This post has not been vetted or endorsed by BuzzFeed's editorial staff. BuzzFeed Community is a place where anyone can create a post or quiz. Try making your own!

    Show Me The ROI

    Search Engine Optimization or SEO has become a bigger and more complicated subject over the years. There are many qualified people working to improve the SEO quotient of big and small businesses.

    The problem is that SEO data has become complicated to the point where businesses are not completely sure whether they are benefitting from it. The biggest three complaints against this method of marketing are that there is too much data to comprehend, no proof of SEO’s impact on customer conversion and too many fancy acronyms such as CTR, CSS, PPC and so on. The trick is to prove to business owners, especially small business owners that they are getting bang for their bucks. The following are some marketing tips for small business to accomplish that.

    Google Analytics is an amazing tool, but unfortunately, it only looks great to professional Marketers. However, the amount of data it generates would make a mathematician feel proud, but not your average business owner. All they are going to do is take a look at it and then take a pill to get rid of their headache. Therefore, sending automated Google Analytics data is not necessarily a good idea.

    Really speaking, businesses only care about one type of number, in the context of SEO. And that would be how much more business is the business getting. This is what they call conversion rate. Therefore, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that the report that gets sent should be a simple explanation of conversion rates.

    Calls need to be tracked using dynamic number insertion. Call tracking can be accomplished by using special software. CallRail and Call Tracking Metrics are two popular software’s used by marketers to see real results, by seeing the source of phone calls. As an extra benefit, goals can be set on Google Analytics and landing page reports that show the viewer which pages prompted the customer to call. This is real data that can be printed and sent, showing exactly how many calls the web page was responsible for.

    Another simple metric businesses love is estimated revenue. The first step is to find out the average lifetime value of the customer. Multiply this by the closing ratio percentage, then finally multiply that number by the number of conversions. All of this produces a number that shows the customer how much exactly they are making by paying you. This way, you can also show them that lifetime value of a customer is the most important metric in the equation.

    Page ranking is no doubt an important aspect of getting visibility. It's not uncommon for business owners to lose sleep and call their marketing people if there is a drop in rankings. The truth is that there is more than meets the eye with page ranking. Screen shots, such as ones done by using Bright Locals, can be helpful in showing business owners the way SERP used to look like. The next step would be to show them how things look now. This before and after picture will help paint a better picture by showing what is really going on.

    One of the goals of a marketer is to show their clients their return on investment or ROI by providing valuable marketing tips for small business. One of the ways a marketer can improve is to actually not think like a marketer but more as a business owner such as AmeriSales. If both the marketers as well as the business owners goals align, then it is the duty of the marketer to let the business owner know that.