SEO is about providing the best content possible to the right audience at the right time and place. To achieve this, ensure you know what’s happening in your industry, and how people search for information online. SEO is the process of optimizing your website for search engines, like Google, Bing, or Yahoo!. It’s a crucial component of digital marketing because it allows you to get more traffic from search engines while reaching out directly to people who are looking for what you have to offer.
Now, the need for SEO forecasting has never been greater. Your company needs to know how to prepare for the future of SEO, but do you know what that looks like? If not, this guide can help you start your journey to becoming an SEO expert. We’ll explain SEO forecasting and why it’s important for your business.
Also read: SEO for Websites: How to Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
What Is SEO Forecasting?
SEO forecasting is a form of business intelligence, which uses data to predict what will happen in the future. Forecasting can be used in many situations. Here’s an example that suits best in the digital marketing field:
- SEO forecasting helps you determine whether or not you need to make changes to your website’s content or structure. If you have enough information, it may be possible to predict whether or not new content will be successful at driving traffic and increasing conversions on your site or any other.
Benefits of SEO Forecasting
SEO forecasting is a powerful tool for any business. While it can be challenging to predict the future, with SEO forecasting, you can make accurate predictions and prepare accordingly. This can help you avoid unexpected changes in your business, which could lead to significant losses or even bankruptcy.
Forecasting SEO also helps you manage costs more effectively by helping you plan what needs to be done, and how much money those tasks cost per hour. You may find that some things need fixing while others require longer-term planning since they won’t have an immediate impact on revenue generation; however, both types of projects should still be taken into account when making decisions about how much time should be spent on each project type (or if any at all). This way, everyone involved knows exactly where they stand financially, so there aren’t any surprises later down the road when deadlines approach closer than expected!
Effective Ways To Use SEO Forecasting
Forecast Return on Investment
You can use SEO forecasting to decide how much to spend on SEO, and you can also use it to understand how much you can spend on other marketing efforts. The reason this is important is that it helps you answer questions like this:
- Do I need to hire new people?
- Should I create a new product or service?
- How long will my existing products/services last before they become obsolete?
Forecasting Performance of Existing Keywords
With SEO forecasts, you can check the performance of your existing keywords. With SEO forecasting, you can:
- Forecast the average position for a keyword in the Google search console. This gives you an idea of where your site might rank for that keyword and how many times it appears on page 1.
- Forecast the average click rate for a given keyword or phrase (e.g. “buy car insurance online”). This can tell you whether people are clicking through search results or not. If they aren’t clicking through, what could be driving them away from the site?
- Forecast how many times a keyword or phrase is searched for on Google. This can help you determine if your site is optimized for those terms and or not. If not, how might you optimize it?
- Forecast the number of searches over time for a given keyword or phrase. For example, let’s say you want to know how many people search “buy car insurance online” every month. With SEO forecasting, you can figure it out quickly.
Also Read: How to Monitor Keyword Rankings
Forecast Opportunity Cost
With this data in hand, you can use it to decide your SEO strategy. For example, if you see that another company is ranking higher than yours on a particular keyword and have already invested in content marketing around that topic, then you need to decide whether or not it’s worth paying more money for better rankings.
If there are no competitors in your industry and no one else has been investing in similar keywords yet, the forecasted opportunity cost may be lower than it should be for specific keywords because there isn’t any competition for them yet.
Forecast Future Competitor Traffic
You can use SEO forecasting to forecast your future competitor traffic.
- First, you need to know how many visitors your competitors have each month. This is important because it’s not just about the number of people visiting their site. It also considers how long they stay on the page, how much time they spend there and what their primary intent was when they visited in the first place.
- To figure out this information, you can either use Google Analytics or another third-party tool, such as Alexa Traffic Rank (if you want a more accurate estimate). Once you have access to these reports from your website’s analytics tool(s), it’s time to do some math: calculate the total monthly unique visitors over time (e.g., if 100 people visit every day for five days straight). Then divide by 365 days per year and multiply by 12 months per year so that we get an average monthly figure instead of an annual one; this will give us our yearly average daily visits per person!
Also read: Understanding the Google Analytics Dashboard in 2022
Benchmarking with SEO Forecasting
Benchmarking and trending reports are a crucial part of SEO forecasting. Benchmarking is the process of comparing your SEO efforts to others. It’s a competition, except between you and other businesses who have also done their SEO work.
You can use benchmarking to help forecast future SEO efforts, especially if you plan to make changes or expand into new markets.
Conclusion
SEO forecasting is a crucial part of the process, but it’s not something that can be done overnight. Forecasting takes time and careful consideration of factors such as traffic trends and existing competitions. With the right tools for SEO forecasting, you’ll be able to make informed decisions about your site’s content strategy from day one to have all the resources needed for successful results!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is first-party data in SEO forecasting?
First-party data gives you complete insight into how your website performs, especially in growth and optimization. First-party data uses information collected from tools like Google Analytics.
What is third-party data in SEO forecasting?
Third-party data primarily focuses on how well your competitors perform with goals similar to yours.
Name a few SEO forecasting tools.
