Use this free SEO ROI calculator to see what extra enquiries could be worth against the cost of SEO, and how many customers you need to cover it.
By Annabelle Cochrane, Managing Director & SEO Specialist at ALC Consulting. Last reviewed November 2026.
Visitors climb in a straight line to your target, which real campaigns rarely do. Package prices exclude GST. Repeat customers and referrals aren't counted. Treat this as an estimate, not a promise.
So if SEO costs you $18,000 and brings in $27,000 in gross profit, that's $9,000 ÷ $18,000 × 100, or a 50% return. That's an example, not a typical result.
Start with the simplest question: how many extra customers do you need each month to cover the cost? If it's one or two and you know people search for what you do, SEO is worth a serious look.
It may not be worth it yet if you need enquiries this month, your margins are thin, or very few people search for what you sell. If that's you, I'd rather tell you now. You can also compare SEO with Google Ads.
Revenue can make a campaign look better than it is. A $2,000 job with a 50% margin only leaves $1,000 to cover your marketing, so that's the number to measure against.
Read more on how to measure SEO success, or see what each SEO package includes.
Take the gross profit SEO brought in, subtract what you spent on SEO, divide by what you spent, then multiply by 100.
It can be when each customer is valuable and people search for what you do. If you only need a small number of customers to cover the cost, it is easier to justify. I will tell you if it does not stack up.
It depends on your market, your starting point and what each customer is worth. Change the months setting in the calculator to see how timing affects your result.
Count gross profit from customers who came through organic search, not just traffic or rankings. Use your analytics and your enquiry records to track where customers came from.
No. Nobody controls Google. This calculator shows what your numbers would need to look like, not what will happen.
