By Nick Nelson

If you can’t measure it, you can’t make sense of it. This points to one of the biggest barriers facing business leaders when it comes to search engine optimization.

There’s no question that SEO delivers a return on investment. That’s been proven over and over again. But the math is not as simple as, say, pay-per-click advertising with its straightforward transactional nature.

Marketing leaders across industries are wondering: How much of my marketing budget should be allocated to SEO, and what can we expect to get out of it?

SEO is a long-term play, no doubt. But don’t mistake that to mean it doesn’t make a real, concrete, and measurable revenue impact. Taking steps to track and grow the value of your SEO efforts is not easy, but it is very much worthwhile.

“Taking steps to track and grow the value of your SEO efforts is not easy, but it is very much worthwhile.” — @NickNelsonMN
Click To Tweet

Measuring SEO value: 6 key metrics and focuses

There’s a difference between metrics and techniques used to measure the performance of your SEO versus the value of your SEO. You’ll find an assortment of performance and optimization metrics listed in our forthcoming comprehensive guide to B2B search engine optimization.

Here, we’ll shine a spotlight on value-based measurement methods that can help demonstrate the bottom-line impact of a high-performing SEO strategy.

1. Organic traffic (and attributed leads)

The guiding key performance indicator (KPI) for virtually any SEO program is organic traffic, which refers to visitors who arrive at your website from unpaid search. When you’re driving organic traffic around terms that matter to your business, that means you are putting your brand in front of relevant and interested people.

Search engines are evolving around search intent. Understanding your buyer’s journey and delivering helpful content to support it helps you win rankings and attract qualified website visitors. Unsurprisingly, this type of traffic tends to convert at a higher rate than most other sources.

Measuring the leads and opportunities your company is sourcing to organic search and then comparing the quality or conversion rate of those leads to other sources can be a good window into the essential role SEO plays.

Of course, tracing an eventual customer back to organic search is not always (or often) an A-to-B equation. Marketers use different techniques, including multi-touch attribution, to gain this insight.

“Measuring the leads and opportunities your company is sourcing to organic search and then comparing the quality or conversion rate of those leads to other sources can be a good window into the essential role SEO plays.” — @NickNelsonMN
Click To Tweet

2. Keyword rankings

Ranking at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) for a keyword or query of great importance to your business is more than a point of pride. It can lead to substantial revenue impact!

The reality of online search is that top-ranking results in a SERP get a vast majority of the clicks from users. …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

Author: Aaron