How to Calculate SEO ROI for a knowledgebase or support portal
-
Dear Moz Friends,
We are trying to calculate SEO ROI for our customer support website driven by Self-Help documents, Support Videos, and path to contact our Live Support. We would like to collect your valuable thought/inputs on how to better calculate support website SEO ROI.
A typical customer journey scenario:-
Customer searches for a solution to a problem with our product in Google/Yahoo/MSN
-
Customer then clicks our link in the SERPs that addresses his/her current problem
-
Customer lands on the link, reads the fix/solution and does one of the five below-mentioned actions
- a) Customer resolves the problem and clicks the ‘Yes’ button to notify us is he is satisfied. Eventually, the customer leaves our support website.
- b) Leaves the website as a result of resolving the problem without clicking the Yes or No button.
- c) Customer does not resolve the problem and clicks the ‘No’ button to notify us that the problem persists even after he/she tried to fix the problem using the support/help document. Then customer might contact us using the contact button (when takes them to Live-help options page).
- d) Customer clicks the ‘Contact Us’ button to contact our live support agent either via chat or phone, who will help resolve the issue.
- e) Searches using the Internal Search, if the link doesn’t seem to solve his/her problem and can hop onto other support documents.
Note: The website is purely for support. We currently do not cross-sell, or up-sell, or do any marketing activity like conversion, etc.
Please share your thoughts and help us figure out the ROI formula for our efforts. Let me know if any questions.
Thanks,
Norton Support SEO team. -
-
In general the ROI (Return Of Investment) is calculated as (gain of investment - cost of investment)/cost of investment, which gives a good measure of what you get compared to what you spend. As you probably already know, the higher ROI the better.
In your case, you have a knowledge database for computer problems solving. As you also note in your question, you don't do any marketing activity, therefore there is no straightforward way to measure the gain of the investment.
One key point to mention is the buying cycle which explains the 5 steps to convert your site visitor to a customer. Aw****areness: Through your SEO people find your website and get to know about your products and your services.
R****esearch: After getting on your site, people can search for more information about your product/service, and refine their search.
Preference: This step contains the process of making the final choice and the confirmation of it.
Purchase: Now that the final choice is made, the visitor can be converted to an actual customer. Loyalty/advocacy:.After the purchase, we expect a satisfied customer that will come back to the site, and search for other products/services that are provided.The last step takes us back to the first one, as we make a customer aware of more products.
As you can see, the key point is the marketing, that you make people know what you "make" and try to convince them that they need it. That is the main aspect of ROI.
On the other hand, I noticed that you don't have anything related to the social media (facebook like and share, tweet, etc). That is the best tool in our days to attract people and let them know what you can provide. In fact it is also a very good way to boost your ROI. Even in your case, it would be imperative to have people to able to share their experience on your site, for example: "I was very satisfied by this article" along with a link of a solution shared on facebook or after contacting your live support to share that "The article didn't work for me, but they have a great online live support!". This will bring more people on your site searching for answers and/or solutions.
If you would like more information, check also these links:
http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/05/16/how-to-calculate-the-roi-of-your-seo-campaign/
http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/06/27/how-to-calculate-the-roi-of-your-social-media-campaigns/ -
This is just my opinion. I am certain that accountants and pseudoaccountants will disagree.
This is how I would value the site if I owned it.
If your website provides accurate, easy-to-find and easy-to-follow advice for lots of Norton's most frequently-encountered customer problems then the website might have a positive ROI from a branding perspective. Since you don't sell anything or try to sell anything then you really can't calculate a direct ROI.
If your website provide skimpy, inaccurate, hard-to-find advice then it should be closed down because because it is stinking up your brand and the ROI is negative. Lots of companies have support websites like this. The worst ones have a forum that nobody visits where you can ask a question and it might get answered next year by a spammer.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Facebook conversions - issue in calculation
Hi, I have a few campaigns for conversions on Facebook, but any of them don't show to me real numbers. There are 4 times more conversions on Facebook than in GA. I did a little research. The problem is that - Facebook pixel calculates all possible conversions from all sources, and because my campaign results are wrong e.g.: Facebook campaign results: Conversions: 10 | Cost per conversion: 1 GA for that campaign (real numbers): Conversions 1 | Cost per conversion: 1 GA from all campaigns and sources: 10 It's that correct? Pls help. Br. Marco
Conversion Rate Optimization | | marcop21 -
Can Very High Impressions and 0% Organic CTR Impact our SEO Rankings?
