Analyzing SEO and Reporting its True Value

I am going to outline the process I follow to determine the true value of SEO campaigns.

For any organic search campaign you would be interested in knowing:

1. How the campaign has performed or is performing?
2. How people who came to your site consumed and engaged with your contents?

The traditional way of doing this is by creating a custom report in Google Analytics:

Fig.1

I have been using this custom report for ages. In case you want to use it too, then you can download it from here.

Now the problem with this custom report is that, it reports only those conversions (goal conversions, ecommerce transactions) in which organic search was the last marketing channel a person was exposed to before he/she converted.  So the Goal completions you see in this custom report are the last click goal completions.  Similarly the goal conversion rate you see is the last click goal conversion rate, and the ecommerce conversion rate you see is the last click e-commerce conversion rate.

But what about those conversions which SEO campaigns didn’t directly completed but initiated and assisted.  We call such conversions as assisted conversions (any conversion other than the last click conversion).

We can never truly determine the true value of our SEO campaigns unless we don’t start analyzing and reporting the role, organic search campaigns are playing in the overall conversions occurred on our website.

“ SEO not only helps in completing a conversion but also help in initiating and assisting the conversions which are completed by other marketing channels (like PPC, Email, Display, Direct, Referral etc). “

In other words we need to analyze and report:

• how SEO is helping PPC
• how SEO is helping Display
• how SEO is helping Email
• how SEO is helping the entire business

It is very important that you show to your client/boss and esp. to all the people in your marketing team that how important SEO is to their campaigns’ success and to the overall bottom-line of the company. I use the following conversion segment to determine the true value of SEO efforts:

Fig.2

In this conversion segment I am selecting all those ‘conversion paths’ in which ‘organic search’ was not the last interaction.  Google Analytics by default follows the last click attribution model. So in Google Analytics non multi-channel funnel reports you see conversion volumes and conversion values for conversion paths in which ‘organic search’ was the last interaction.

That is why in my conversion segment I have excluded all those ‘conversion paths’ in which ‘organic search’ was the last interaction.  In this way I can avoid reporting double counts of last click conversion volumes and conversion values. If all this doesn’t make much sense to you, then I highly recommend you to read the post: How to do Attribution Modeling in Google Analytics – Ultimate Guide. This post explains attribution modeling from start to finish in easy to understand words.

Once you have applied this conversion segment to your ‘Top Conversions Path’ report, you will get an insight similar to this:

Fig.3

Here we can see that the SEO campaigns assisted in additional 20k+ conversions (goal conversions and ecommerce transactions) whose value is more than $70k.  You can’t get such insight through non-multi channel funnel reports.  But since in multi channel funnel reports, conversions include both Goal conversions and e-commerce transactions, we need to segment the data:

Fig.4

Now we can see that out of 20,839 conversions, 467 are ecommerce transactions.  These are the transactions which organic search didn’t directly completed but assisted in completing. Without the assistance of organic search these transactions wouldn’t have completed in the first place.  We want to determine the value of these e-commerce transactions. So I will unselect all the goals and then click on the ‘Apply’ button:

Fig.5

Fig.6

Here we can see that Organic search helped in generating revenue of $40,885 on top of the revenue ($122,211.09) it directly generated (as reported by our custom report above in Fig.1).  Similarly unselect ‘e-commerce’ transaction in Fig.4 and then click on the ‘Apply’ button to determine the total value of assisted goal conversions.

Here is how the final SEO report should look like:

 Similarly you can determine true value of your PPC campaigns, Display campaigns, Email campaigns etc.

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Other Posts you may find useful:

• What Matters more: Conversion Volume or Conversion Rate – Geek Case Study
• The Geek guide to Bounce Rate Optimization in Google Analytics
• How to Report & Analyze Conversion Rate in Google Analytics
• 8 Super Awesome Google Analytics Conversions Segments you Must use
• Attribution Modeling Case Study – Introducing Effective Click Optimization
• How E-Commerce Tracking works in Google Analytics – Ultimate Guide
• Is your conversion Rate Statistically Significant?
• Google Analytics Shortcuts: Tricks, Tools, keyboard & APIs
• Google Analytics Account Setup Checklist