This document discusses how to invest in SEO for the highest return on investment. It recommends focusing on long-term goals like monthly recurring traffic rather than short-term gains. Proper budget allocation to top ranking factors like backlinks, content, and user experience is important. While SEO outcomes are uncertain, focusing on serving users and Google's goals can make a website more future-proof. The ROI of SEO investments increases over multiple years. Measuring ROI requires tracking conversions and understanding the customer journey holistically through the funnel.

1. How to Invest in Your SEO
for the Highest ROI
Tom Casano
SureOak.com

2. The Business Owner’s Dream

3. Consistent Business Growth
● “Up and to the Right”
● Every month you make more money than the last.

4. SEO as Inbound Sales
● New customers find YOU.
● Steady and consistent flow of new business coming to
you, every single month.

5. vs Outbound Sales = Unqualified Prospects
● No more cold calling.
● No more cold emailing.
● Intent isn’t there (they’re not chasing you).

6. Monthly Recurring Traffic

7. Monthly Recurring Traffic
Definition:
Qualified and targeted prospects (potential customers)
coming to your business’s website every single day, week,
month, and year.

8. Monthly Recurring Traffic

9. The Benefits of Monthly Recurring Traffic
● stable & consistent
● predictable
● easier to scale

10. If your web traffic already
converts into paying customers
or clients for your business,
then monthly recurring traffic
drives your most important
business metrics.

11. Monthly Recurring Traffic is a Primary Driver of:
● monthly recurring revenue
● monthly recurring revenue growth

12. Monthly Recurring Traffic
Consistent Business Growth

14. The Fatal Assumption

15. Optimize Your Website
Monthly Recurring Traffic
Consistent Business Growth

17. Problems
1. Google’s algorithm is a blackbox
2. 200+ ranking factors: Which ones to focus on?
3. What “works” today may not work tomorrow
4. Measuring ROI
5. Experiments have a very long life cycle
6. Variables in experiments are difficult to isolate

18. Right Thinking

19. 1. Begin with the End in Mind

20. Get Clear on Your Goals
● Set your KPIs
● Reverse engineer how to get there from here.

21. 2. Think Long-Term

23. SEO is an investment-based
marketing channel.

24. The highest ROI of SEO is
long-term.

25. Paid Traffic
Organic Traffic
Fast Money In, Money Out Growth comes over
months/years

26. 3. Think like an investor.

27. Budget Allocation
● Your SEO manager is actually a fund manager.
● 80/20 rule
● Focus on “what moves the needle”.

28. What Moves The Needle?
● Search engines and thought leaders sometimes give us:
○ Generic information that may not apply to you
● every website and situation is unique
○ Misinformation
● This is an unknown to the beginner and intermediate SEO

29. 4. Align with Google’s ultimate
goals.

30. Serve Google’s Users
● Help them get what they want and have a great
experience.
● Serve them the best search result.

31. Benefit: Become Future-Proof to Algo Updates
● Algo is optimizing to help their users.
● It is an imperfect model of reality, but always getting
closer.

32. Monthly Recurring Traffic
Highest Possible ROI

33. Example
2 Assumptions:
1. The business is a good fit for SEO
2. The business’s SEO budget has been properly allocated.

34. Example: Invest $10k into SEO
Initial Investment -$10,000
Month 1 $0
Month 2 $0
Month 3 $2,000
Month 4 $2,000
Net Loss -$6,000

35. Month Month Earnings Total Earnings Absolute ROI % ROI
Month 1 $0 $0 -$10,000 -100%
Month 2 $0 $0 -$10,000 -100%
Month 3 $2,000 $2,000 -$8,000 -80%
Month 4 $2,000 $4,000 -$6,000 -60%
Month 5 $4,000 $8,000 -$2,000 -20%
Month 6 $4,000 $12,000 $2,000 20%
Month 7 $4,000 $16,000 $6,000 60%
Month 8 $4,000 $20,000 $10,000 100%

37. ROI by Year
Year % ROI
Year 1 260%
Year 2 740%
Year 3 1,220%
Year 4 1,700%

38. “Good” Investor Returns = ~10%

39. Disclaimer
● An exercise to shift your mindset.
● Demonstrate the potential long-term value of SEO for your
business.
● Not typical results.
● You can revise the numbers downwards significantly to be
more conservative (still get a positive outcome).

40. Example
2 Assumptions:
1. The business is a good fit for SEO
2. The business’s SEO budget has been properly allocated.

41. Budget Allocation

42. Top Ranking Factors
● Authoritative Backlinks
● Optimization (Keyword Research)
● Content (Helpful, Long-Form, High-Quality, etc)
● User Experience
● Technical
○ site speed, architecture, etc.

43. Your Situation is Different

44. Real Risks
● Unknown outcomes
● Doing the wrong things right
● Doing the right things wrong
● Not knowing what you’re doing.

45. Measurement

47. The Conversion Path is Non-Linear
Conversions are generally attributed to the last touch in the path

48. Multi-Channel Attribution
Conversions are generally attributed to the last touch in the path

49. Measuring Your ROI on SEO
● Track conversions to the extent that they can be tracked
● Understand the customer journey
○ Channel attribution
● Look all the way through the sales funnel
○ e.g. a lead but not a sale
● Experiments have a long life cycle
● Variables in experiments are hard to isolate.

50. Closing Thoughts

51. Focus on the long-
term for maximum
ROI.

52. Focus on budget
allocation.

53. Trust practitioner
experiments and
data over “best
practices”.

54. Panel and Participant Discussion
Aiden Carroll Tom Casano Patrick Reinhart Marcela De Vivo
Panel Host Presenter SEO Expert SEO Expert