How To Predict Your SEO Success: A 5-Step Formula

Before you launch your next marketing campaign, wouldn’t it help to expect how much traffic and revenue you’ll bring in?

After all, why promote a product or service without first understanding its market potential?

The ability to estimate your ROI is vital to making smart decisions for your business – whether determining how to allocate your marketing budget or selecting the best SEO keywords for your brand.

On Feb 15, I moderated a webinar with Sabrina Hipps, VP of Partner Development, and Jeremy Rivera, Director of Content Analysis at CopyPress.

Rivera and Hipps demonstrated how to predict the outcome of your next campaign using a simple mathematical formula that analyzes specific keywords and forecasts your SEO results.

Here is a summary of the webinar. To access the entire presentation, complete the form.

But first, why is return on investment (ROI) important?

Why Think About ROI?

You need to think about ROI to:

• Justify your in-house budget.
• Improve your agency/freelance pitch.
• Leverage SEO data as business intelligence.

[Learn how to calculate ROI] Instantly access the webinar →

5 Steps To Forecast Your SEO Potential

Here’s how to determine the ROI for your next SEO campaign:

Step 1: Determine Your “Keyword” Universe

To get valuable keyword insights, talk to people!

• Check-in with your customer support team: Review support tickets and see what new users don’t understand about your product. What problems are they trying to solve?
• Listen to sales calls: What winning arguments and closing tactics get prospects to become clients?
• Connect with current/past customers: Use surveys and follow-up conversations to discover what challenges your product/service solved for them.

[Discover three ways to gather and combine your keyword data] Instantly access the webinar →

Step 2: Get Traffic Volumes

Once you have your keywords, you can come up with a guesstimate of potential traffic.

Consider the limitations of data, attribution, and organic click-throughs when qualifying your data.

[Learn how to estimate keyword traffic volume] Instantly access the webinar →

Step 3: Define What A Conversion Is For You

Once you’ve got a guesstimate of your potential search volume, keywords, and traffic estimate, define what a conversion means for you.

This may differ between ecommerce and lead-generation-based sites.

[Learn the difference] Instantly access the webinar →

Step 4: Determine How Good Your Sales People Are

Not every lead turns into a customer. That’s why it’s crucial to consider your sales close rate when forecasting ROI.

You’ll also need to consider factors like one-time revenue or lifetime value.

To forecast your SEO ROI, follow these steps:

1. Gather the keyword list.
2. Get search volumes.
3. Multiply by organic CTR = potential traffic.
4. Find conversion rate.
5. Multiply traffic = conversions.
6. Find the close lead rate
7. Multiply by conversions = potential sales.
8. Find revenue per sale.
9. Multiply sales by revenue.

[See this formula in action] Instantly access the webinar →

Step 5: Make Your Forecast Reasonable

To make your forecast reasonable, know how you perform through content analysis, untapped keywords, and competition analysis on search engine results pages (SERPs).

The future is in your hands. Knowing that there is a volume of potential traffic and rankings and conversion and revenue can help you make a business argument.

[Slides] How To Predict Your SEO Success: A 5-Step Formula To Help You Win

Here’s a copy of the presentation:

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Smarter Ads: 5 Cost-Efficient Ways To Get Higher Return On Paid Media

In this webinar, Tucker Stoffers, Senior Director of Growth Marketing at Divvy, will provide actionable insights and key strategies for you to grow your business while getting more bang for your buck.

Image Credits

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal