How do you defend your SEO budget and ROI to your boss?

You will not start seeing results in month 1 or sometimes even in the initial 6 months if the website is very new. Here is how you showcase your work and results: 1. Show your growth pattern. One you have selected the keywords to target, show the growth patterns. For Example, today your website is ranking on 8th Page and after initial implementation it moves to 6th page, show this in your growth report. You will not get traffic or ranking growth here, but lead growth is important. 2. Show Impression Growth from Google Search Console. You may not see traffic growth in GA4 but most of the time, your impressions will grow before your clicks and traffic grow. Raise the Bar! Warm Regards, Anil Varma

What is SEO best practice is not always what's best for the business. Aligning your SEO efforts with the business means finding a north star goal that you will be constantly optimising towards. This will earn you trust amongst leadership in a few different ways. You will speak the language of leadership and report on what they care about. You will not be wasting time and resources in stuff that does not impact your north star goal. You will learn to be an asset to the business, more than a comodity, and understanding the ROI of your own work will help you grow in your career.

Show them the search terms from Google Search Console that people landed on the site from. If you’re doing your job they will be relevant. For example if you sell dog treadmills and 1,000 of people land in your site for that term, then show the decision maker in budgets, and say “hey SEO gets people ask for dog treadmills, want to maintain or max this out? We need budget.

1. Start by aligning your SEO goals with your company's overarching business objectives. 2. Understand what your boss values, their challenges, and their expectations regarding SEO. 3. For instance, if your boss prioritizes sales growth, illustrate how SEO can generate qualified leads, drive conversions, and increase revenue. 4. If brand awareness is a priority, showcase how SEO can enhance visibility, authority, and reputation. 5. Demonstrating how SEO directly contributes to the company's growth and success reinforces its importance and justifies the SEO budget and ROI.

I would say that once you have identified what your employer wants, you can demonstrate it through regular data-driven reports by showcasing the correlation between your SEO initiatives and KPIs. Create simple, visual reports that demonstrate how SEO directly impacts organic traffic, conversion rate, customer lifetime value, and return on ad spend. This will help you display real-time results and ensure that you are aligning your SEO strategy with your employer's requirements. Use data and case studies to demonstrate the impact of SEO. For example, you could show how SEO has increased organic traffic, leads, sales, or revenue. I personally believe GSC is the best way to showcase that you are actually putting in effort.

For defending the budget, I think the first thing you should do is writing a comprehensive report. Your report should contain lots of data shown as charts and graphs. The focus of the data should be on conversions drove from organic search. Also conversions should be divided into different stages and each step in the funnel reported separately. For example, form completion, signup, purchase, etc. should all be reported in-detail.

SEO impacts a broader sphere of influence that extends beyond simple metrics like clicks and conversions to more intangible factors like brand credibility, user experience, and long-term customer loyalty. Success in SEO is often incremental and cumulative, building over time as you optimize various aspects of your website and content strategy.

Do the POC. Here's the thing, each marketing venture is expected to contribute positively towards achieving a specific goal. Similarly, convincing your boss to invest in SEO relies on showing them that you've not just got a plan, but THE PLAN. A case study often works wonders. Ideally, such a case study would be about your very own company. Prove SEO worth and value with a Proof of Concept (POC). Frame a hypothesis, identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and give yourself a timeframe. Aim to reveal concrete answers - what kind of results it brought. Once you have a POC showing that SEO works the discussion will change from whether to invest in SEO to how much to invest in SEO.

To defend my SEO budget and ROI to my boss, I focus on data-driven results. I present clear metrics showing how SEO efforts have increased organic traffic, improved search rankings, and boosted conversions. I compare the cost of SEO with the value of the leads and sales generated, highlighting a positive return on investment. I also emphasize long-term benefits, such as sustained visibility and brand authority. By showing how our SEO strategy aligns with overall business goals and contributes to revenue growth, I make a compelling case for continued investment.

Define Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound objectives for your SEO efforts. These objectives provide a clear direction for your strategy and create the basis for measuring success. If certain metrics indicate room for improvement, highlight these areas and present actionable plans for addressing them. Demonstrating a commitment to growth can be reassuring.

You must demonstrate to them what your business is actually lacking. Like Have you covered all the most important keywords your website is supposed to rank for? If your business has a physical location, does it appear for specific terms when people search for it? If nothing happens, now it's time to show them how you can achieve results. You can demonstrate how your competitors are making efforts to rank higher. Instead of using complex terms, explain them in layman's language. Educate them, or at the very least, show them some real results by simply updating your old content, acquiring backlinks, or promoting on social media. Even a slight improvement can make a difference and will help you convince them that SEO is worth investing in.

