How to Track SEO ROI from SEO Campaigns - Calculating, Tracking, and Measuring ROI of SEO
The digital marketing world is ever evolving. Today, you can have a beautifully designed website, but if you’re not getting a tangible return on your SEO campaign, you’ll end up wasting a lot of money without earning a top spot in search engine results.
This can be incredibly frustrating. Business owners need to master SEO ROI, as this metric can help demonstrate success. It shows whether what they’re paying for is working or not.
For years, I've come across many marketers and business owners who invest a lot of time and money into search engine optimization without a proper SEO strategy and a clear method for measuring SEO success.
They knew their rankings were improving and organic traffic was growing. However, when it came time to justify their budget, they lacked a clear answer.
That's why understanding the ROI of SEO is super important for your business. It helps turn SEO from a mysterious, long-term effort into a quantifiable, revenue-generating machine.
At Sapphire SEO Solutions, we believe that there is no other channel that provides the compounding value of SEO. According to a social media poll conducted by Search Engine Journal, 49% of the respondents said that SEO offers the highest ROI, outperforming traditional marketing channels like email, social media, and paid ads.
SEO shouldn’t just be about traffic and rankings. It should focus on building a revenue-generating asset that is sustainable over the long run, delivering consistent SEO returns year after year.
In this guide, we will go over understanding, tracking, and boosting your seo returns. We'll also cover how to calculate the ROI of SEO and analyze your seo performance.
Whether you're an in-house marketer or work with an SEO services provider, SEO is a great investment, and this guide will provide you with the framework to turn your efforts into measurable profit!
Key Takeaways
In simple words, SEO ROI refers to the returns you get from investing in SEO for your site. Measuring this metric helps you understand whether or not your SEO efforts are working.
Business owners can calculate SEO ROI in four steps: defining revenue and conversions, tracking organic traffic and conversions, calculating SEO costs, and applying the formula.
There are several challenges to calculating SEO ROI, including the attribution problem, time lag, and valuing non-revenue metrics.
What Is SEO ROI?
The first step to a successful SEO investment is to determine what an SEO ROI is.
Simply put, it's the financial return on investment you gain from your SEO efforts. It’s not about ranking for a specific keyword or where your website shows up in search engine rankings.
Instead, SEO ROI is about showing that your organic search efforts are directly contributing to your bottom line.
The key goal for businesses is to ensure a positive ROI. This is when the revenue generated from your organic search traffic and conversions is greater than the investment in SEO.
While SEO ROI may sound pretty straightforward, in my experience, it’s where most businesses struggle, failing to track their costs and returns. This leaves the value of their SEO work open to guesswork.
SEO ROI is a way to prove the direct financial impact of your SEO efforts. It provides a clear metric that shows the value of your campaign. This is crucial for you and the stakeholders, as it helps with making informed decisions.
What Is the Formula to Calculate SEO ROI?
If you want to see the value of your SEO efforts, there is no way around calculating it. Fortunately, there is a formula that you can use.
To help our clients, we like to break down such calculations into core components. This makes the process easy to follow.
Here is the formula that you should use to calculate the ROI of your SEO work:
SEO ROI = (Revenue from Organic Search−Cost of SEO Investment)/Cost of SEO Investment
Now, let’s break this formula down into “cost” and “revenue”.
Calculating Your Costs
To calculate the return on your efforts, you must first calculate your expenses. This includes every dollar spent on SEO.
In my experience, most businesses only think about the most obvious costs, like an agency fee. They also need to consider the cost of investment, which includes the following:
Fixed monthly fees associated with SEO services/monthly salaries of an in-house SEO team
Subscription costs of SEO tools and software
Costs of content creation
Link building expenses
To get an accurate picture of your ROI, you must add all of the above mentioned costs and returns.
Calculating Your Revenue
Quantifying the revenue generated by your SEO efforts is the second important component of SEO ROI. You need to go beyond calculating direct sales from your website.
For many businesses, a conversion is a lead, not a direct purchase. Here is what you must consider when calculating revenue:
E-commerce sales: This refers to the total value of all sales arising from organic search traffic.
Lead generation (B2B, Services): You must assign a monetary value to a lead to calculate the revenue from lead generation.
When working with clients, we like to look at the average customer lifetime value (LTV) and the lead-to-customer conversion rate.
