Calculate Your SEO ROI in Seconds: Use This Free SEO ROI Calculator to Measure Success

Today, when people can find your brand on social media or through online advertisements, the use of search engines is still just as widespread as it ever was. In fact, over 81% of internet users have used a search engine in the past month, which speaks to the continued importance of SEO in driving traffic to your website.

However, simply investing time and effort in SEO isn't enough—it's crucial to measure the return on investment (ROI) of those efforts to ensure you're getting results. That's where an SEO ROI calculator becomes invaluable.

Our SEO ROI calculator helps you estimate the revenue generated from your SEO efforts and compare it to the resources invested, giving you a clear picture of your SEO performance. Below, we explain how our SEO ROI calculator works, provide tips for improving your SEO ROI, and offer a calculator tool to measure your SEO efforts effectively...

Streamline Your SEO Performance Tracking with our ROI Calculator

An SEO ROI calculator is a tool that automates the calculation of your SEO ROI based on inputs such as revenue generated from SEO and the cost of SEO efforts. It takes away the manual work of creating an Excel sheet or calculating ROI by hand.

This calculator is a must-have in your SEO toolbox because creating an SEO strategy is just the first step. Next, you have to track and measure its performance to see if it's delivering the expected results. An SEO ROI calculator simplifies this process. It also lets you experiment with different scenarios and see how they impact your ROI.

How to Use the SEO ROI Calculator?

Using our SEO calculator is pretty simple. Simply fill in all the fields in our SEO ROI calculator, and it will do the rest. The results aren't set in stone, but they give you a good idea of where your SEO strategy stands.

Some figures are based on estimates, such as the percentage of traffic that converts to leads or sales. Use realistic estimates to get an accurate ROI calculation.

You can also use the calculator to compare different campaigns or strategies. For example, if you already have a measure of your social media ROI, you can compare it with your SEO ROI to see which one is performing better. Maybe you'll find that investing more in one of the two could bring higher returns.

How to Calculate SEO ROI Yourself: Understanding the Profitability of Your SEO Efforts

SEO ROI is the measure of the return on investment for your SEO efforts. In simpler terms, it shows the percentage of profit gained or lost from investing in SEO. It helps you tie your SEO efforts to your business goals and determine the effectiveness of your strategy.

The simplest formula for SEO ROI calculation is:

SEO ROI = (SEO revenue - SEO costs) / SEO costs x 100 

Suppose your SEO-generated revenue is $2000, and you spent $1000 on SEO efforts. Your ROI calculation would look like this:

SEO ROI = $2000 - $1000 / $1000 x 100 = 100%

This means you gained a 100% return on your investment in SEO. But if your revenue from SEO was only $500, your ROI would be:

SEO ROI = $500 - $1000 / $1000 x 100 = -50%

In this case, you lost 50% of your investment in SEO.

How SEO Drives Traffic, Brand Trust, and ROI Across Industries

The importance of SEO is evident from the fact that 53% of all trackable website traffic comes from organic search, which is way higher than other channels like social media or paid search. So, it won't be wrong to say that SEO expands your reach. An effective SEO strategy ranks on the first page of Google, and that means you have a chance of being seen by 99% of Google traffic.

Besides making you more visible, SEO also helps you outrank competitors or, even better, send them down the search engine results pages (SERPs). With less competition, you have more chances of attracting potential customers.

SEO also contributes to ROI by enhancing brand perception. For example, when you search for SEO or influencer marketing-related content and always see Influencer Marketing Hub or Semrush on the first page, you associate them as experts in the field. Gradually, this leads to higher brand trust and credibility, which results in better ROI.

Local businesses also benefit immensely from SEO. By simply having a complete Google Business Profile, local businesses are 70% more likely to get customer visits. Since people read reviews before visiting a store or availing of a local service, local SEO further influences ROI by boosting positive reviews and improving online reputation.

Similarly, for eCommerce businesses, SEO drives a ton of ROI, as eCommerce sites get 33% of their total traffic from organic search. There has also been a noticeable increase in the number of keywords for commercial and transactional queries, which is a positive sign for eCommerce SEO.

Number of keywords by search intent

Simply put, by improving SEO and ranking higher for these keywords, you can drive more sales and generate higher ROI.

