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Investing in SEO yes, but the right way

You are a business owner, a manager or the marketing director of an e-commerce company. You want to push your website pages to rank for one or more keywords in order to attract more traffic, sell more. But you only want to invest IF it will be profitable. How do you go about it?

Let’s look at an example.

The basics of ROI calculation in SEO

You know that the main keyword you are targeting is searched, for example, 100,000 times on Google (this information can be found for free on Adwords in particular, even though the figures are no longer very reliable).

It is commonly accepted that the first result on Google captures 33% of traffic, the second 15%, and the third 10% (the figures are similar on mobile, see this article and many others, all excluding Adwords).

• Let’s assume that you succeed in your bet and rank in second position, i.e. 15% => that gives 15,000 visits per month to your site.
• If you convert 1% of those visitors, with an average basket of €100, you will have 150 orders, i.e. €15K in gross revenue.
• Assuming that currently you have 5,000 visits instead of 15,000, you are generating €5K instead of €15K per month from that single keyword, meaning a gain of €10K gross per month.
• Assuming you had to invest €10K in your SEO to get there, and that your average margin per basket is 33%, this investment pays for itself in 3 months (€10K × 33% × 3 = €10K). Of course, this calculation is only valid IF the SEO work has delivered results, and after a certain delay (allow 6 months on average, even though semantic clusters now rank from the end of the first month).

And in practice?

That said, correctly calculating an ROI (Return on Investment) is more complex than that:

• There is not just one keyword to consider: it is obvious that by pushing one keyword, the site will also rank for complementary mid-tail and long-tail expressions. The gain will therefore be more substantial.
• Nobody can predict where a site’s pages will rank tomorrow. Even if it is possible to show progress curves and rankings achieved within a few months on other sites, results will inevitably differ on yours.
• Competition moves. And so does Google! The cleaner the work, the better the chances of performing well in the long run, but even then, there are short/medium-term surprises. In both directions.

Conclusion

Investing in SEO is a winning game in the long run and for the long term, IF it is done properly — but never with a guarantee. Those who say otherwise are lying.

The questions to ask yourself are:

• How much am I willing to invest to test and see?
• How much time am I giving myself for this test?
• Who do I choose to work with?

I propose we answer those questions together, but only contact me if your budget is at least €3,000. There is not much we can do with less in the current competitive landscape.

Ready to invest in SEO the right way? Discover our semantic cluster SEO service and our Google Discover strategy — two channels that deliver lasting organic visibility.