The Problem With Outdated Measures of Success
Most SEO reports still focus on rankings, clicks, or traffic growth. These metrics might sound impressive internally, but they rarely make an impact in executive meetings. Senior leadership cares about business outcomes—revenue, profit, and long-term growth—not vanity metrics.
Let’s break down some of the common issues with traditional success measurements:
Clicks Don’t Equal Business Value
High click-through rates and pageviews often don’t tell the full story. You might generate thousands of visits, but if none of those visits result in meaningful conversions or revenue, what’s the point? Senior stakeholders want to hear how SEO Thailand contributes to the bottom line, not how it looks in GA4 dashboards.
Conversions Aren’t Always Cash in the Bank
A one-time £100 conversion might look fantastic, but is it better than a £75 sale that leads to repeat purchases or a subscription? Standard metrics often fail to account for customer lifetime value (CLV), refunds, cancellations, and churn. These gaps in measurement can lead to inflated assumptions about content performance.
Traffic Growth Can Still Cost You Money
More traffic isn’t always better. Every pageview incurs a cost—whether in infrastructure, hosting, or content maintenance. Pages that attract heavy traffic but don’t convert can become liabilities. If you don’t measure the return on that investment, you risk scaling unprofitable content and contributing to content waste.
To truly optimize your Content Marketing strategy and maximize content profit, you need a better way to measure what matters.
How to Calculate the ROI of Organic Content
Understand ROI
To measure the return on investment (ROI) of your content, you must first define what counts as a “return” and what constitutes an “investment.”
- Return: The revenue generated from organic visitors. This includes direct sales, assisted conversions, and any measurable impact on the sales funnel.
- Investment: The cost to create, publish, and maintain the content. This includes writing, design, hosting, software tools, and server usage.
The basic formula is:
Content ROI = Organic Revenue – Cost to Serve Content
By treating each page as a business unit, you can spot which pieces are profitable and which are draining resources.
Calculate the Value of a Page
To apply this ROI formula to individual content pieces, you need to break it down further.
1. Determine Cost Per Pageview
Start with your total monthly infrastructure cost. Let’s say it’s £1,500/month, and your site receives 1.5 million pageviews annually. That’s £0.000083 per pageview.
If a specific page received 90,000 views in a year, it cost:
90,000 x £0.000083 = £7.47
2. Calculate Annual Organic Pageviews
Use tools like Google Ads or your analytics platform to measure page-specific organic traffic over the last 12 months.
3. Calculate Annual Organic Revenue
This is where you multiply the number of conversions by the net value per conversion, accounting for refunds and cancellations.
Example:
18,645 conversions x £5 net value = £93,225
4. Plug into the ROI Formula
Revenue (£93,225) – Cost to serve page (£7.47) = £93,217.53 content profit
This simple math gives you a clear picture of whether a page is delivering real business value.
Calculate Assisted Value
Not every page directly drives sales, but that doesn’t mean it lacks value.
Some content plays a supporting role:
- Increases brand visibility
- Assists in multi-touchpoint conversions
- Builds trust and authority
- Generates email signups or social engagement
Use tools like GA4 attribution modeling or CRM data to flag assisted conversions. Assign binary or weighted values to pages that aid in the customer journey, even if they don’t convert directly.
For example, a blog post titled “Best Flip-Flops for Summer” may not sell anything itself, but it increases brand searches and newsletter signups. That’s indirect value worth tracking.
Classify Pages by Business Impact
Once you have ROI data, group content by its contribution to the business:
High-Value Pages
These pages generate strong revenue or have high assisted value. They should be optimized regularly and supported with internal links and promotions.
Medium-Value Pages
These contribute modestly or indirectly to revenue. They may support other channels or act as entry points to the funnel. Keep them updated and aligned with business goals.
Low-Value Pages
These pages have little financial impact but may serve niche purposes like brand storytelling or technical relevance. Evaluate their strategic importance before removing.
Net-Negative Pages
These cost more than they earn. Common culprits include outdated blog posts or high-bounce informational content. These pages should be removed, redirected, or repurposed.
By categorizing your content this way, you can manage your website like a portfolio—investing in winners, improving underperformers, and cutting losses.
Practical Use Case of the Content Value Matrix
The content value matrix is your strategic dashboard for making informed content decisions. Here’s how it applies in everyday SEO workflows:
Get Buy-In and Justify Budget
When you present SEO to stakeholders in terms of content profit, it becomes easier to justify your work. Instead of saying, “We increased traffic by 20%,” you can say, “This content generated £45,000 in profit with a £0.38 cost per view.”
Framing your strategy in financial terms builds trust and makes budget approvals more likely.
Prioritize Work
With content categorized by ROI, you can focus on what matters most. Instead of spreading your effort across 100 pages, concentrate on the top 20 that drive the majority of revenue or conversions.
You can also flag net-negative pages for deletion, saving money and improving overall site performance.
Forecast Value
Forecasting SEO results is tricky, but this model gives you a starting point.
Let’s continue with our yellow flip-flop example:
- Current traffic: 90,000 annual visits
- Conversion rate: 20.7%
- Value per conversion: £5
If you increase traffic by 10%, you get 99,000 visits:
- Additional revenue = 9,000 x 20.7% x £5 = £9,319.08
- Additional hosting cost = 9,000 x £0.000083 = £0.75
That’s a net ROI increase of over £9,318, demonstrating how small improvements can yield major returns.
Identify High-Performing Pages
When you analyze your top-performing content, patterns emerge. You might notice that most high-ROI pages focus on a specific category or product.
For example, if your best pages are about black trainers, that’s a hint to double down on that theme. On the flip side, if pages about white slippers consistently underperform, it might be time to cut your losses.
Concluding Thoughts: Use the Content Value Matrix to Eliminate Waste and Maximize Budget
The future of SEO reporting lies in financial impact, not vanity metrics.
Clicks and traffic are only valuable if they lead to profit. By using a content ROI framework, you can:
- Identify high-value pages
- Eliminate content that wastes resources
- Justify your SEO Audit investments
- Forecast future growth
- Align your team around business outcomes
Every piece of content should be treated as an investment. The content value matrix helps you optimize that investment, ensuring your efforts deliver measurable business value.
Whether you’re working in-house, at an agency, or running your own site, embracing content profit as your core metric will transform how you approach Ecommerce Marketing—and how your work is perceived by leadership.
Start today. Audit your content. Classify it. And make smarter, data-driven decisions that grow not just traffic, but real revenue.
