Key Takeaways
- C-suite executives need clear data to evaluate SEO’s value.
- Marketing leaders should use ROI forecasts to justify SEO investment.
- Track key metrics like search volume, traffic, and conversions to build an ROI forecast.
- Use current data to estimate 6- and 12-month traffic growth and show SEO’s potential impact.
Every dollar spent on SEO must deliver a tangible result–and the sooner better. Yet, SEO campaigns take time to mature. Often, results aren’t clear for months.
Meanwhile, executives wait nervously for the expected return on their investment. No wonder leaders often prefer to invest in channels with more predictable timelines and forecastable results.
Unfortunately, without leadership buy-in, your SEO campaigns will starve for resources and never get started.
Predicting ROI from organic search has always been difficult. Emerging generative AI search engines and the threat of zero-click searches is rapidly changing the calculus of SEO. To accurately forecast results
How do you convince your leadership to back your SEO campaigns?
Our experience suggests that you must identify achievable results, choose the right metrics and craft a plan with resource constraints top of mind.
This step-by-step guide offers practical strategies for predicting the ROI of your SEO campaigns. You’ll craft a convincing case for SEO investment and secure buy-in from your leadership team.
To get there we’ll help you answer these questions:
- How do you make a quantitative case for SEO?
- How to align your SEO investment with business goals?
- What metrics should you track to effectively measure SEO?
- How can you demonstrate the impact on multichannel conversions?
- What analyses and visuals effectively communicate the long-term value of SEO?
After decades of SEO campaign experience, we wouldn’t dare recommend SEO without gathering data, researching competing campaigns, and presenting a forecast with hard numbers.
Let’s get started.
5 Steps to Building a Data-Driven Business Case for SEO
Step 1: Identify Key Metrics
When developing a quantitative case for SEO, you must start by identifying the key metrics you want to measure and forecast. Some SEO metrics are helpful and some are not. You must choose metrics that align with business goals that are top of mind for your leadership.
We recommend considering the following metrics:
Metric: Organic Conversion Rate
Measure how often your organic traffic converts into sales or leads. You should estimate your expected conversion rate using historical organic traffic performance in GA4.
If you can’t estimate the expected conversion rate with analytics data, be sure to revisit this estimate when you have more data. In the meantime, we have found that 1.5% is a useful conversion rate that is accurate for many industries.
Remember that your actual organic conversion rate could vary widely from page to page so choose an average for now.
Metric: Monthly Search Volume (Non-branded)
This metric shows you how often relevant searches happen without your brand name. Why is this useful? Simple: it highlights market opportunity. Use Google Search Console to obtain this metric.
Metric: Percentage of Total Search Volume Captured
This shows how much of the available market your SEO is reaching, helping you gauge growth potential. To calculate it, use a tool like Ahrefs to find the total monthly search volume for all ranking keywords and your organic traffic.
Or, to be more accurate, use Google Search Console and obtain your site’s number of total impressions over the past 12 months. Then, divide this number by 12.
Formula:
Percentage of total search volume captured = (Current monthly organic traffic / Total monthly search volume)
Metric: Organic Traffic
Organic traffic shows the direct impact of SEO on your site’s visibility and how well you attract visitors without paid ads. Track this using GA4 (filtered for organic traffic only) or Google Search Console. To find average monthly organic traffic, collect data over the last 12 months and divide by 12.
Metric: Total Monthly Leads or Revenue
This links SEO performance to financial outcomes, helping decision-makers see the value. Measure it using the number of leads or revenue generated through SEO.
Overall, these baseline metrics are key to use in predictive models for SEO ROI. While there will likely be other metrics or data that are important to your management team,(such as engagement rate, 1st page keyword rankings, or share of traffic), identifying key metrics is the place to start.
Step 2: Gather Supplemental Data
Beyond the metrics mentioned above, supplemental data can be used to strengthen your quantitative pitch for SEO investment:
1. Highlight a Successful Competitor
If your company is focused on outperforming specific competitors in search results, it’s helpful to incorporate them into your pitch. Use keyword research tools to identify your competitors’ estimated monthly traffic, traffic value, total ranking keywords, and keywords in top 3 positions. This gives your leadership team a clear target to aim for with an SEO campaign.
