How does an SEO company measure content ROI?

It compares what each piece or group of content cost with the value it can be shown to produce, over a period long enough for the content to be found. The formula is the ordinary one: value minus cost, divided by cost. The work is in the two inputs. Cost has to include everything the content took, and value has to be traced from the pages where visitors arrive to the inquiries and sales they lead to. Google Analytics measures part of that path well and part of it not at all, and a useful report says which is which.

Counting the full cost

The cost of a piece of content is more than the writer’s fee. It includes research and keyword work, editing, images or design, a share of the tools used to plan and track it, the time spent publishing and linking it, and the time your own staff spend briefing and approving it. A company that reports ROI per piece or per topic group should show this cost the same way, so you can see which content paid for itself and which did not.

Which pages bring visitors in

Search Console shows the clicks each page earns from Google Search. Google Analytics adds what happens next. Its Landing page report, in Google’s words, “shows you the first page a visitor lands on when they visit your website and how many visitors land on each page.” It can also show key events against each landing page. That metric only works once the actions that matter to you, such as a form submission, a call, or a purchase, have been marked as key events; Google’s description of the metric reads: “Populate this metric by marking an event as a key event.” Agreeing which actions count is therefore the first step in measuring content at all.

Content that helps before the final visit

A visitor may read a guide, leave, and come back later through another channel to make the inquiry. Google Analytics has a key event attribution paths report that shows “which channels initiate, assist, and close key events.” It breaks the data out by channel, source, medium, or campaign, so it can show that organic search started journeys that ended elsewhere, but not which article did. Credit for an individual piece of content in a longer journey is therefore an estimate built on assumptions, and the company should state those assumptions.

Check, too, that the company’s description of attribution is current. Google’s page notes: “The first click, linear, time decay, and position-based attribution models are no longer available as of November 2023.” A report that still describes those models as options in Google Analytics is out of date.

From leads to revenue

Analytics counts actions on your site; it does not know which inquiries became customers or what they spent. Revenue from content can only be measured by matching leads to your own sales records or customer system. Where that link does not exist, the honest report stops at leads and states the value you place on a lead, rather than presenting a revenue figure it cannot support.

Measuring over the right period

Content costs are paid when it is produced, while its value arrives as it is found and keeps arriving while it ranks. Measured too early, content can look like a loss even when it later pays for itself. Compare the cumulative cost of a piece or group with the cumulative value it has produced, and ask the company to say in advance when it expects to judge each piece.

Separating measured ROI from assumed ROI

Ask how cost is counted and whether it is reported per piece or per group, which actions are marked as key events, which report the value figures come from, how credit is handled when content starts a journey that ends through another channel, and whether revenue comes from your own records or is estimated. The answers tell you how much of the ROI figure is measured and how much is assumed.