Why Measuring SEO ROI Is Critical for Long-Term Success

While we've established that SEO is important to generate ROI, there's no use in investing time, effort, and resources into something without measuring its results.

Measuring SEO ROI is important for the following reasons:

• Communicate Success: Whether you're a marketer reporting to your clients or a business owner looking at the progress of your website, SEO ROI measurements help you visualize and communicate success.
• Allocate Resources: When you know which SEO strategies and tactics are working for you, it becomes easier to allocate resources effectively. This way, you don't waste time and resources on strategies that don't generate ROI.
• Benchmark Progress: Industry reports give you an overall average of SEO ROI, but every business is unique and has different goals. So, you can measure SEO ROI to benchmark your progress against your own goals. That makes it easier to gauge whether you're on the right track or need to pivot your strategy.
• Create Future Strategies: If your SEO ROI is not up to the mark, you can use the data and insights from an SEO ROI calculator to identify areas of improvement and create future strategies that can generate better ROI. Similarly, if it meets or exceeds your expectations, you can continue implementing existing strategies and potentially scale them up. 

What Are the Key Metrics for Calculating SEO ROI? 

The formula we mentioned for measuring SEO ROI above is quite simple. If we go into depth, there are many SEO KPIs that go into finding how your SEO efforts are paying off. Here are some of them.

Keyword Rankings

Keywords form the crux of SEO campaigns since their ranking position determines the level of visibility your content gets. For any keyword, you can measure its performance in terms of:

• Keyword ranking on the SERPs
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Organic traffic generated from the keyword
• Position change over time

You can use a tool like Semrush's Position Tracking to monitor your keyword rankings and track their progress over time. This will give you a clear idea of how well your SEO efforts are performing. The Position Tracking tool has a dashboard where you can see the keyword's position changing over time.

Keyword Position Tracking Tool results

Plus, it shows the top keywords your website ranks for, along with the keywords that have seen an increase or decrease in position in the past week or month, based on the period you’ve set.

Keyword Position Tracking Tool results

It also lets you set alerts for when your page drops in ranking by three positions. You can then take immediate SEO action to fix the issue and improve your keyword's position.

How Keyword Rankings Fit in SEO ROI Calculation

Where your keyword ranks on the SERPs is a direct indicator of how visible your content is to potential customers. The higher your keyword ranks, the more likely it is to attract clicks and generate organic traffic.

This directly impacts your website's overall SEO performance and ultimately contributes to the ROI.

Keyword Volume

Keyword volume tells you how often people search for a particular keyword in a given time period. You can use this SEO KPI to estimate potential traffic and identify high-volume keywords to target.

Semrush's Keyword Overview tool tells you the keyword volume for a query. For example, for "digital marketing agencies," the keyword volume in the US is 8.1k.

Keyword Overview tool

The tool also shows related keywords and their respective volumes. Here, you can find keywords with higher volume and lower keyword difficulty to add to your SEO strategy.

Semrush keyword ideas

By targeting high-volume keywords, you increase the chances of ranking high on Google since people are actively searching for the keywords in your content.

How Keyword Volume Fits in SEO ROI Calculation

Keyword volume tells you how many people land on your website through a particular term. Your Google Analytics can tell you how many conversions stemmed from those visits, giving you a clear idea of the ROI generated by targeting that keyword.

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate of specific keywords, in relation to your goals, is another SEO KPI that must be monitored. It tells you whether the keyword is meeting your campaign objectives. Some examples of goals are email sign-ups, content downloads, product purchases, subscription renewals, social media followers, or referrals.

How Conversion Rate Fits in SEO ROI Calculation

The conversion rate is the primary factor that contributes to the "SEO revenue" calculations from the formula earlier. It shows the number of people who have taken a certain action, which has resulted in you making money.

Suppose the traffic for a keyword is 500 people. 20 of them convert. The average order value for your store is $50. So, you can estimate that the keyword generated $1,000 in sales.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) for Organic Search

The customer lifetime value (LTV) is the amount of money you get from a customer throughout their relationship with your business. If you collect customer data regularly, you'll have a general idea of how much a customer is worth.

However, not all your customers are coming through SEO. You probably use other channels like paid advertising and social media, too. So, you should segment your customer database to know their source of origin and apply that metric in the ROI calculations for SEO channels.