Focus on the high-value, purchase-intent keywords your competitors are ranking for, as these drive more leads and revenue compared to informational keywords. For example, if a competitor ranks #1 for “best places to live in Florida,” that may generate traffic but not many leads. However, a keyword like “mortgage rate calculator” has stronger purchase intent, making it more valuable for increasing ROI.
2. Measure the ROI of Your Existing Traffic
Evaluate the ROI of your current traffic to identify which search intents convert well and can be scaled. Many SEO strategies emphasize blog content to drive traffic, but not all blogs convert into leads or revenue. If your content is mainly focused on informational keywords, it might not be contributing much to the bottom line.
The rise of generative AI, such as tools like Gemini and ChatGPT, or AI-powered search features like Featured Snippets and AI Overviews, has further reduced the value of informational content. To boost ROI, SEO campaigns need to go beyond informational keywords.
Use GA4 to pinpoint which of your pages are driving the most conversions. Then, look for trends in the types of pages and topics that perform best. If, for example, product category pages (like “White Running Sneakers”) are delivering a higher ROI than blog content, focus your SEO efforts on creating more category pages in your pitch.
3. Analyze Your Google Ads Search Terms Report
Most companies don’t realize they already have valuable data that can guide their SEO strategy. Google Ads Search Terms reports, for instance, reveal which keywords are driving clicks and conversions.
Google Ads Search Terms Report (source: Surfside PPC)
If you find certain keywords are generating a high conversion rate through paid search, targeting those same keywords organically can yield similar results without the ongoing ad spend. This data can also help predict the number of conversions that can be generated by targeting adjacent keywords with similar search intent.
By analyzing these kinds of supplemental data, you can gain valuable insights into what search terms are already working for your business. This can help predict the potential ROI of an SEO campaign.
Step 3: Model ROI Scenarios
There are several ways to model ROI, but we’ll guide you through the approach we have found works best for us during our discovery process.
1. Calculate Your Traffic Baseline
Start by measuring your current traffic performance using tools like GA4 and Google Search Console.
- Percentage of Total Search Volume Captured: Use this formula to calculate how much of the total search volume your site captures: Percentage of total search volume captured = (Monthly organic traffic / Monthly search volume of all ranking keywords)
- Non-Branded Search Volume: Use Google Search
- Monthly Organic Traffic and Leads/Conversions: Use GA4 (for traffic and leads/conversion metrics) or Google Search Console (for traffic metrics) to determine these metrics for your site. Identify your site’s traffic and leads/conversions over the past 12 months and divide by 12 to determine the average monthly metrics.
- Expected Conversion Rate: Use this formula to determine your expected conversion rate based on traffic and monthly leads: Expected conversion rate = (Total monthly leads or conversions / Monthly organic traffic)
2. Calculate 6-Month Projected Traffic
Once you have your baseline, calculate your traffic projections for the next six months:
- % of Total Search Volume Captured: For six months, we estimate capturing 1% of the total search volume. This is a conservative estimate but can be adjusted based on your historical data.
- Non-Branded Search Volume: Use the same non-branded search volume from the baseline.
- Organic Traffic: Multiply the estimated 1% of total search volume by the non-branded search volume to calculate projected organic traffic.
- Conversion Rate: We recommend using a conservative rate of 1.5%, as non-branded traffic typically converts at a lower rate than branded traffic.
- Monthly Leads or Revenue: Calculate projected leads using this formula:
Projected leads = Baseline leads + (Projected organic traffic * Conversion rate)
For revenue, use:
Projected revenue = Baseline revenue + (Projected organic traffic * Conversion rate * Average revenue per conversion)
3. Calculate 12-Month Projected Traffic
For 12-month projections, repeat the steps above but increase the % of Total Search Volume Captured to 2%. This reflects the cumulative impact of ongoing SEO efforts over a longer period.
Once you’ve modeled your scenarios, the next step in the process is to package and present the information so that it effectively communicates the data to your leadership team.
