How To Get Maximum ROI from SEO | SEO ROI Statistics for 2023

There are various marketing strategies today, but not all of them have the same ROI. For example, by now, you have probably heard of SEO campaigns and how effective they can be. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It involves taking steps to help a website or a piece of content (usually an article or poster) rank higher on Google.

You might be wondering what makes SEO stand out over the other marketing techniques. The key difference between an SEO campaign and paid advertising is that SEO involves “organic” ranking. SEO efforts end up with organic search traffic – organic being the keyword, meaning you don’t pay to be in that space on the internet. This basically means taking a specific online content and optimizing it so that search engines, like Google or Ecosia, will show it at the top of the page when somebody searches for something with similar keywords.

Google Analytics is very important. In 2022, most online searches begin through a search engine – the most popular being Google. 75% of online searches are actually known to start on Google. To understand the ROI of SEO, you need to understand how search engines work. A good understanding of these search engines will teach you how to optimize your content better.

What are the Core Elements of SEO?

There are two paths you can take for a general SEO campaign: on-page SEO or off-page SEO. What is the difference, and do they have the same ROI?

What is On-page SEO?

On-page SEO is all about building content to improve your rankings on search engines. This means you’ve got to be resourceful and incorporate keywords into your content, pages, website. All of the content you’re producing should be quality, including metatags, titles, and headings filled with relevant keywords that actually make sense. We’d have to debunk that the SEO strategy means you can use article generators online. People usually think that as long as the keywords are present, search engines will pick it up and result in a positive ROI. However, this won’t really be effective because if your content is poor, to begin with, it will certainly not be optimized. You will end up wasting the opportunity for on-page SEO.

What about Off-page SEO?

Meanwhile, off-page SEO is when the optimization happens from your website itself, like through earning backlinks. This type of SEO campaign involves building relationships and creating content that people actually want to share. Off-page SEO takes more effort. You will need to put more thought into your content. While it takes a lot of legwork, the SEO ROI from this SEO campaign is high.

You might be wondering how to calculate SEO ROI. There are actual formulas to do so, but we will define what SEO ROI (return of investment) is before we get to that.

The best analogy for it would be the ROI for a real estate property. It involves a long and tedious process that takes months or even years. When you purchase a property, its value does not increase immediately, not even in the next two months. But everybody knows that property values – whether it comes with a house or not – appreciate over time, and that’s why real estate is one of the best investments you could make. A sizable profit awaits you if you sell, rent, or lease your property eventually.

Meanwhile, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is similar to renting an apartment. Apartments are perfect when you immediately need a place to live. You can move in within days. But here is the catch – the monthly rent will never deliver an ROI beyond the month you made the payment. This is because you are already living there and reaping the benefits of your rent. So the longer you stay, the more money you are spending without any appreciation over time.

It is safe to say that PPC advertising is the traditional route. However, SEO is fairly new, and marketers usually recommend PPC advertising, not because it offers a higher ROI, but because they usually don’t know how to measure the ROI of SEO. That’s why SEO campaigns aren’t really the first choice when it comes to marketing campaigns. Hiring an SEO agency and getting SEO tasks done takes some money, and some companies are still hesitant to go this route. But know that an SEO investment actually has the potential to outperform other digital marketing campaigns! In fact, even Google itself finds that ROI on organic search is 5.3 times higher than that of paid advertising.

How long does it take to see the ROI of SEO campaigns?

There is also the factor of immediacy. People want to see results now. However, it takes a few months at least before an SEO campaign makes a sizable ROI.

Using an ideal strategy, you can expect to see organic positions within the first six months. Web traffic improvements and advanced web ranking can also come up during this time. But you will notice activity within a week or two from executing the campaign.

While this activity does not translate to traffic or revenue yet, it does not mean that the SEO strategy is not working. For example, if you begin placing at #60 for high-priority keywords and notice that you are bumped up to #35 after a few weeks, that means that search engines like Google are gradually beginning to understand your content’s high-quality and also the efficiency of its search engine results pages (SERP) competitors.

