Unless you're part of the SEO team, you shouldn’t be focusing on basic metrics like organic visitors, CTR, and on-page time with enterprise SEO.
Though great metrics, on an enterprise level, executives don’t care about them. They care about the money the SEO efforts are bringing in.
Because of this, you need to track metrics that report revenue or are closely related to money. For the most part, this requires a lot of work from CRM systems, enterprise SEO tools, and various other internal programs.
Key Enterprise SEO Metrics to Track
The SEO metrics you should track for an enterprise are much different to a regular SEO campaign.
This doesn’t mean, however, that you shouldn’t track them, especially if you’re the SEO or marketer. You should track them, but you should only present the following metrics to executives, stakeholders, etc:
- Revenue
- Return on Investment (ROI)
- Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Conversions
- Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
- Opportunity Value
- Cost Efficiency
These are the figures executives and business owners care about. They are also the figures they understand.
Revenue
One of the main metrics you should track is revenue. Revenue from organic traffic.
Luckily, this is one of the easier metrics to track. You can track revenue from organic traffic directly in Google Analytics.
The calculation for this metric is also simple, regardless of whether you track it using software.
Total Revenue from Organic Traffic = Sum of all revenue from organic sessions
Revenue is also a base metric for a lot of the other metrics we’ll explain below. For example, return on investment (ROI).
Return on Investment (ROI)
Return on investment (ROI) is another metric you can track. Most of the time, you’ll need multiple tools to track this metric.
To calculate this metric, you need two figures: SEO revenue and SEO costs.
Gaining access to SEO revenue is easy. However, if not tracked, SEO costs are a little more difficult.
On an enterprise level, you must think about software costs, labour, outsourcing, and more—a lot of the time, these costs are calculated internally or on an accounting software.
ROI = (SEO Revenue - SEO Costs) / SEO Costs x 100
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) is a very important metric. It tells us the average amount spent by customers over a lifetime.
LTV, like ROI, is difficult to calculate. However, once you have a system in place to calculate it, it can be greatly rewarding.
LTV = Average Revenue per Customer x Average Purchase Frequency x Average Customer Lifespan
SEO is expensive. Sometimes, you don’t make an ROI from the first customer interaction.
This is where LTV comes into play. It shows us how much each customer is worth over a lifetime, regardless of how much it costs to obtain them.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Talking about costs of obtaining customers is customer acquisition cost (CAC).
CAC considers all the costs it takes to obtain one customer. Think SEO costs, in-house staff, tool subscriptions, agencies, additional labour, office spaces, etc.
CAC = Total SEO Costs / Number of New Customers Acquired via Organic Search
Most marketers use CAC throughout their marketing campaigns. It’s something you can optimise to increase per-customer profits.
Conversions
Another metric you should track is conversions. Not the number of conversions, either, but the conversion rate.
The conversion you track will depend on your conversion goals. However, it tends to be from submissions, purchases, or phone calls.
Conversion Rate = (Number of Conversions / Number of Visitors) x 100
What makes conversion rate special is that it provides us with a quick picture of what keywords are bringing in the money.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
Sales-qualified leads, or SQLs, are great for websites that have good sales funnels. It can even help us project forecasts on future revenue.
SQL Rate = (Number of SQLs / Number of MQLs from Organic Traffic) x 100
SQLs are worth measuring because they can help determine what keywords or landing pages are more likely to bring customers into our sales funnels.
Opportunity Value
Opportunity value can help with current and future budgeting.
It’s a quick number that everyone understands. It showcases the opportunity we’re missing out on or could have based on previous performance.
Opportunity Value = Total Potential Revenue from SEO-Generated Leads
The number alone is an estimate. But it’s a calculated estimate that could help shed some light on available budgeting and resources.
Cost Efficiency
Upper management or owners want to see the efficiency of their money. They want to know how efficient it is compared to other advertising outlets.
Cost Efficiency = Total SEO Spend / Total Conversions or Revenue Generated from SEO
Like opportunity value, it’s a quick figure that everyone knows. With this metric, whether you’re an SEO or not, you’ll understand the efficiency of the SEO campaign.