Step 4: Package and Present the Forecast
1. Summarize Key Information Clearly
When presenting the forecast, highlight the most important insights concisely. Provide a high-level overview that covers key metrics like projected traffic growth, conversion rate improvements, and expected increases in leads or revenue over six and twelve months. We recommend focusing on:
- Current traffic baseline vs. projected traffic growth
- Expected increase in leads or revenue
- ROI projections based on both historical and forecasted data
Use bullet points to make the information easy for leadership to understand quickly.
2. Connect the Forecast to Strategic Priorities
Just like financial investment planning, where decisions are driven by balancing risks and potential returns, your SEO forecast should link directly to your company’s overall business goals.
If the goal is to increase market share, demonstrate how capturing a larger share of search traffic will support that goal. If revenue growth is a top priority, focus on how the projected leads and conversions will contribute to meeting those targets.
By framing SEO as a long-term, strategic investment—similar to a financial portfolio—you can help leadership see how it aligns with their objectives and long-term success.
3. Use Effective Visuals and a Strong Narrative
Visuals are crucial for making complex data more digestible. We recommend using:
- Graphs and Charts: Show traffic growth, conversion rates, and ROI projections.
- Comparative Tables: Display side-by-side comparisons of baseline and projected metrics.
- Infographics: Condense key takeaways into visual summaries to reinforce your main points.
To get the most out of your visuals, combine your graphics and tables with a strong narrative. Emphasize how SEO efforts will not only contribute to short-term growth, but also position the company for sustainable success over time.
Unlike paid marketing channels, where results stop as soon as you stop spending, SEO continues to deliver results even after you’ve stopped actively investing in it. The work you put into SEO can keep benefiting your business for years to come.
Highlighting this point helps leadership see SEO as an investment that grows over time, just like a well-managed financial portfolio.
Step 5: Implement a Feedback Loop
Tracking actual results against your forecast is key to understanding how well your SEO efforts are performing. It’s also key for keeping executives committed to the long-term, incremental growth process that SEO inherently requires.
By comparing the real data with what you originally predicted, you can see where things are on track or where adjustments are needed. If your results don’t match your forecasts, you can tweak your strategy by targeting different keywords or improving your website content.
Over time, using this data to fine-tune your approach helps make your predictions more accurate and ensures you get the most out of your SEO investment.
Expected Results and Impact
Taking a quantitative approach to pitching SEO builds confidence with your executive team. By setting clear, measurable goals for the SEO campaign, you will be able to boost accountability and keep the focus on what matters most—driving revenue and tangible business growth.
It can also be helpful to remind leadership that a revenue-focused SEO strategy doesn’t just increase organic traffic and revenue; it improves your site’s performance across all channels. By incorporating CRO, building trust, and improving content quality, SEO can positively impact other acquisition channels like paid ads, email marketing, and social media.
The more value your pitch demonstrates, the easier it will be to get buy-in across the board.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, building a data-driven case for SEO is essential to gaining leadership buy-in and driving long-term business growth. By following the five steps outlined in this guide, you’ll be equipped with everything you need to present a compelling case to your C-Suite.
This will be great for you and your department, as it will help you secure the investment you need to be effective in your role.
It will be great for your executives, because they will walk away with increased confidence in their SEO strategy and understand how to measure and iterate over time.
Most of all, utilizing this approach will help your organization adopt a robust and adaptable approach to SEO that remains effective as the landscapes of SGE, Gen AI, and technology at large continue to evolve in unexpected and unpredictable ways.
Ultimately, SEO is a long-term investment that continues to deliver value long after active efforts have stopped, making it a critical part of a sustainable marketing strategy. With a data-driven business case and a strategic approach for pitching your organization’s leadership, you will have everything you need to secure SEO investment and drive meaningful, long-term growth for your business.
Let Fire&Spark help you …
1. Schedule an SEO strategy session: Talk to a strategist at Fire&Spark about building and pitching your organic customer acquisition campaigns. Schedule a strategy session.
2. Dive deeper into SEO for Revenue: Fire&Spark’s SEO for Revenue Guide explains how to update your SEO strategies to optimize for sales and conversions, not just rankings and traffic. This mindset shift is crucial for adapting to changes in search. Get the guide.
3. Request a generative AI search audit: Our team would be happy to take a look at your site and help you forecast the effect of generative AI search and Google’s AI overviews on your top-of-funnel organic traffic. Request an audit.