Measuring SEO Success - Rob Garner - iCrossing - SES Chicago 2011

MEASURING SEO SUCCESS
ROB GARNER
VP STRATEGY, ICROSSING
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www.sempo.org www.dfwsem.org
@RobGarner
214.676.2089
Rob.Garner@icrossing.com
VP Strategy, iCrossing

Jumping right in…a few thoughts and
challenges

Paid vs. SEO: The 90/20 Search Budget Conundrum
• 90% of search channel budgets go to paid media
• Paid media supplies 20% of returns from search channel
• 10% goes to SEO, while it returns 80% of all revenue from the
search channel
The reason?...
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Paid search is easier to measure, and it’s harder to
look long term and tie direct ROI back to specific
SEO engagements…

…but SEO is easy to measure in aggregate and at
the keyword level once a balanced program is in
place.

The biggest opportunities for marketing in the
search channel are in natural search.

Challenges of tracking SEO ROI on the client side
• Disconnect between legacy systems in tracking
performance
• Using last-click attribution
• Larger companies measure value as “what have you
done for me lately” – natural search benefits tend to be
longer term
• Not maintaining search performance history going back
years
• Bad analytics and tracking
• Analytics utilize algorithms too – make sure yours is sophisticated in
the search tracking space
• Educating those holding the budgets for natural search
@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Some tough questions for SEOs; most don’t have a simple answer
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“How much is
a link worth?”
“How much is a link
development
campaign going to
return?”
“How much is
domain authority
and trust worth?”
“How much is SEO maintenance worth?”
“What is the ROI on
implementing meta
descriptions?”
“What is the ROI on
reducing duplicate
content?”
“Why should SEOs
perform any work that
doesn’t contribute to
the bottom line?”
@RobGarner
214.676.2089

A longer term view of natural search is needed
• Natural traffic is earned and
eventually owned, and
becomes a traffic generating
asset
• Maintenance costs for SEO
are a realistic expense
• Looking at what you gained
over the long term should be
a realistic expectation
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

How to think about measuring SEO

Four key measurements needed for meaningful SEO metrics
• Value of search equity for the site being optimized
• Media value of natural search traffic
• Value of various action across the site
• Both individually, and in aggregate
• Value of the stress and time costs on your organization
• You can do it now ten times easier than if you to do it later
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Building a business case – a few questions
• How much is invested in search?
• How much is spent on SEO activities? How much equity has been
earned by SEO activities? How do you protect what you’ve already
done? How much sweat and pain has been invested?
• How much is a conversion worth, and how much will
search modifications be worth?
• What values do we place on various actions?
• How do we measure lift in natural search metrics?
• Project traffic lifts based on increase in content and relevant theme of
pages against keyword search stats (visibility and traffic)
• Link development – measure lift in rising keyword ranking against
traffic, against conversion
• Create a natural search event (more on this later)
• How much opportunity may be lost without an SEO plan?
• What is the value of current traffic, and how will site redesign impact
this traffic?
• Compare current internal traffic value against relative keyword CPC’s
in major search engines
@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Ex. Establishing the market value of a search click
• Calculate anticipated traffic lost or
gained in natural search
• Determine the average CPC in a themed
area of one of your campaigns
• This is the market value that a marketer is
willing to spend on relevant traffic, based on
actual spend
• Multiply the average CPC times the
amount of SEO traffic to quantify its
media value
• Ex. 100,000 additional clicks in natural
search per month times an average CPC
of $2.53 is valued at $253,000. In a
year, the media value of that traffic is
$3,036,000.
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Outlining what could be lost in a site redesign without SEO
• Natural traffic: Estimate potential traffic loss or gain, and multiply
times the media value, or actual conversion rate of this traffic. Ex.
25,000 new visits from search X $3.50 CPC value is $87,000 worth of
traffic per month
• Link equity: Time is money. Changing domains could shed 15 years
of link development that is almost priceless. Also quote how much it
would cost to build up 1,000-1,000,000 quality links on a new site, and
use this estimate as a value for saving money.
• Natural search equity and history: For sites with positive equity,
there is a price on trust and authority. The cost is in years of waiting
and rebuilding. Most often, this is priceless because it can’t be
reproduced.
• Costs for fixing technical mistakes: If your developers are building
out a site all in Flash or AJAX, quote the cost of going back ex post
facto to create a mirrored, page-based site for search engines. Not
cheap. But cheaper to consider SEO in redesign mode.
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Outlining what could be lost in a site redesign without SEO
• Cost for recreating containers for content: Trying to add in video
hosting or RSS feeds into an enterprise sites can become costly, and
in some cases jot at all possible.
• Sales, actual monetary returns. Look at conversions in aggregate
from the natural search channel, and calculate the risk or gain by
percentage points. So if you are getting $1,000,000 a year in sales
from natural search, and 50% of the content is removed, expect sales
to decrease by 30-50% as well.
• Trophy rankings: Think of the costs involved when your boss’s pet
trophy ranking “Tulsa Oklahoma widgets” goes away.
• Sum of long tail rankings (and subsequent traffic, media value, and
conversions)
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

