But none of that really focuses on return beyond the idea of “more traffic.” Too few people ask: What’s the business case for simply “more traffic”?

The real key isn’t just more traffic, but traffic that converts better. Make sure you know *why* the client wants more traffic on a given keyword. Does the client want to drive readers to give up their e-mail address for further marketing? Do they want to monetize page turns? Do they want to drive people directly into a purchase funnel?

Traffic for the sake of traffic is a waste of money. And keywords that drive bulk traffic aren’t necessarily the right keywords. You want success on keywords that have a positive financial impact. A keyword that brings 5,000 daily bounces to a site is the wrong keyword, even though you can show a traffic increase. But if you’re monetizing pageviews, a keyword that brings 1,000 new visitors to a site, each of whom looks at 8 pages, is a powerful success.

To some extent, all an SEO can do is deliver traffic; there are a zillion ways that the site itself can screw up the conversion — and most of them do. But by focusing on organically optimizing for traffic that converts, you do prove your cash value to your client.

Sometimes your SEO goals are not directly about ROI but about being found in the search engines and gaining more qualified traffic to your site. If this is the case you can measure how much traffic is referred to your site from search engines both before and after optimization, as well as keyword ranking before and after.

Also, if there is some kind of lead form on the site you could measure what percentage of lead forms have been submitted both before and after optimization to get a sense of the quality of your keywords and how well they are targeting your audience.

I guess my main point is to establish your goals and metrics at the beginning and reinforce how important SEO is within a marketing strategy. It’s kind of like PR, you have do to it to get your name out there but it’s difficult to measure directly the ROI.

Happy optimizing!

We benchmark everything at the start using combination of analytics, rank checkers and webmaster tools to show accurate numbers of inward links. This works well for an already established site.

We then compare month on month (we try to tie clients in for at least three months so as to get a good timeframe in which we can demonstrate value) and show increases (hopefully) in

non-paid search revenue
non-paid traffic
per visitor value

We take a blended view of SEO so we suggest Conversion Rate improvements and demonstrate success with usage metrics – time on site, decrease in bounce rates, cart abandonment, more favourable user testing reviews etc.

As much as I hate doing it, we also show changes in rankings but stress to clients it is traffic that counts.

We deal with link building separately but we also explain that the SEO landscape is fluid and you need to try to stay ahead of your competitors efforts in that area. We use a variety of tools to show how competitors are doing in the market, especially in their link building.

A great comparison tool is available on SEOmoz labs that shows a spider diagram comparing you and your competitors efforts, both the quality and quantity.

Holding them up against their closest competitor usually makes a client take notice.

This comparison is also useful for new sites as it gives the client something to aim for.