When educating your boss on SEO best practices, emphasize the importance of steady, sustainable growth. One way to do this is by comparing it to a library. Each piece of optimized content you create is like a book in your company's digital library. Over time, this library grows, attracting more visitors and becoming a valuable resource in your industry. SEO ensures that your library is well-organized, easy to find, and filled with valuable information. By approaching SEO with a marathon mindset, you're not only setting realistic expectations but also positioning your company for enduring success. It's about building a strong online presence that continues to deliver value year after year, making it an investment that keeps on giving.

Show your boss what competitors are doing. That will engage them to learn. For example page speed no technical issues or rankings.

By educating your boss on SEO best practices and its impact on business success, you can foster a better understanding of the value of SEO. Begin by explaining the fundamental concepts of SEO. Define what SEO is, why it matters, and how it impacts online visibility and organic traffic. Use simple language to ensure clarity. This not only ensures support for your SEO initiatives but also allows for informed decision-making and the effective integration of SEO into the overall business strategy.

Break down the basics, unveil the challenges and opportunities, and highlight effective tactics. From the intricacies of algorithms to the significance of keyword research and content optimization, empower your team with knowledge. By doing so, you not only defend your SEO budget but also build trust and confidence in your strategy.

This is where a Proof of Concept (POC) comes in handy. Think of it as an experiment where you start with a hypothesis and define important metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Set a timeframe and monitor how your SEO efforts bring about changes. This could be an increase in site traffic, improvement in ranking, higher conversion rates, and so on. By using real-life data from your own company, you can make a compelling case for SEO. Once you have clear results, the discussion won't be about whether SEO deserves a budget but how much of it should be allocated.

I employ a strategy centered on showcasing success stories. I communicate the impact of the SEO budget by presenting real, tangible instances where our optimization efforts have yielded positive outcomes. By highlighting specific achievements such as significant increases in organic traffic, improvements in keyword rankings, or successful conversion rate optimizations, I paint a vivid picture of the value generated. These success stories serve as concrete evidence of the direct correlation between the allocated budget and tangible results, reinforcing the importance and effectiveness of our ongoing SEO efforts in driving business success.

Screenshots of your best SERPs. If you get a knowledge panel, featured snippet, or other rich card result, snap a screenshot of that and promote as much as you can. No. 1s always look good.

The best way to show someone that SEO is worth doing & investing in is with an awesome business case study. Using previous client case studies to show the results and dangle the carrot in front of your leadership team can be an excellent way to defend your SEO budget and get more buy-in from the top. If you're at an agency, use previous case studies. If you work in-house use external competitors as an example and show how they are doing vs how your company is doing. No one likes to see their competitors doing better than them.

When presenting our SEO budget and ROI to my boss, I focus on clear success stories. I highlight specific campaigns, such as one where we invested in keyword optimization, resulting in a 30% increase in organic traffic and a 20% boost in sales. I break down the costs of these campaigns and compare them to the revenue generated, showcasing a positive return on investment. I also emphasize ongoing improvements, like higher keyword rankings and better user engagement metrics. This approach demonstrates the tangible impact of our SEO efforts, helping my boss understand the value of our budget and fostering confidence in our strategy.

At the start SEO is usually an ROI-negative exercise, so it's important to communicate this clearly to set realistic expectations. A good analogy to use is that SEO is like joining in a marathon late - everyone else is already running. If you want a chance to finish competitively, you have to run faster than everyone else who has a headstart, i.e. you need to outwork and outspend them. "We'll invest when we start seeing results" is a common mistake. Given the above scenario, would you join a race and say "we'll run slower than everyone else but speed up if we start overtaking them"? Both feet, or neither!

One approach that works really well, especially if the company/leader is newer to investing in SEO is the cost of NOT investing. For instance, you do a total addressable market analysis of your direct competitors and you see they are driving hundreds of thousands (if not more) through SEO. The longer the company/leader holds out the more expensive its going to be for them to capture this traffic through paid media or other non-organic efforts.

I always pitch the narrative that "PPC is like renting a house, SEO is like buying it." If you stop paying rent you will lose your house, you invest time and effort and you can have your own established house. Every C-Level executive say we want instant results, we can't wait for 6 months and this is a common practice in every company. To earn their trust, you can work on a low-hanging fruit as an experiment and pitch that improvement as a sign of what you're missing out on!

Flip the question of “how much is SEO going to cost us?” on its head to be “what’s the cost of NOT doing SEO?” If you’re not investing into SEO and seeing growth from organic search, there’s a good chance you’re going to have to buy traffic with paid search or social. And this, in most cases, will result in a higher CPA than organic. Combine SEO forecasting with insights into your paid CPA to begin to calculate the cost of NOT investing into SEO. This can also be used to showcase what a reduced investment into SEO could ultimately cost the business. If you’re defending budget, showing this can be invaluable and can really help to demonstrate the need for sustained SEO investment.

If the decision maker is against SEO and has a history of not being opened mined, don’t waste your energy. Find a role that values SEO.