C A S E S T U D Y
Banking site re-launched on renamed URLs, with no redirection plan
Site relaunched with new URLs in mid-month
Media and conversion losses attributed to not investing in SEO
404 errors spiked, and the site never fully recovered. Losses included:
- $1,500,000 in actual revenue per month
- $600,000 per month worth of media (based on avg. CPC of over $4 per click)

Marketers must place a monetary value on actions
to help SEOs quantify results
• Marketers spend lots of money on media, but they don’t often place a
value on actions
• Not placing an educated value on actions from natural search (or any
media spend) is spending blindly
• When marketers spend blindly, they don’t know their most effective
channels, and they don’t know where to reinvest
• Sample metrics and $$$ targets that marketers (not the SEO), should
place on actions:
• Value of a lead
• Lifetime value of a customer
• Value of an engaged visitor
• Value of a returning user
• Value of a new email subscriber
• Value of a new hire obtained through search
• Value of new content generating users for marketers who host communities
• Etc.
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Sample forecast
Directional data, at best
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Conservative estimates were applied
to CTRs based on analytics data, and
also comparisons to Google
impression data
@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Create a natural search “event” to measure lift
• The benefits of natural search grow holistically in many ways,
and positive ROI for a large-scale enterprise is often the sum of
many factors of optimization
• Marketers still tie specific optimization actions directly to ROI
performance.
• Separating out some implementations can make it easier to
see lift, and reflect a spike on the analytics end
• Use analytics data to show lift for core metrics
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Create a natural search “event” to measure lift
Natural search impact on new optimized page launch of six pages
• Six pages measured: Charleston Widgets, Minneapolis Widgets, Columbus Widgets,
Indianapolis Widgets, Sacramento Widgets, Salt Lake City Widgets
21Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
- Total generated from natural search since implementation: $19,320
- Average full calendar month, natural search: $5,493
- Five-year projected return in natural search alone: $329,580
- Current ROI, July-Nov (based on $3,000 development cost): 6.4:1
- Projected 5-year ROI: 109.8:1
@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Rankings as a metric have passed the tipping point
Focus more on traffic and revenue
• Ranking measurement still has directional value in terms of visibility,
and shows overall progress of natural campaigns
• They have become too chaotic to use as a primary measurement of
success
• Google personalization, geo-targeting by IP, and search
customization, have moved us from a world to where everyone sees
the same result for #1, to a world where everyone theoretically sees a
different #1
• This doesn't mean that rankings measurement and optimization do
not have value; only that they must be viewed in a different way
• Using analytics is a common sense way to measure natural
performance
• Move away from viewing of ranking metrics as the primary indicator of performance,
and focus on deeper analysis of traffic and revenue from the natural search channel.
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Break out the historical trending data to show lift
• Compare your data against the same period in previous years,
rather than the previous month or quarters.
• Comparing over previous months can create an inaccurate
picture of performance, due to the seasonal aspects of search.
• Comparing your data against the same time over the previous
year (or years) is a nice balance, and can help show lift from
current search efforts.
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

Natural Search Sessions, Year-over-Year (YoY) Trending
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@RobGarner
214.676.2089

26Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential
Directional Visibility: Non-Branded Terms/Position One Rankings
@RobGarner
214.676.2089

THANK YOU
Rob Garner
VP, Strategy
iCrossing.com
@robgarner
214.676.2089
Slideshare.net/robgarner1
facebook.com/garner
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Measuring SEO Success - Rob Garner - iCrossing - SES Chicago 2011

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Measuring SEO Success - Rob Garner - iCrossing - SES Chicago 2011