Hi George,

I second Perry’s suggestion. Good position in SEO is only one dimension of the problem. His methodology will help you figure out the mix. For general ideas on this, refer to literature on A/B split testing in print materials.

Regards

Brian

I’ve successfully used A/B testing for this: Create some pages which are SEO’d (test group) and some which aren’t (control group). Determine marginal conversion/revenue lift of SEO page over other pages – here is your de facto ROI. If your site is CPM ad-serving, determine traffic level lift.

I recommend this method b/c if you show up #1 in google for a search term that doesn’t translate into revenue for you, the SEO did a great job but didn’t bring you in more money!

I think John touched upon an important point here: you need to track something that really matters to the business, such as your conversions. A conversion is normally a sale, though it can be anything: a download, a submitted form, a subscriber.

Google Analytics can track this easily, though you can track your sales using your own payment system.

If anything, you also need to aim at targeted search engine traffic by using the words your customers use. You can learn this from keyword research tools, such as WordTracker.

Links:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

I think the age old axiom, quality over quantity applies here. The number of times your site is displayed in search results won’t be nearly as important as WHERE it is displayed. If your SEO efforts are successful, then your site should be on the first page of listings for the key terms you’ve optimized (ideally in the top 3 or 5 listings overall). Since the number of people that click beyond the first one or two page of listings decreases exponentially, I wouldn’t consider those “free brand impressions” nor a succesful barometer of your SEO efforts. Solid results for the keyterms you deem most important should be your ROI.

Additionally, you should also consider what your desired call-to-action should be once someone clicks through to your site. Do you want them to find a dealer, order a brochure, go to a certain page? Determine that, track the traffic that acheives your desired result and see what correlation there is between that traffic and the keyterms they searched for. You could start seeing some valuable trends.

Hi George,

1) Take your top 50 keywords and rank them in terms of importance (keywords within the industry vertical)
2) Take top 20 results on each keyword and give each URL a weightage according to its position – for example, weightage 1 for appearing in top 5 positions, 2 for top 10, 3 for top 15 and 4 for top 20.
3) Club all the results (50 keywords – 20 URLs each) and sort them. You have the keywords list according to its ranking, and each URL with its weightage score. The list may be in a descending order of numher of times it appears on various keywords. You now have your URL in comparison to other URLs in your vertical, and their exposure on various keywords.
4) You can further add an avg CTR score against each keyword and position based on either your traffic patterns or an avg. assumption. For example, your CTR could be 1% on top 5 results, .75% for positions 5 to 10, .50% for positions 10-15 etc. You can furthermore add the conversion stats to each keyword for your URL and assume similar averages (in terms of registrations) for your competition to know exactly where you stand on the comparison score.

Hope this helps.

Best,

Aashish

Hi George,

1) Take your top 50 keywords and rank them in terms of importance (keywords within the industry vertical)
2) Take top 20 results on each keyword and give each URL a weightage according to its position – for example, weightage 1 for appearing in top 5 positions, 2 for top 10, 3 for top 15 and 4 for top 20.
3) Club all the results (50 keywords – 20 URLs each) and sort them. You have the keywords list according to its ranking, and each URL with its weightage score. The list may be in a descending order of numher of times it appears on various keywords. You now have your URL in comparison to other URLs in your vertical, and their exposure on various keywords.
4) You can further add an avg CTR score against each keyword and position based on either your traffic patterns or an avg. assumption. For example, your CTR could be 1% on top 5 results, .75% for positions 5 to 10, .50% for positions 10-15 etc. You can furthermore add the conversion stats to each keyword for your URL and assume similar averages (in terms of registrations) for your competition to know exactly where you stand on the comparison score.

Hope this helps.

Best,

Aashish