There is also the factor that not all website visitors will convert. But over time, you will notice that a sufficient number of visitors will. With this, you can monitor website traffic and how profits change throughout the year. An accurate calculation of SEO ROI would come from looking at web traffic, and profit boosts over a time period of two to three years at least. But if you are patient enough to wait for a longer duration, you can calculate the ROI of SEO performance during its peak, resulting in greater positions, website traffic, and profits performance.

Of course, the value of an SEO depends on a variety of factors.

How does SEO produce a sizable ROI?

Recent studies show that about half of all web traffic comes from website users who clicked on organic results. So right off the bat, we can tell that the websites that rank well make up “half the market share of the entire internet.”

This organic traffic market share is roughly five times higher than from PPC advertising and up to ten times higher than from social media. So with that, any website that performs well organically will actually produce a stronger marketing ROI than websites that solely rely on paid search or social media marketing.

Organic search still dominates the search engine results pages, like Google SERPS. Statistics show that organic listings actually earn over 77% than desktop clicks. Even on mobile devices, organic clicks make up 73%.

Say, for a valuable search query, your website is on page two on desktop and ranking at #20. According to Advanced Web Rankings (AWR), you are looking at 1.03% SERP click share. So with each incremental increase in your ranking, you are capturing a little more SERP click shares. By the time you are on page one and ranking as high as #5, your click share has increased exponentially – by 313%! If you make it up to the top 3, this click share grows up to 852%.

Here’s where you can start to make more actionable forecasts. Let’s say your website is ranking #20 (page two) on a desktop for a valuable search query. You’re looking at a 1.03% SERP click share, according to AWR. With each incremental increase in rankings, you capture a little more share. By the time you make it to #5 on page one, you’ve increased your click share by 313%. As soon as you crack the top 3, that increase grows to 852%.

As we have mentioned, marketers tend to ignore how search engine optimization impacts overall share in the market – not just click share in the SERPs. But SEO efforts can help companies achieve over 300,000+ monthly increases in organic traffic. The brand can quickly rise from having 0 to having a 3% market share in a multibillion-dollar industry.

SEO return on investment is more than just the rankings – look at SERP click share and overall market share, too.

Increased website traffic

Website traffic is a great way to track the efficacy of your marketing campaigns. With SERP share measurements alone, companies can calculate how much more website traffic they can drive by improving their rankings for existing keywords.

Another factor comes from the untapped traffic that companies are not reaching today. So SEO ROI is not limited to boosting what’s already on page two or three of the search engines. It also depends on capitalizing on opportunities the company is currently missing.

If you find your company in this situation, here are a few good questions to ask:

Does your target audience search online in a certain way?
Do your current pages addressing those queries effectively or not?
Are you possibly missing out on high-volume, high-opportunity topics and keywords?
Is your SEO campaign missing any key stages in the purchase funnel?
Is it possible to boost your website’s sustainable, incremental user traffic by targeting a few additional long-tail keywords with each piece of content you release?

Looking at these questions will help you and your marketing team strategize the best SEO campaign possible.

Decreased bounce rates

Nobody wants useless website traffic. However, users who visit your site and immediately return to Google SERPs to choose another option are not doing your company any favors. In fact, under certain circumstances, it could be hurting you and your company’s statistics.

If you have noticed that pattern before, here are some suggestions to address the bounce rates of your website:

Strategically select the queries you know your target audience searches for
Carefully match their search intent for every query
Create the most helpful and useful content for these queries (focus on making it informative)
Provide an engaging user experience beyond the actual content

It is certainly ideal for capturing traffic from the people who actually need your content and with whom your content will resonate the most. And as your customers’ interest peaks, they will explore more pages on your website and continue on the customer journey. At this point, you will have already received the clicks and ROI you aimed for – all thanks to a successful SEO campaign.

