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aRodSEO
10-12-2006, 07:41 PM
I run some of my client campaigns based on a CPA (cost per acquisition) model. With these campaigns the more organic search leads we obtain, typically the more profit my company makes.

The challenge that I have been given is to provide an estimate of spending “this amount” on SEO will result in “this many” more leads and therefore make my company “this much” more money per month. So if we spend ten hours writing more content (those hours translate into x dollars spent), and ten hours implementing link popularity initiatives (those hours translate into y dollars spent) that the resulting increase in visibility will result in 100 additional leads (those leads translate into z more dollars profit for the company).

I just feel as though there are so many outside influencing factors that any of the numbers that I come up with to plug into the X + Y = Z equation (I realize I’m simplifying) will be so approximated that I will have an extremely low confidence in my estimates. I have talked with quite of few of my colleagues throughout the industry and not really come upon any good method to provide these estimates. The only solution that I have come across is to do it, track it, and create the estimates afterward to be a model for future campaigns. However, I feel that any estimate I did come up with would be unique to that particular web site and industry and would not translate very well onto another clients industry and web site.

Has anyone had any similar experience or tackled a challenge like this? :confused:

Black_Knight
10-14-2006, 10:16 AM
Yes.

I go with conservative figures.

"Spending X will gain a minimum return of Y, and has the potential to return far more".

Then factor in the percentage chances of it returning higher amounts based on past data. ("Of the last 3 campaigns of this type, Project A returned ten times the minumim return; Project B returned double the minimum despite competitor Z running a special offer, and some implementation delays due to E; and Project C returned 28 times the minimum return. No project of this type has yet returned the minimum calculated return, but we want you to be aware of the possibility")

Rajat Garg
10-13-2007, 03:16 AM
aRodSEO,

I think the bigger problem is that your company folks don't understand SEO. They are looking for PPC campaign manager - here is what you paid and here is what you got.

Having said that, you can reduce uncertainties by doing the following:

A. Determine target keywords (using your industry knowledge)
B. Determine estimated clicks/day for those terms - both broad and phrase match. Say, keyword 'A' gets X clicks per day (phrase match).

Use Google traffic estimator, which gives you a good median for amount of traffic per keyword (Cross check with Google trends to determine seasonality). Although, it estimates traffic for SEM 1-3 position, I have seen that most of the keywords (based on 100 kwds) within 5-10 position received close to that estimate (+- 10-15%). For 1-4 position, you may get as much as 3x of google traffic estimates. I will thus suggest using Google traffic estimates as median.

C. Competitive analysis - Look at the competitors link profile using some tools from SEOMoz or seobook.com
Further, analyze back links to determine the quantity of links (Y) with relevant anchor text. Determine Y for top 10 sites. Take median (Y) and top (Y)

Proposal -

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We can expect X amount of traffic, if we have more than median(Y) links pointing to the site.

We need to invest $$ to get median(Y) links from quality sites.

Also, state that this is based on the current information and as competitors add more links or get more SEO savvy, median(Y) will keep increasing.

As black_night suggested, you can use X for broad match as the number to state "with the potential of growing to X (for broad match)"

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A lot of above is also dependent on your credibility within the company (which is most of in-house SEO about anyway ???). If you can show small experiment (change footer/ change text on main traffic driving page etc) that increases traffic by 20+ %, you will have much easier time convincing them for follow up projects.

I hope above is useful and others please chime in, if you think that above strategy has flaws/ you want to add on to it.


Regards,
Rajat