For example, if you know 10% of your leads become paying customers, and the average customer is worth $5,000, each lead is worth $500. This is a great way to accurately calculate the ROI for your SEO lead-generation efforts.
Why Does Measuring the ROI of SEO Matter?
Simply put, it's a direct line to your business's financial health.
While many marketing channels provide benefits like brand awareness and engagement, measuring the ROI of SEO gives you a clear, quantifiable metric that proves its worth. It’s an essential part of any successful seo campaign.
Businesses can’t have an effective SEO strategy without a commitment to measuring results. I’ve seen firsthand how a data-driven approach transforms client relationships.
Instead of making vague promises about "getting on the first page," you can present stakeholders with hard numbers. Here is an example of what I mean by that:
“Our SEO efforts increased organic traffic by 40% last quarter, which translated directly into $50,000 in new revenue."
The above mentioned example not only justifies your budget but also can help secure the resources you need for a more aggressive SEO strategy.
SEO ROI measures the value of your SEO campaigns, enabling you to make smarter decisions. When you know which tactics are driving the highest returns, you can reallocate resources and double down on what’s working.
It’s also crucial to understand that SEO takes time to deliver results. For that reason, it’s important to set expectations. How do you do that when you’re just starting?
Business owners must start measuring ROI from the get-go. It helps you show that even during the early stages, progress is being made and the investment is sound. This builds trust with clients to see the campaign through to its full potential.
How to Calculate the ROI of SEO: 4 Steps to Tracking and Measuring Your SEO Efforts
Before measuring the impact of your SEO efforts, you must start with ensuring proper tracking. To do that, you need Google Analytics 4 (GA4) configured with conversion tracking, and Google Search Console connected to your website.
Once all of the tools are properly set up, follow the steps below to help your clients measure their SEO performance and calculate ROI:
Step 1: Define Your Revenue Goals and Conversions
For an e-commerce site, a conversion could be a sale. But for most businesses, it can be a phone call, an email sign-up, or an online contact form submission. You need to define what a conversion is and figure out how to assign a monetary value to it.
Here is an example to help you accurately measure the financial returns associated with conversions:
If you know that 10% of your email subscribers eventually become paying customers with an average lifetime value of $1,000, each email sign-up is worth $100.
Step 2: Track Your Organic Traffic and Conversions
SEO key performance indicators (KPIs) are super important. They include organic traffic, ranking, and conversion rate.
Here's how to find such data in Google Analytics:
To view organic traffic: Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. From here, you can filter the data to see only search engine traffic.
To view conversions: Navigate to Reports > Engagement > Conversions. This report will show you the number of conversions from all your digital channels, including organic search.
Comparing SEO results to other channels, such as PPC or paid search, can help see the value of search engine optimization for your business.
In addition to that, track the quality of your search traffic, CTR (click-through rate), and search visibility, which is determined by how often your site shows up on the first page of search results.
Step 3: Calculate Your SEO Costs
In this step, you need to account for all expenses related to your SEO budget. This may include agency fees, software subscriptions, and content creation. You’ll need to weigh these costs against the revenue generated by your SEO.
Step 4: Apply the Formula
Now, it's time to bring everything together.
Use the formula provided at the start of this guide to calculate the ROI for your entire campaign. Here’s an example to guide you further:
A conversion for a local plumber is often a phone call or form submission. If each job brings in an average of $300 in revenue, and their SEO efforts generate 150 calls a month, that’s $45,000 in revenue.
Suppose that the plumber’s SEO budget for the month is $5,000. In that case, their ROI would be 8 ($45,000 - $5,000) / $5,000. This means that they are generating $8 for every $1 spent on SEO.
What Is a Good SEO ROI?
According to DesignRush, the average ROI for a comprehensive, high-quality SEO campaign is 748%. However, your actual ROI can vary.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that the ROI of a B2B software company is much different than the ROI of a large e-commerce retailer.
There is no specific percentage or rate that signifies a good ROI. In fact, a good ROI depends on many different factors, including the following:
Business model
Industry
Scale of your initial SEO investment
The main thing to focus on is a positive ROI. Anything beyond that shows how well you’re executing your SEO strategy.
How to Forecast SEO ROI
Before setting a new SEO budget for the month, you need to forecast the potential for success. It is a great way to predict the potential SEO returns from a new seo strategy. Plus, it also shows you’ve done your homework and are ready to justify the investment with data.