How Customer Lifetime Value Fits in SEO ROI Calculation

The LTV can help you determine how much profit you can expect from a customer who found your website through organic search. Like conversion rate, it contributes to the SEO revenue calculations.

If you find that the LTV for customers coming through organic search is higher than that of other channels, just as this study found, you can expect a higher SEO ROI than other channels. This knowledge can help you make informed decisions about your marketing budget and where to allocate resources for maximum return.

Custom LTV by channel

Organic Traffic Growth

How much organic traffic is generated through your SEO efforts? How has it increased (or decreased) over time? This SEO KPI provides insight into the impact of your keyword strategy and other SEO efforts.

The Semrush Domain Overview report lets you set up graphs to see how your domain has grown over a certain period. You can look at the following SEO metrics: organic traffic, organic keywords, organic traffic cost, backlinks, referring domains, and paid keywords. 

It shows you the time periods of organic growth, giving you an idea of how your SEO efforts have impacted your website's performance. You can then trace back any SEO changes to see what you did right or wrong to bring that change to the website traffic. Here’s the organic traffic change for Influencer Marketing Hub over the past month. 

Domain Overview

How Organic Traffic Growth Fits in SEO ROI Calculation

As a rule of thumb, the more organic traffic your website receives, the higher its SEO ROI. Organic traffic growth is directly proportional to the success of your SEO efforts.

If you're getting more organic traffic, it means there is a high likelihood of conversions, and that ultimately means more sales or other actions that generate revenue for your business.

Cost of SEO Efforts

While not exactly an SEO metric, the total cost of SEO efforts shows you the amount you've spent on your SEO strategy. It includes costs like:

• In-house SEO team salaries
• Freelance SEO expert costs
• Content creation costs
• Keyword research tools subscriptions
• Link-building services 
• SEO agency fees or monthly SEO packages 

How Cost of SEO Fits in SEO ROI Calculation

In the formula (SEO ROI = Revenue from SEO - Cost of SEO / Cost of SEO x 100), the second part represents the cost of SEO. So, you must measure it accurately to get the closest SEO ROI estimate.

As for the other metrics mentioned above, they all contribute to the first part of the formula: the revenue from SEO. 

How to Measure SEO ROI? A 3-Step Approach 

As we've explained, you need two main components to find the SEO ROI:

• SEO costs
• SEO revenue

Here's how to measure these two elements and calculate SEO ROI using a 3-step approach.

Step 1: Calculate Your Investment 

To start, calculate how much you have spent on your SEO efforts. This includes any costs related to:

• SEO tools and software
• Hiring an SEO agency or specialist
• In-house SEO resources
• Content distribution and promotion
• Link-building costs

Step 2: Track Conversions

In this step, you have to determine the value of every conversion on your website. You'll need Google Analytics 4 (GA4) or a similar tool for this step.

For every business, what they count as a "conversion" will differ. An eCommerce business can use sales data to track conversions, while a B2B company may use lead generation metrics.

To track any type of conversion, you have to first set up Google Tag Manager (GTM). After you set it up, you'll see reports with detailed information on all transactions. For example, for an eCommerce business, this would be for all the sales they've made.

You can build your own filters in GA4 to analyze conversions from different sources. For SEO, when you add a filter, in the drop-down menu under "Dimensions," select "google/organic." Then, you'll see all the conversions that came from organic search. You can also select a time frame to see the conversions for a specific period.

While this method works for eCommerce sites due to the presence of a monetary value for each conversion, it may not be applicable for non-sales-based conversions. In such cases, you can assign a monetary value to each conversion.

For this, you'll need to create an Event in Google Analytics. It could be a signup for a free trial, a form submission, or anything else that counts as a conversion.

After you create an event, you have to select the following:

• Parameter: The name of the conversion/event.
• Operate: What it counts as.
• Value: What it signifies.

So, for a free signup trial, the selection will be as follows:

• Parameter: Free trial
• Operator: Equals
• Value: Signup

After creating an event, switch the toggle to "Mark as conversion" in the Existing Events list in GA4. Now, every time someone signs up for a free trial, GA4 will add it to the Conversions tab.

But that still doesn't signify monetary value. So, you can assign one yourself.