I have a very strange feeling that someone bad is trying to hurt our company, but maybe I am wrong. Let me explain. In the last two month, we have seen a very significant drop in sales on our website, but we couldn't figure out why. We have looked at different metrics (Google Search Console, Moz, Google Analytics), but everything looked alright. We had 10% loss in traffic, but we didnt believe at the time that it could be the main issue. Just yesterday we've discovered the following (please see attached screenshot😞 On August 18, 2018 Google launched Search Update On the same date, we had a jump in Organic Search Impressions for one particular keyword, which we never tracked before: "free facebook login". Majority of all impressions (233,000 out of 258,000) were from Philippines. Very low total number of clicks (50 clicks) led to 0% Average CTR for this keyword. Which in return, also lowered our global CTR by 1%. One month later we had 1000's of spam emails sent to our Helpdesk from two IP addresses, also from Philippines. We blocked them of course. It could be all coincidence. I dont know. But do you think that someone can use this fraudulent tactic to lower our CTR and drop our ranking and traffic? Can this influence our SEO in any way? It's also possible that someone is attacking Facebook and we just happen to be there, on the first page, for the same keyword. Should we try to eliminate our page for this keyword and see what happens? I've checked this article from Rand Fishkin - https://moz.com/blog/impact-of-queries-and-clicks-on-googles-rankings-whiteboard-friday and it seems that CTR is an important factor. However the article is from 2015 and maybe it's no longer relevant. What should we do? Thanks! G86Nge4
Conversion Rate Optimization | | plumrocket11 -
Anyone using WebP to optimize your images? Also is there any SEO benefit to doing so?
While researching ways to optimise images for SEO and quick load speeds, I've come across this:
Conversion Rate Optimization | | adamlcasey
https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/download Is anyone using this and are you seeing any SEO benefits?0 -
Working with Wine & Spirits - SEO
Hello All, I'm looking for an SEO contractor/agency who can start the SEO process here and has worked with wine and spirtis, foodie sites, or luxury. I'm having trouble finding this experience ion SEO. We're looking for a company that is willing to be tranparent in methods and show us the process. If anyone has referrals or input, I would love to hear it. We are considered a start-up in the wine-industry and cannot devote 20 hours a month on this myself. Please chime in on your perpsective, advice.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Airbutoh0 -
Responsive SEO - Redesign
My team is in the process of redesigning our main website. In order to balance Conversion Rate Optimization and SEO we are considering adding some features to the new site – HOWEVER we are wondering whether or not this will make any significant to our SERP’s. All together I am looking for your opinion – on two distinct areas. NOTE: Our site is built in plain HTML- No CMS. First (HOME PAGE) Content Slider above the fold. Our current site does a good job of utilizing this prime space with a balanced use of H1 and Text. However – it is not optimized for conversions. We feel a slider will kill both birds with one stone. Have you have any experience with this? What are your thoughts? Do SE’s like this? SECOND (NAVIGATION) We are adding a submenu to the site. Besides our Horizontal top menu and additional menu in a Column format is being discussed. We are thinking that the left placement will work better with conversions – however what do search engines like most – left or right navigations? Your input is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Daniel
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dhidalgo10 -
Improving data tables for Usability & SEO
I have some large html data tables that look horrible (see bottom of http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/surety-bonds/commercial-bonds/auto_dealer_bond.htm). To my surprise, heat map tests actually proved them to be useful in improving our conversion rates to get visitors to apply for the bond they need. We are looking at ways to better the user experience while still keeping the data visible to search spiders. One idea was to use a dropdown list to filter by states. With new web technologies, there must be a better way to utilize this data. What are some alternatives?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | TheDude0 -
Any Suggestions for Building an SEO Friendly Auto Dealership Website?
Does anyone have suggestions for re-designing an auto dealership website? Is it possible to build a WordPress website that accepts an inventory feed from VinSolutions? I've been building websites and provided SEO services for years. This is my first time working in the auto industry. The issue I am facing is that our dealership currently have two websites. Both are built on 3rd party platforms and I am seriously considered rebuilding our website from scratch. Our first website was been provided to us by our Hyundai and the website is managed through Cobalt. While I like that the website is directly affiliated with Hyundai, it's very difficult to manage and I have yet to be able to get the techs to grant me access to the FTP server or provide help with installing Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools. The owner of our dealership never liked the Cobalt website so they decided to launch a second website that is created and managed by a company called Dealer Specialties. The site is also very difficult to administer and I only see problems later down the road. Is anyone familiar with working with auto dealership websites? I would love to hear your comments on the best way to proceed with our new web presence.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | bryanmull0 -
Page Title Tags - SEO vs CRO ?
Hi everyone, Thanks to what seems to be a recent(ish) algo change in Google, some of our more targeted deeper pages are ranking for search terms where before only our homepage would rank. This is of course great however I am a little worried that some of the page titles of our internal pages are a little short, for example our main departments (we are an ecommerce store) are titles 'Department Name | Liberty Games' so for example 'Pool Tables | Liberty Games'. I have heard varying reports on what to do with the title tag, I have heard to keep the most relevant keywords to the left of the tag, which we have done, I have also heard that shorter is better. I am just a bit concerned that our tags are looking a little stumpy in the serps alongside other results which are longer (although admittedly a bit keyword stuffed). So (eventually) my question is, will short titles harm my click-through rate ? but are shorter titles better for SEO ? If longer is better are there any recommendations about what I could add to these titles that could potentially help click-throughs and natural rankings ? Many thanks, Stuart
Conversion Rate Optimization | | stukerr1