Question

Hey guys, i have been required to calculate CPA for SEO for a lead gen site. So the way i'm thinking about calculating is calculate the difference in YoY conversions with SEO spend e. g. lets say goal completions was 10, 000 in year 2019 and 18, 000 in year 2020, with $20, 000 invested into SEO. The difference is a 8, 000 increase. So then the SEO CPA would be total SEO spend $20, 000 / 8, 000 leads which is a $2. 50 CPA. If you had to calculate CPA is that how you would do it?  

Answer 1

Wrong group.  

Comments

@rosebud wrong group but cpa should be calculated the same, right? @hugh2 $20k is spend for 2020 with goal of 18k? That means that your CPA goal is $1. 11 If your CPA is below $1. 11 you’re going well. if you’re above goal, then you need to optimize.  

---

@estradiol This is a group about SEA, not SEO. If someone has questions concerning SEO, ask in a SEO group. SEO and SEA are different worlds with different ways to do and measure things. My take on it! If your teeth hurt you don't go to an animal doctor.  

---

@rosebud totally understand that. That’s why I’m asking if CPA is calculated the same? If not then, yea wrong group. But if CPA is calculated the same, why not help anyway?  

Answer 2

Why not just divide the $20k by 18000, the amount you converted for that year?  

Answer 3

In short, yes this is how you would calculate it if you take into consideration that all remained equal and there was 0 organic growth. But, and this one is important, you must take into account source attribution. Are there any other sources of traffic to the lead gen pages (e. g. FB Ads, G Ads, emails. )? What's the impact of those channels. Are you a newcomer or an established name - meaning does the brand name already trigger users to click or do you need to take bites out of your competition. This is important so you k ow which part of the funnel should get more credits etc. Next what KWs brought the converting traffic - if you're including brand, thats fine for a report but be honest with yourself and know that traffic was super easy to convert in comparison with generic search terms. and on and on we go :) So this is where it get's interesting if you want to have a real good overview of just what is going on with your conversio s

Answer 4

You're calculating incremental CPA with that math (cost of additional leads). This is a valid way to look at it when you can't quantify previous year's cost (in which case you might run total cost/total leads for last year and then compare to this year) Also lots of SEO experts in this group and if anything I've found more quantitative thinking in this group vs many SEO communities.  

Answer 5

The thought of this is making my head hurt! Realistically you should be looking at where increased rankings have lead to increased conversions etc. You could use a tool to try and get a grip on this but if it’s a large number it’s going to be impossible.  

Answer 6

Since it's lead gen last-click attribution is easy enough to work off, so to be fair on the client removing brand is a must ideally internal pages should be a getting a majority of non-brand traffic so to make it easier you just look at organic landing pages and remove the homepage, that should be a close enough figure for non-brand leads. If the homepage is getting a majority of non-brand traffic then you need to use search console to get the % of branded traffic vs non-brand then just use that % of non-brand and apply that to the total number of organic leads. Again both of these methods aren't perfect but it's, unfortunately, it's the best you can get. Also, you want to show the incremental value so instead of doing it for the whole year do it monthly and ideally show the CPA amount declining every month to show them how much value you're giving the site.