SEO costs vs. returns: what is the ROI and what does it deliver?

As we mentioned at the beginning, the ROI of SEO is not as easy to calculate as it is for SEA or Meta, for example. The difference between SEO and SEA is that with SEA, you can immediately see how much traffic and conversions your ads generate, and what the cost per click or per conversion is.

With SEO, this is a bit more complicated. It's a question we often get asked, but it's also a difficult question to answer because it's simply not as easy to measure as with SEA. Nevertheless, based on the data we have, previous studies, and our own results, we can make a good estimate.

Although we often talk about "free traffic" from search engines, SEO certainly does not come without investment. Investments in SEO usually consist of:

1. Agency fees – You can do SEO yourself or outsource it. If you outsource SEO to an agency such as Reward, you pay for expertise and implementation.
2. SEO tooling – Professional tools such as Ahrefs that we use to perform analyses.
3. Link building – Building high-quality links to your website, an essential part of good SEO.

These costs vary depending on your industry, competition, and goals. But they are all necessary to achieve effective SEO results.

But while we refer to SEO as an investment, it naturally also generates revenue. Otherwise, we would not be able to market it as an investment. SEO can deliver various forms of value:

1. Organic traffic – More visitors via unpaid search results.
2. Conversions – Visitors who become customers or take a desired action.
3. Brand awareness – Visibility in search results strengthens your brand, even if people don't click immediately.

Now that we know what SEO costs and what it can deliver, one question remains: how do you translate this into a concrete ROI?

To calculate the potential ROI of SEO, we at Reward have come up with the following. Although we cannot predict exactly how much traffic you will get from the monthly search volume, we can make a good estimate.

Here's how we do it:

1. Determining the target conversion value – We work with the customer to determine what a conversion is worth. This can be set in Google Analytics and forms the basis of our ROI calculations.
2. Competition analysis – We analyze what it takes to get into the top 3 on Google for your most important keywords, because we know that 70% of Google users only click on the top 3 results.
3. Traffic and conversion forecast – Based on average click-through rates and conversion rates, we estimate the traffic and number of conversions you can expect.

By bringing these elements together, we can paint a realistic picture of what SEO can do for your business.

The potential ROI of SEO depends heavily on the type of business and product you offer. Let's take two different examples:

1. A plumber who offers fast, relatively inexpensive services

The average order value is lower, but the purchase frequency may be higher.

2. A contractor who builds complete extensions costing €40,000-€50,000

The order value is much higher, meaning that even a small number of conversions can generate a significant ROI.

For both companies, we look at: what do we need to achieve that target conversion? What will it cost? What is the current competition like in the market? Based on that, we make a forecast of how many clicks it will generate, and we look at the CTR in combination with that target conversion amount.

At Reward, we don't see SEO as an expense, but as an investment in the future of your business. Although we can't give any hard guarantees about the exact ROI (who can?), we have seen time and time again that a solid SEO strategy pays for itself.

The key is to make a realistic forecast, be patient with the process, and work with a partner who is transparent about both the costs and the potential returns.