Here are the steps that I follow to build a reliable SEO ROI forecast:
Find the right keywords and search terms: There are many keyword research tools you can use, such as Ubersuggest, Semrush, and Ahrefs. You can use any of these tools to find valuable, high-impact keywords. Always look for a mix of keywords, from high-volume to competitive terms, niche, and low-hanging fruit search terms (commercial intent).
Estimate potential organic traffic: Now that you’ve found the target keywords you want to use, use their search volume and your site’s current ranking to estimate how much new organic traffic you could attract. To get a more realistic estimate, benchmark against competitors. This step requires expertise in seo and content creation. Check out our blog on how SEO and content writing services work in 2025 for further guidance.
Project conversions and revenue: Use your existing conversion rates and average lead value to project the number of conversions. Also, forecast the revenue generated from the estimated new traffic. This gives you a tangible number to use for budgeting purposes.
Whether you have an in-house SEO team or are working with a reliable SEO agency like Sapphire SEO Solutions, forecasting ROI is crucial. Investing in SEO shouldn’t be a gamble, and by forecasting, you are setting realistic expectations.
Need better SEO returns? Start applying the right SEO tactics. They can increase your search visibility and show that you’re on the path to online success.
What Are the Challenges of Calculating SEO ROI?
Clients need to know if the investment is worth it. And for SEO professionals, calculating ROI is far from easy. There are many challenges we face when it comes to estimating SEO ROI, some of which include the following:
Challenge 1: Attribution Problem
It can be difficult to figure out if SEO has worked or not in certain situations.
Some customers don’t buy right away. They may find your site through organic search, but later on purchase a product through a paid ad. Should you attribute that sale to SEO or paid marketing campaigns?
The key to solving the attribution problem is to understand what SEO does. Use Google's Analytics 4 to see how organic search helps at different steps. This shows the real value of your SEO work.
Challenge 2: Time Lag
Whether SEO is worth it or not can be hard to prove. SEO takes time to work. You may have to wait three to six months to see any results. And ROI may take even longer.
The best way to tackle the time lag problem is to track short-term wins while waiting for long-term results. Instead of a time period, focus on results that matter, such as more organic traffic, better rankings for search terms, and improved site performance. These are signs that you’re heading in the right direction.
Challenge 3: Valuing Non-Revenue Metrics
While SEO offers many benefits, some can be hard to quantify in monetary terms. They include better user experience and brand authority. Plus, Google's search algorithm changes can mess with your results.
Business owners need to know that SEO is a cost-effective strategy when executed properly. They need to focus on the long-term value of this marketing technique.
How Long Does It Take to See ROI from SEO Campaigns?
It depends. Before investing in SEO, it’s important to understand that search engine optimization is a long-term process. It’s not a sprint as many people would like to believe.
While you can expect some results (better ranking and organic traffic) within three to six months, real ROI from SEO can take much longer.
Positive ROI usually starts showing within 6 to 12 months. Peak benefits often come in years two or three. SEO builds on itself like a snowball effect.
Your timeline depends on:
How competitive your industry is: Tough markets need more time and a bigger SEO investment.
How much you invest: Bigger budgets for content and links get results faster.
Remember, SEO builds a valuable long-term asset. It's not about quick wins but creating steady revenue for years.
For more information on what to expect when it comes to the SEO timeline, don’t forget to read our blog on “How Long Does SEO Take to Work?”
Boost Your SEO ROI with Sapphire SEO Solutions
Avoid the guesswork and use data to create an impactful SEO strategy. Make sure to track your costs and monitor the site’s performance regularly.
Whether you're a marketer handling digital marketing or a business owner wanting growth, calculating ROI is key to success.
At Sapphire SEO Solutions, we're an SEO agency focused on making your SEO profitable and predictable. We don't just offer standard SEO services. Instead, we partner with you to use SEO tactics that maximize your return when it comes to investing in SEO.
From a simple fixed monthly fee to full SEO campaigns, our experts will show you exactly where your SEO budget goes and what it brings back.
No more guessing the cost of SEO. Work with us to start seeing results. Fill out our online contact us form to reach out to an experienced SEO professional. We will build a custom SEO strategy for your business and help measure and track your success!
