Earlier this week, we worked with a company to measure their Google AdWords and SEO return on investment (ROI) by calculating the amount of leads they are able to generate in relation to the amount of money they spent on AdWords and SEO. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use unique thank you pages that people see after filling out a web form.

The first thing you will need to do is set up a web form on your website. This information can be passed along to a CRM system or it can be housed within the website. Some folks will just list an email address or phone number on the Contact Us page, but by not having a form to fill out, it’s impossible to track whether or not a lead has converted and how they got there. Once you have a form set up, you will need to set the form setting to redirect to a page you can measure. This is typically a thank you page that says something like “Thanks for contacting us, we will get back to you in 24 hours.” This page will allow you to track the number of leads you generate and how they are coming in so you can measure your marketing effectiveness.

Measure Google Adwords Conversions

To measure Google AdWords conversions, you can create a conversion event by doing the following:

• Log on to Google AdWords.
• Go to Tools an Analysis and select Conversions.
• Click on the + Conversion button and name your conversion.
• The next page will ask you if you want to add Google Site Stats notification or not. This is a small widget that would appear at the bottom of your Thank You page. It’s up to you if you want to tell your prospects if they are being tracked.
• The last step is to generate code. This will be code you embed within your thank you page.

Once you have the code embedded it will take about 24 hours to verify. Having the code on your site will allow you to not only track your ROI on Google AdWords, but also tell AdWords to serve the ads that convert at a higher percentage rate.

SEO Measurement of Leads

For SEO measurement of leads, the best thing to use is Google Analytics Goals. You can set a goal by telling Google what page you want people to end up on. This could be a receipt page for a product or a thank you page for submitting your email address. You can create a custom goal by doing the below:

• Log on to Google Analytics
• Click on the core domain where you will measure conversion
• Go to Goals
• Click on + Goal
• Give the Goal a specific name like “Contact Us Form Filled Out”
• Choose URL Destination
• For Goal URL – choose the address right after your domain so if it’s http://dfm.com/thank-you, put /thank-you
• Choose Head Match for Match Type

Once you get this goal situated, give it a quick test to see if Google Analytics is tracking the goal. Sometimes, Google needs to have the “Match Type” configuration changed to record the right URL.

Adwords or SEO Bringing in Positive ROI?

Now that you have the conversions and goals set up, you can start to measure whether or not either AdWords or an SEO company is bringing in positive ROI. This can be done in two ways.

The preferred method is to measure how many dollars you are getting from the conversions either by knowing the total sales generated or by being able to track which leads converted into real sales. To calculate the return on investment you would simply divide Total Money Earned from AdWords Leads by Total Money Spent on AdWords. Any ROI less than one means you aren’t recouping your investment in AdWords. The same can be said for an SEO company. You would divide the total money earned from SEO by the total money spent on SEO. If your ROI is less than one, you may have an SEO company that isn’t pulling their weight or not enough search traffic to justify having an SEO company. Regardless, having the proper pages set up will let you measure what’s working and what’s not to maximize your marketing spend.