Your return on investment (ROI) indicates whether you’re getting what’s worth the investments you’ve made in your business. In the digital age, it’s impossible to survive without allocating for SEO marketing, so you need to make sure that your investments in this strategy are helping you get the gains you’re targeting.
Make sure that you’re maximizing your ROI using your SEO investment by:
- Identifying your objectives
You need to make sure that your website has an objective, and this objective is always quantifiable. For instance, the website aims to raise the conversion rate. In this case, what you can do is set up this objective in software, like Google Analytics, to be able to calculate the amount of conversion rate. This applies to all actions you want from your customers, may it be a subscription, or completing an order.
These conversions will help you see whether your SEO strategy is working because you can keep track of them. Without recognizing these objectives, you will have no standard to help measure your ROI from your SEO investment.
- Researching your target keywords
Once you know what your goals are, the next method to maximize your ROI using your SEO investment is to research target keywords. Keywords are a core component of SEO. Having a clear idea of who your target audience is and what they need is a huge help when coming up with keywords because you would then know what your target audience is looking for.
There are various ways to perform keyword research, and the best SEO agency will help you with the tools you need to use to help with this task.
- Targeting long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords consist of 3 to 4 words that include the keywords related to your business. Finding those relevant keywords and incorporating them into your content will help your web pages rank in the SERPs, as well as facilitate an easier, quicker way for your target audience to locate your business online.
Having less competition and catering to more specific search intent, long-tail keywords bring the most qualified traffic to your website as possible, with higher prospects of leads, sales, and revenue, i.e. a higher ROI for your SEO investment.
- Creating useful content
The other, better half of keywords is the quality of the content you actually put out. Blog posts, videos, product and service pages, and guides are a good content mix, but you also have to make sure that when your audience reads into these pages, they find the thing that they’re looking for.
For instance, if you offer service as a personal injury lawyer in Brampton or if you have a company of accountants in Malta, creating and maintaining quality content for your site makes it more compelling to visitors that are looking for the exact services you offer. It’s also a pillar in building your brand, as your usefulness will give you authority and trustworthiness in your industry. High-quality content also raises you up on the search rankings, as other people or businesses will find you worthy of linking your content to theirs.
- Re-optimizing your old content
DON’T DELETE OLD, OUTDATED CONTENT! Instead, you can re-shape and refurbish the contents of your existing pages to contain more relevant, more useful information.
Keeping outdated content is not advisable, as people will always recognize something that’s not valuable to them. Don’t make your content irrelevant to your target customers’ search. Maximize the value and impact of your content by providing content updates to help your blogs and service pages advance in the SERPs.
You can start by:
- Studying the search intent on the first few pages of your related keywords
- Finding additional keywords to target (go for long-tail keywords)
- Updating outdated statistics, studies, or practices mentioned in your content
- Putting newer images, videos, or GIFs that elevate the usefulness of the content
- Optimizing and improving your local listings
One way to maximize your ROI on your SEO investment is by prioritizing your local listings. Always reserve a spot for local search in your SEO strategy as it helps your business come up at the top search when your target users begin discovering and researching keywords that match your content and services.
For example, a target user is looking for security training in Toronto. A quick Google search generates a list of potential businesses, which might include your practice, if you’ve taken the time to secure your Google My Business (GMB) listing, providing the following pertinent information:
- Name
- Address
- Phone (a local number if possible)
- Business Hours
- Category (Security Training, plus secondary categories like “Security” or “Training”)
- Website
- Description (Your services and what sets you apart from the rest)
- Payment Options (Cash, debit/credit, bank transfers)
- Maintaining a fast, mobile-friendly website
It is important that you have a fast and mobile-friendly website because when it comes to determining where your site ranks in search results, Google looks at page speed and mobile-friendliness. If you have a slow site that does not work properly on mobile devices, you can have lower search rankings, and if you have a low search ranking, you can’t attract the traffic necessary to generate an ROI from your SEO investment.
This is also important for your potential customers. Most of your target audience may have been using their mobile devices while searching for your product or services, and you need to ensure that their user experience is of high quality. That’s why your goal should not only be to ensure a higher search ranking, but also to ensure that your website meets a user’s need and that it’s accessible enough for potential customers to actually get to the answer that they are looking for.
What’s so good about SEO as a digital marketing strategy is that you can gauge and track your results in real-time, more often than not. Tools like ROI-tracking Google Analytics help you measure and monitor the ROI of your SEO and other online marketing strategies. Now that’s a convenient way to keep track of the progress of your business!