How Google Analytics data helps calculate your search marketing ROI

Analytics | Marketing   |   
Published January 20, 2020   |   

You have hired an SEO agency for your online business.

You are running an outreach campaign.

But how are you measuring the ROI of your search marketing activities?

ROI (Return on Investment) is one of the most focused areas in marketing and economics, especially since digital marketing activities are one hundred percent measurable ineffectiveness of generating business opportunities. Although ROI is an indicator that is presented as a percentage of the profitability of a business or investment, it is also an element of great importance in the management and optimization of search marketing campaigns.

Any business that invests in marketing expects a reasonable ROI and the same goes for search marketing. If a company is hiring an SEO agency, they want to know the dollar value of its ROI instead of just ranking and traffic. With an Ecommerce website and PPC, it can be pretty straight forward however in other cases where businesses hire an SEO agency, the main KPIs like traffic & rankings won’t be enough after a while unless you can assign a dollar value to these KPI’s.

Similarly, with ever-increasing competition and changing dynamics of search marketing, SEO’s now have to optimize everything. From content to conversion, everything somehow falls in their job description.

So here we have a guide that will help both businesses and search marketers to calculate ROI of your search marketing based on Google Analytics Data.

We are going to explore how to put a dollar value to your Google analytics data for 3 most important search marketing factors.

Click here to read here on how to set up Google Analytics for your site

But before we do that, let’s clear some basics and prerequisites. There are 4 standard requirements to correctly perform ROI analysis in Google Analytics.

  • Ecommerce Tracking Configuration
  • Conversion / Goals Setting
  • Cost data available in your Google Analytics reports.
  • At least 60 days of data in Google Analytics that includes e-commerce data, goals, conversions, cost data, and website data usage.

Now before we can get into the data reports in Google Analytics, we need to link Google Ads Google Search Console accounts for the data to show on the Analytics platform.

For PPC Tracking

Connect your Google Ads account to your Google Analytics account. With both accounts being connected, you will automatically start receiving cost data from Google Ads. It’s pretty straight forward

Go to Google Analytics > Admin > Google Ads Linking (in 2nd column) > Select the Google Ads accounts you want to link > Name Link group > Turn Linking ON > Link Accounts

You may also want to Import cost data from other paid marketing campaigns that have not been made by Google

Go to Google Analytics > Admin > Data Import (in 2nd column)

Now you have all accounts setup and data imported, let’s dive into the actual ROI tracking.

Visitors & Impressions ROI

Google Analytics gives you a complete overview of visitors, impressions, top landing pages, etc.

Now it’s not easy to put an ROI on organic traffic because of several factors but we’ll try to put a value on it based on our investment as it’s a good thing to quantify your results.

Say you hired an SEO company and pay them $5000. Usually, an SEO company suggests the landing pages and keywords they will work on.

Let’s assume your website is getting 400 visitors per day from those keywords on their relevant landing pages. And out of those 400 visitors, 10 people are making a purchase worth $2000.

This gives you a conversion ratio of 2.5%

Now after 3 months, your website is getting 1600 visitors per day from those keywords on their relevant landing pages. And out of these 1600 visitors, 50 people are making a purchase worth $10000.

Now your conversion ratio is 3.1% with a 300% percent increase in traffic.

And your ROI is 60% as your total sales volume increased from $2000 to $10000 resulting in $8000 revenue.

Remember that you have to filter the data based on the landing page to get this picture.

The same thing applies to PPC traffic and Social Traffic. You can filter the traffic source by going to Google Analytics > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

Sales & Leads ROI 

Luckily, for Ecommerce websites, Google Analytics offers built-in Ecommerce  tracking.

If you are a tech-savvy person, then you can add the code yourself, but to make things simple, all you need to do is find the option/settings to connect Google Analytics with your shopping cart system and you are good to go.

Assuming you have set up Google Analytics already, simply go to Google Analytics > Your Site > Admin > Ecommerce set-up > On

If you have added the analytics code to your site by yourself then you have to modify it a little.