Remember, Tracking is Difficult…
Tracking key metrics, such as the ones mentioned above, isn’t easy. It’s actually very difficult, especially if you don’t have the right data collection systems in place.
“Standard” metrics such as monthly organic traffic, keyword positions, organic CTR, etc., can all be tracked using one tool—for instance, Google Analytics, SEMRush, or Ahrefs.
However, when tracking more difficult metrics, such as ROI, LTV, CAC, and SQLs, you need multiple tools. Typically, this involves Google Analytics (or another SEO tool), a CRM like HubSpot, and accounting tools like QuickBooks.
On top of all this, you need someone to manage the data. This ensures data isn’t duplicated or incorrect. Because if it is, well, it’s useless.
Tips to Track Key Enterprise SEO Metrics Effectively
We can’t provide a how-to guide on tracking each of the individual KPIs mentioned, as everyone will do it differently.
However, we can provide some tips that’ll help everyone master KPI tracking for enterprise SEO.
- Tip 1: Only collect relevant data related to your specific KPI. Everything else is just noise.
- Tip 2: Utilise software and tools to help track and visualise KPIs. Try to use a tool that is considered the “single source of truth”.
- Tip 3: Monitor your KPI tracking regularly to ensure optimal uptime. A few hours in downtime could mean non-accurate results.
- Tip 4: If data needs to be manually inputted, for instance, in a CRM, be very careful. The information needs to be accurate to ensure KPI accuracy.
When collecting data for key KPIs for enterprise SEO, follow these tips. It’ll ensure your data is accurate and timely, allowing you to make better data-driven decisions.
Using Metric Data to Drive Decisions
For an enterprise, data is incredibly important. Instead of making judgements or educated guesses, you can make real, factual, data-driven decisions.
The decisions with data are what push the needle in business. They help increase ROI and everything else in between.
We’ll break down some ways in which the metrics we’ve explained above can be used to drive decisions.
SEO ROI
SEO ROI can give a clear as-day reflection on whether certain SEO efforts are worth it. It considers all money coming in and going out from SEO.
If the ROI is positive, increasing investment is a good idea. If the ROI is negative, it’s a good idea to rethink or eliminate what you’re doing.
You can even look at ROI from a keyword perspective. With enterprise SEO, the goal is to rank from high-volume and difficult keywords. Keywords with only a few words in them. For example, “account software".
By tracking ROI, you can see whether the keyword is worth the investment. You may realise it isn’t and put investment elsewhere, for example, in the keyword “account software for freelancers”.
LTV
Most enterprises measure LTV rather than single conversions. Single conversions are nice, but LTV really tells us how much each customer is theoretically worth.
The metric LTV can be used in multiple ways. You may find that certain keywords bring in higher LTV clients. In that case, focusing more investment on these keywords or target groups is a good idea.
You may see that LTV is dropping among certain keywords. If that’s the case, you need to investigate why and strategise around it.
CAC
You can use CAC to see what keywords are pulling in low acquisition costs. Typically speaking, the lower the acquisition cost, the more profits.
You can also see if the CAC on some keywords is too high. If that happens, you can re-strategies and focus on more affordable client acquisition.
Using Multiple Metrics
Don’t be afraid to use more than one metric to make decisions. Use them all together. This can be tricky, but it can really paint a picture of your business.
For example, you may find that certain keywords bring in low CAC. At first, that’s great. But what if these low CAC efforts bring in low LTV customers? Then they probably aren’t worth the investment or time.
Another example would be high CAC efforts. However, what if the high CAC efforts brought in even higher LTV customers? It may be worth it. You just need to read the data.
Final Word
As you can see, there are a few essential metrics you need to track for successful enterprise SEO.
Just remember that you should still track different metrics, such as keyword positions, organic traffic, etc. However, executives don’t care about these figures. They care about the money.
For that reason, it’s very important to get used to tracking these metrics.
It can help everyone, regardless of SEO experience, whether their SEO investment is worth the money.