Increased conversion rates

Conversion is a huge part of SEOs. This marketing channel allows you to target new customers at each stage of the purchase funnel. By aligning your website’s content with customer’s search intent, you can deliver a solid user experience that increases engagement for your site. And in return, you will earn more conversions.

With that, conversions do not have to focus solely on transactions. As a brand, you can set other conversion goals that strengthen brand loyalty, and you can do this by adjusting the length of your conversion funnel and observing how your customers convert. This information will help you send high-quality leads over to sales.

Here are some examples that will drive conversion higher without the requirement of making a purchase:

Signing up for a mailing list and/or newsletter
Downloading an ebook
Filling out a request for a quote
Registering for an event or webinar
Requesting more information from the user
Downloading a coupon
Submitting a contact form
Watching a video
Booking an appointment
Making a donation

Increased revenue

The more traffic you generate through your SEO campaign, the more revenue you are likely to have. But keep in mind that not all website traffic is created equal. For example, some keywords have higher search volume but carry less purchase intent and vice versa.

If you want to achieve a short-term ROI for your SEO, the trick is to perform well on the keywords with higher purchase intent. This is a win-win because you get the clicks, traffic, conversion, and sale!

But if you have a long-term goal, you can calculate your ROI by incorporating traffic results from keywords at the top of the sales funnel and thus priming your company for future sales. So don’t just factor in revenue and lead quality scores from higher traffic in the funnel in your ROI calculations.

Strengthened brand equity and reputation

A holistic SEO campaign has many branding benefits, too. SEO helps your brand:

Find the right people
Match their search intent
Build relevant pages and create informative and useful content
Answer their questions
Build a trustworthy brand
Establish expertise and authority in a subject or industry
Strengthen brand presence in the SERPs
Solidify results for your branded terms
Get people to talk about your brand and share your high-quality content
Establish a content strategy that supports link building
Be a brand that others want to link to and connect with
Guide visitors to the actions that matter most
Make sure your satisfied customers will leave great reviews.

Businesses and companies can rebuild their search profiles to showcase a positive brand sentiment through online reputation management. More than that, brands can prepare their immunity against future threats and recover faster (and more efficiently) should any crisis happen. Furthermore, integrating SEO and public relations extends the visibility of PR placements, increasing ROI even further.

All of these factors contribute to making a sizable ROI for your SEO efforts.

What are the top SEO ROI statistics in 2022?

Organic strategy drives 300% more traffic to internet sites than social media networks.
The # 1 result in Google’s page one obtains roughly 32% of all clicks.
On average, there are 81,000 searches per second in 2020, a huge increase from 63,000 searches in 2016.
Google currently has 86.86% of the search engine market.
Nearly 60% of the pages ranking in the top 10 Google results are three years old or even more.
SEO reinforces your brand equity as well as reputation.
Search Engine Optimization obtains consumers at 25 cents on the dollar compared to any other paid network.
The ROI for Software Sector (B2B SaaS) is 702% in less than a year.
The ROI for Technical SEO Campaigns (technical repairs, keyword study, title tag rewrites) is approximately 117% for a period of six months.
ROI for standard Web Content Advertising (using average quality keywords, research study, and blog content and write-ups) is about 16% over a period of 15 months.
ROI for Thought Leadership Marketing (transactional top quality keywords research and blog write-ups) is around 748% in less than one year.

An SEO ROI includes the following benefits for your business:

Revenue – increase organic search revenue by 25% in 12 months
Reputation – repair damaged online reputations in less than 18 months
Lower Customer Acquisition Costs – acquire customers at 25 cents on the dollar compared to pay-per-click advertising

You can refer to these statistics as a good benchmark for your own future SEO campaigns. If you are concerned about your ROI meeting your standards for an SEO campaign, it is certainly time to consult with a digital marketing agency to curate a robust SEO strategy for your business.

How To Get Maximum ROI from SEO | SEO ROI Statistics for 2023