Go to ''Parameter configuration'' and then ''Add modification.'' In the "Parameter field," select your currency, such as USD, and then the monetary value, like $30.

This way, GA4 will also track the monetary value of each conversion, and you can filter by source to see which sources are bringing in the most valuable conversions.

How to Assign Monetary Value to Conversions?

This is the simplest formula to assign a monetary value to conversions:

Event Monetary Value = Customer Lifetime Value x Lead Conversion Rate

We've already covered customer LTV; lead conversion rate is the percentage of leads that convert into paying customers.

Let's say you have a customer lifetime value of $500 and a lead conversion rate of 5%.

You can assign a monetary value of $25 ($500 x 0.05) to each conversion. While this method isn't ultra-precise, it gives you a baseline to work with and improve upon.

Step 3: Calculate SEO ROI 

Now that you've calculated both the cost of your SEO efforts and the monetary value of your conversions, you can calculate your return on investment (ROI) for SEO.

SEO ROI = (SEO revenue - SEO costs) / SEO costs x 100

Suppose for Q3 of 2024, your SEO efforts generated $50,000 in revenue and cost you $20,000.

Your ROI for SEO would be:

($50,000 - $20,000) / $20,000 x 100 = 150%

This means that for every dollar you spent on SEO, you made $1.50 in revenue. You can use the same formula to calculate ROI for specific campaigns or time periods to monitor SEO performance and take necessary actions to improve it. 

How to Improve SEO ROI?

One of the main reasons for measuring SEO ROI is to make improvements to your SEO strategy. Here are some SEO practices that can help you do that.

Focus on High-Intent Keywords

High-intent keywords are terms used by people who are close to taking a certain action (e.g., signing up for a free trial) or buying something. These keywords have an intent to buy or engage with a service in some way. When you target these keywords, you meet potential customers at a point in their journeys where they're closer to the final stage than the top of the funnel. This means a higher chance of conversion and a better ROI.

Let's say you're an eCommerce store that sells lights and lamps. An example of a low-intent keyword would be "dorm room lights.''

On the other hand, a high-intent keyword would be "buy bedroom chandelier online.''

The latter has a higher chance of conversion because the person using that term is ready to make a purchase.

You can use Semrush Keyword Overview to find the user intent for keywords. Informational intent means that the searcher is just gathering information. Transactional or commercial intent means the person wants to buy something or research product options.

Semrush Keyword Magic Tool

Monitor Your Website's Growth Trends

As you make changes to your SEO strategy, keep track of your website's growth trends. How many organic keywords are you appearing for? What are your organic traffic numbers like? What are your organic position rankings? What is the intent behind the keywords you rank for?

The Domain Overview feature in Semrush provides all these insights. For example, we can see that we have the highest keyword exposure for informational-intent keywords. We have received over 150k people in traffic through these keywords.

Keywords by intent

Similarly, we can see our top organic keywords. The tool shows us the general search volume for every keyword we rank high for and the percentage of our website's total organic traffic that comes from it.

Organic keyword research

This information helps us understand which keywords are working better for our website.

Optimize Conversion Rate in Parallel With SEO

Maybe you have a stellar SEO strategy, but your conversion rate is still low. What could be causing this?

Well, it's possible that the intent behind the keywords you're ranking for doesn't align with your website's offerings. For example, our website is optimized for informational-intent keywords. But what if we were selling a digital marketing course on our website?

There would be a mismatch in user intent. This results in visitors not converting.

Here are some ways to optimize your conversion rate in parallel with your SEO efforts:

• A/B test landing pages using SEO data to see which version converts better.
• Improve website user experience and make it easy for visitors to navigate and find desired information.
• Use call-to-actions prominently on your website. A/B test different versions and placements to find the most impactful option.
• Optimize website loading speed and make sure all pages are mobile-friendly.
• Show social proof, such as customer reviews and testimonials, on your website, preferably near a call-to-action.
• Use targeted and persuasive language in your website copy to encourage visitors to take action.

You can also partner with conversion rate optimization (CRO) agencies to ensure your CRO and SEO efforts complement each other.

Create High-Quality Content to Drive Traffic and Leads

Content is king for a reason; it's what drives traffic to your website and ultimately converts leads into customers. So, create high-quality content to boost SEO results.

