ROI in SEO and SEM

Calculating Return on Investment (ROI) in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and search Engine Marketing (SEM) can be one of the most challenging activities in designing and implementing an effective online marketing campaign. For one, the length of the campaign can drastically increase the ROI and help you plan better for experimentation. If a campaign must have an immediate return on investment traditional SEO is likely something thet will have to take the back seat or at least SEM will have to support SEO until you begin to see positive movement in the SERPs and that movement translating into income.

The first step is to make realistic expectations set at reasonable intervals. We recommend 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 18 months spending on the physical size of the site and the length of time it may or may not take to make any on-page enhancements. A site that is comprised of 5-25 pages will take significantly less time to implement any on-page changes compared to a site that has 500, 5000 or five-hundred thousand. Expectations should be defined during the "pitch" process, before a contract is even presented.

Any credible SEO will tell you that it can take 1 or 2 or 5 years to get to the top of the engines for your "head" keywords unless you already have great placement., If you feel that your firm has "maxed out" and will never get you above the fold it might be time to have someone evaluate the progress -- of course with their knowledge. Our blended approach to SEO ? SEM is great for the small and mid-level business, especially if you are already spending on PPC. In almost every occurrence we are able to squeeze more relevant traffic and conversions out of your current campaigns, and thus free up money for investment in SEO. Once you define what your goals are, and how much you can expect to gain from SEO in relation to your budget, we can then begin to pay for the campaign out of more efficient SEM spending and then tap into your SEO Investment Budget.

Calling it quits with an SEO Firm should only happen when you are relatively sure that the plan is sufficiently off track to warrant a complete divestment of your portfolio. Every plan should account for expected fluctuations in the marketplace and the algorithms but if the plan, the product or the SEO Firm themselves is tragically flawed it may be time to jump ship. One of the biggest problems is that it may take a year to know that for sure. In fact, unless you realize that you've been suckered into a scam, a year is a really reasonable time to judge performance.

Calculating return on investment is subjective. Reaching a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) that increases profit and profit margin should be the litmus. Remember that in many online businesses if your product or service is quality then a lead is not just worth the one-time exchange but a source for an ongoing relationship that can bring much more to the table. You have to know what your average spend over the lifetime of a relationship with a client is, their likelihood of being a return customer, the average profit margin of each product and the likelihood that a customer who buys one product would buy another one. Roll these all in to find the average value of certain types of customers and compare that to the marketing cost or cost per acquisition for each of your different marketing spends to create a target CPA as a litmus for each campaign. If the campaign is paying for itself and there are no better performing marketing assets presented, then you're in a good position.

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