROI and monitor your performance thoroughly.

Lead-Based Business (Service Provider, etc.)

Collecting revenue generation data is slightly tricky if you don’t generate sales directly through your site. Tricky, but possible!

Open Google Analytics. Go from Admin to View to Goals in Analytics.

It’s time to start setting up goals for every on-site conversion. By goals, we mean every positive action taken on your site. Of course, this won’t include sales.

However, it’ll include actions like requesting a free quote, filling out your “contact us” form, making a phone call to your business, etc.

Figure out a dollar value for these goals. Once you have the numbers ready, enter them in the Goal Details section. Don’t worry about getting the exact values; that’ll be impossible.

Use analytics data to get a good idea of the estimates and continue.

We recommend making the following calculations:

• How many leads are converting into sales?Let’s consider an example. If you’re getting 200 lead forms each month and 100 are becoming customers, you have a 50% conversion rate.
• What is the average value of each sale?If every lead that ends up being converted spends $100, your average value rounds up to $100.
• What is the value of each lead?Calculate this using the following formula:

If you reel in 100 customers and they spend $100 each, you make $10,000. This is the total value of conversions.

Divide it by the original number of leads (200). Every lead from your goal is roughly worth $50.

Conversion Sorting

Make sure you carefully track your conversions for at least a month. This will give you ample data.

Use this to start measuring your local SEO ROI! There’s a very simple way to do this.

Open Google Analytics and access your conversions report by going from Conversions to Multi-Channel Funnels to Assisted Conversions.

Open the Conversions tab to get a complete set of all the conversions on your site.

You can select a specific time frame and sort them accordingly to create specific data sets.

ROI Calculation

Using the information above, measure the ROI of SEO.

Remember, you now know exactly how much revenue your local SEO campaign pulled in during a specific period. Generally, this should be a month or a quarter (don’t choose a full year).

Use this formula to calculate the ROI of SEO:

Let’s consider a set of data.

Hypothetical Revenue Gained: $3,000,000

Hypothetical Cost of Investment: $500,000

[(3,000,000 –500,000) / 500,000] * 100

5 * 100

500%

A 500% lead generation ROI?

Now that’s impressive!If you’re having trouble figuring out how to measure SEO’s ROI, don’t worry.

Obtaining the right set of data, making close estimates, and calculating the final ROI can be slightly tricky if you aren’t familiar with Google Analytics.

At Search Berg, we proudly take the reins. Get in touch with our local SEO specialists to calculate your SEO campaign’s ROI.

We use advanced software systems to track and analyze conversions, make precise calculations, and produce an accurate lead generation and ROI report.

What is a Good ROI for SEO?

Once you’ve calculated your ROI, improving it should be your top priority. And by improving it, we mean increasing it.

Now, there’s no exact science here; there’s no hard-and-fast rule about what your ROI should be. However, there is a general estimate. For every dollar you invest into local SEO, you should get $5 back.

This leaves you with an ROI of 500%.

The higher, the better! However, this is the baseline percentage you should aim for.

How to Get a Higher ROI from SEO

As the costs accumulate, protecting your bottom line can become more and more difficult.

Your SEO ROI will gradually fall, putting you in a difficult spot.

Effective local SEO isn’t always expensive. If you do your research, you can find an affordable local SEO company that delivers impressive results.

At Search Berg, we’re that company. Our local SEO packages are budget-friendly. If you run a small business or recently kick-started your start-up, you can’t afford to invest a big chunk of your money in local SEO.

We help make things easier. Our packages start from as low as $199/month. We also offer a money-back guarantee to make things extra sweet. If you don’t like our services, approach, or results, your money will be back in your bank account before you know it.

We take our work seriously.

Search Berg’s local SEO specialists have one clear goal: improving your online visibility and sales. We help you rank on local SERPs, reel in high-quality local traffic, bag more and more conversions, and make a better profit. This is how SEO can drive sales!

All of this has a direct effect on your ROI. We’re here to do all the work. Are you ready?

This Blog at a Glance

As we wrap up, let’s take a closer look at what we discussed in this blog.

Our SEO experts walked you through the easiest way to calculate the ROI of SEO.

We also helped you understand what lead generation ROI really is, how you can set up conversion tracking to measure ROI on your SEO campaign, and the best way to get a better ROI from SEO.

We’ve covered the basics. Now it’s time to put our plans to the test!

At Search Berg, we offer professional local SEO services to help you get seen by your target audience. We want to make that phone ring!

Let’s make it happen. Hire our local SEO experts to start improving your SEO ROI today. We’re a call away if you need more information!