See what a ranking gain is actually worth — and whether the links needed to get there cost less than it returns.
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Your numbers
| Clicks at current position | — |
| Clicks at target position | — |
| New customers per month | — |
| Extra revenue per month | — |
| Total link investment | — |
| Payback period | — |
Clicks use an organic CTR-by-position curve (27.6% at #1, 11.0% at #3, 2.4% at #10, under 1% past #20). Those are cross-SERP averages — if an AI Overview sits on your keyword, halve them.
Ready to build to the number?
LinkyJuice is priced per placed link with no retainer and no minimum, so the cost-per-link figure you just modelled is the cost you actually pay. You approve every site before anything goes live.
Book a callSubtract the cost of the work from the revenue it generates, then divide by that cost. The hard part is the revenue side, which you build from search volume, click-through rate at your target position, your conversion rate and your average customer value. The calculator above runs that chain for one keyword.
For link building against a commercial keyword, a first-year ROI above 200% with payback inside six months is a strong case. Anything taking more than twelve months to pay back needs a specific reason, such as a term you cannot afford to lose to a competitor.
Because the drop between positions is steep and non-linear. Position 1 takes roughly eleven times the clicks of position 10, which is why the jump from page two to page one matters far more than any gain within page two.
Partly. The curve assumes a traditional SERP, so where an AI Overview is present, discount the click estimate — halving it is a reasonable starting assumption. The counterweight is that being cited inside that AI Overview carries its own value, which no click model captures.
Only if your retention data is solid, and then state the assumption out loud. First-year value gives a conservative number that survives scrutiny, which matters more when you are asking someone else to approve the budget.
Three to six months for rankings to move on competitive terms, longer on a newer domain. The calculator shows the steady state once you hold the target position, not month one. Judge a campaign at month six.
Four steps, laid out so you can argue with the output rather than trust it:
Then (annual revenue − link cost) ÷ link cost gives first-year ROI. Every figure in that chain is one you can look up except click-through rate, which is why the tool supplies a position curve for it.
| Search volume | Ahrefs, Semrush or Keyword Planner — for the country you actually sell into, not global. |
| Current position | Search Console, average position for that query over 28 days. Enter 0 if you do not rank. |
| Target position | Be realistic. 18 to 3 is a campaign; 18 to 1 against entrenched competitors usually is not. |
| Conversion rates | Your analytics and CRM, filtered to organic. For B2B SaaS, 1–3% visitor-to-trial is a common range. |
| First-year value | Annual contract value, or twelve months of your average subscription. |
| Links needed | The gap between your referring domains and the pages ranking where you want to be. The link velocity calculator works it out. |
Payback period is the number that matters. ROI percentages flatter long campaigns; payback tells you how long you are underwater. Under six months is strong, six to twelve is normal for competitive terms, and past eighteen the keyword is probably the wrong target.
If year one lands below the link cost, that is not automatically a no. Subscription businesses recover the rest in year two, and links keep working after you stop paying for them — but check it against retention rather than assuming renewal.
Three things the model deliberately leaves out: the three-to-six month lag before links move anything, the long-tail variants a page picks up on the way to position 3, and the value of being cited in an AI answer. The first pushes the estimate down, the other two push it up. Use it to size a budget, not to forecast revenue to the dollar.