Here is what a normal analytics code looks like

Picture1 2

You have to add the following life of code

Syntax: ga(‘require’, ‘Ecommerce ’, ‘Ecommerce .js’);

Just below the gtag(‘config’, ‘UA-28189742-1’); line

But if you are using some popular third-party Ecommerce cart system then it’s even easier than that. Following are the specific guides or plugins to setup Ecommerce Tracking for three popular shopping cart CMS.

  1. Shopify
  2. WooCommerce
  3. OpenCart

Once everything is set up and working, you can see your Ecommerce data by Going to Google Analytics > Conversions > Ecommerce

Image2 1

You can filter the data by Channel and use Organic.

Now assume that you have spent $10000 on SEO services in August, then your revenue from Organic should start climbing in Sep or November. This way you can compare month to month performance to see how your SEO spending is impacting your business goals.

Similarly, you can also see how many purchases were done by the visitors coming to your site from PPC or Social media.

ROI Calculation Example

Say you get 5000 visitors from organic in December and 3700 of them made a purchase. The Total order value was $10000.

Also, assume that you invested $2000 in SEO services a couple of months back resulting in 3000 more visitors in December as compare to the month before investing in SEO services.

If you follow the above example, you have a 74% conversion ratio with a 400% ROI.

The same thing applies to PPC traffic and Social Traffic.

Leads Tracking

Unlike Ecommerce sites, some sites offer services and for them, conversion means lead generation or information collection.

You can set up Goals in Google Analytics to track lead generation. You have to assign a dollar value to your lead generation to track the ROI. This number can be anything that you think is worth a lead. For example, a person submitting a 3-page form might be a $100 value conversion for you.

You have to lay down step by step process of your visitor’s actions including entering on your site and the last page where you are done collecting the information. These steps then later can be converted into goals.

Once you have set up the Goals and assign a numeric value, you can see the reports in Google Analytics > Conversions > Goals

(Click here to read how to set up Goals in Google Analytics)

You can then filter the report based on traffic channels and see how organic vs PPC is performing.

ROI Calculation Example

Say you get 50 visitors from organic in December and 10 of them submitted the form that you values at $50 per conversion.

Also, assume that you invested $100 in SEO services as well a couple of months back resulting in 40 more visitors in December as compare to the month before investing in SEO services.

If you follow the above example, you have a 20% conversion ratio with a 400% ROI.

The same thing applies to PPC traffic and Social Traffic.

Outreach Marketing ROI

Outreaching is currently one of the most recommended and sought after link building services in SEO. Almost all SEO experts have shed light on its importance in SEO conferences. So if you are doing it then you should track it as well.

For that, we can use Campaign feature in Google Analytics. Go to the following URL

https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/

Fill up all the information. In the Website URL field, add the URL you are trying to promote. You can put “Outreach” in Campaign Medium and put site name in Campaign Source. Name the Campaign as you wish.

Once you fill all the required fields, you will get a campaign URL. Here is the sample.

Image1 1

Use this URL in your outreach campaign. Now you can know how many visitors come to your website via outreach campaigns and you can use that data with Ecommerce to see how many of these visitors make a purchase or submitted their info.

ROI Calculation Example

Say you get 50 visitors from a blog that costs you $150 editorial fee. 5 of them submitted the form that you values at $50 per conversion.

If you follow the above example, you have a 10% conversion ratio with a 66.67% ROI.

The same thing applies to PPC traffic and Social Traffic.

So here we have some ways to calculate your search marketing ROI. As a business, it will always help you to know how much ROI you are getting from what channel. This data can help you plan and allocation of your marketing budget efficiently.

If you are an SEO agency or even an in-house SEO, it’s always good to know as well as report how much your efforts are worth to your client’s business. If you can show a client that spending $2000 can bring $8000 revenue, your client will be more than happy to increase the budget and more eager to implement the changes you suggest as an SEO.