What is the ROI of a SEO keyword?

What’s a keyword actually worth to your business?

This article is about keywords and the monetary value of SEO copywriting.

Targeted keywords don’t only open doors for a business because they attract its target audience.

SEO keywords also have an intrinsic ROI if they're in line with that company's specific business goals.

It’s why keyword research and SEO copywriting is so vital to any business content marketing strategy.

SEO copywriting tactics

SEO copywriting used to be about optimising web page copy by targeting keyword phrases in certain on-page positions and densities.

There is still a value to doing this today to signal to Google what your page is about.

But as Google’s algorithm changes have evolved towards stronger keyword analysis and intent, Google has become more intuitive.

Google has refined its goals to provide the user with the best possible experience. That means SEO copywriting needs now to be more tactical.

But this is actually an SEO advantage.

Google's number one aim is now to deliver the most accurate result to the searcher.

So, even if you’re chasing a high-traffic term, there may well be one low-competition long-tail keyword that is your ‘sweet spot’.

This is the term that will help deliver you exactly the qualified website visitors you want and increase your SERPs ranking.b

The challenge is to find it. But keyword research tools such as Google Autocomplete, SEMrush, Ahrefs and Moz Keyword Explorer help make this possible.

The value of a keyword

So, what could a higher ranking in Google for any given keyword actually mean for your business?

Pushing aside the SERPs features that are not traditional organic results (such as rich snippets and paid results that include AdWords), typically, position 1 gives you 33% of traffic; position 2 gives you 17.6%; and position 3 gives you 11.4% .

But the real ROI value of the keyword to you depends on your conversion rate.

Typically, in e-commerce, the average conversion rate is 3.3%. But if you’re a service business looking for sign-ups or a phone consult, it might well be much higher.

I'll stick with a low conversion rate of 3.3% here to do the maths for this example's sake.

Say you are going after a long-tail keyword that has 1,000 searches a month, and you achieve position 1. Based on the above traffic rates, you’re likely get 33% of searches for that keyword – in other words 330 potential visitors.

If you have a conversion rate of 3.3% and your product or service is worth £1,000, then you’ll be making 10 x £1,000 in any given month. That equates to £120,000 revenue over 12 months.

So, say you spend, for argument’s sake, £1,000 a month with an SEO copywriter across 12 months to produce SEO-strong content for your website. And those SEO copywriting efforts lift you up the ranks to the number 1 spot. Then you’ll have invested £12,000 to make £120,000 in revenue. Your profit is £108,000.

Investment return of SEO copywriting

What if that SEO copywriting uplift also means you now rank for more keyword variants that are related to your original one? Then your ROI will be higher.

SEO is a long-term investment. It often takes several months before you see the uplift – the time it takes for Google to index your pages and for people to start taking action when they land on them. Once you start to see an uplift, though, growth tends to be exponential.

These are all hypothetical sums but they do show the potential value of keyword optimisation. Other factors will impact your rate of organic ranking success. But you can see that keywords clearly have a material ROI.

Those other factors will include the quality of your landing page content, mobile optimisation and the authority and quantity of the backlinks you have earned that are related to that specific keyword.

But if you’re using a professional SEO copywriter who is producing you informative and engaging SEO-rich content, such as website copy, blog articles and white papers, you’ll also be far more likely to attract those backlinks.