Ideally, your website content should be user intent-aligned. It should also be well-written, in line with Google's E-E-A-T guidelines, and well-optimized. For your final content to be SEO-friendly, it's important that you start with a template that's built with Google's guidelines in mind.

Semrush SEO Content Template feature builds a content template based on your keywords. For example, we gave it the keyword ''AI in digital marketing,'' and it created a detailed content template for us.

It also gave us keyword recommendations based on data from the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool. Since these suggestions and the template are based on an analysis of the top 10 pages on the SERPs, the chances of your content ranking high increase with this feature.

Keyword recommendations in Semrush SEO content templat

Next, you just have to write the content according to the template. AI writing tools can be helpful in this regard. As 71% of marketers who use AI tools say that the content they create using it performs better than the content made without it, giving these tools a shot can improve your content.

If you want to write the content yourself, it still helps to get AI recommendations for SEO. In Semrush, you can use the SEO Writing Assistant for real-time content check. It provides SEO recommendations while you write, so you can edit and enhance your content on the go.

Semrush SEO Writing Assistant

Conduct Site Audits

It's best to set up frequent site audits through SEO audit tools to ensure the technical side of SEO is in check. You can then resolve these issues to improve your website's performance. Some common technical issues that can affect your website's ranking are:

• Broken links
• Slow page speed
• Duplicate content
• Lack of mobile responsiveness
• Missing metadata
• Issues with the hreflang tag
• Low text-to-HTML ratio

Semrush Site Audit feature does exactly that and provides comprehensive reports on issues affecting your site's SEO performance. It checks for broken links, duplicate content, missing meta descriptions, and other technical errors that can hinder search engine crawlers from properly indexing your site.

Semrush Site Audit

Overcoming Challenges of Calculating SEO ROI

As important as calculating SEO ROI is, it's also challenging. Here are some common challenges you may encounter.

Conversion Attribution Isn't Linear

Nowadays, people don't just make purchases in one step, like seeing your ad and then buying your product. Instead, they're likely to interact with multiple touchpoints along their customer journey. On average, the number is around eight.

So, it's hard to say which touchpoint should receive the credit for a conversion. This is especially true for SEO, as a conversion can come from various sources like organic search, direct traffic, or referral links.

Too Many Metrics

There are just too many metrics to measure when calculating SEO ROI. From keyword rankings and domain authority to traffic volume, customer LTV, and conversion rate, it can be overwhelming to try and track everything.

Inability to Measure Non-Monetary Goals

Not all goals can be measured in dollars. Some businesses may have non-monetary goals for their SEO efforts, like brand awareness or thought leadership. It can be tricky to quantify the impact of these goals in terms of ROI.

We've explained how to assign a monetary value to such goals above, but then again, the value isn't precise like a product's price. So, there's still some room for error.

Ongoing Returns from Past Strategies

Your SEO efforts don't yield results in isolation. They have a lasting impact on your website and web pages, even after a long time has passed since implementing the strategies.

Let's say you invest in optimizing your website for certain keywords this month. You'll likely see an increase in organic traffic and conversions this month, but the impact of that optimization can continue for the rest of the year.

Insufficient Analytics Data

Sometimes, there's just not enough data for SEO ROI calculations. Maybe you did not track data from the past, or your website had low traffic and conversion rates. It's also possible that your website has undergone major changes, so there's not enough data to track.

Go From SERPs to Sales With SEO ROI Calculator

As the guide highlights, SEO measurement is important but also challenging. With an SEO ROI calculator, many of these challenges can be resolved. You'll have a quick and easy way to track the performance of your SEO efforts, compare different strategies, and plan future campaigns.

Besides our SEO ROI calculator, it also helps to use an SEO tool like Semrush to further streamline data analysis. The more comprehensive and accurate your data, the better the insights you can get for your SEO strategies. Then, it's up to you to use these insights to boost your SEO ROI with continued optimization and improvement in everything from keyword research to content creation.

About the Author

Djanan Kasumovic

Writer

Djanan Kasumovic, Head of Growth at Influencer Marketing Hub, drives innovation in digital marketing with expertise in AI marketing and AI influencer strategies. He is directly involved in shaping content strategies for top clients like Viral Nation, NeoReach, Brandwatch, and more, blending creative flair with data-driven insights to ensure people not only enjoy the content but leave a little smarter.