Prediction for SEO

Why do you need a forecast?

Based on existing data, future SEO metrics such as traffic volume and price can be predicted. The forecast is based on the assumption that current trends are likely to continue. It can help you allocate resources, prioritize your SEO efforts, and adjust your efforts before it's too late.

The reasons for doing forecasting depend on the specific situation.

If you work for a company, you typically need to make plans once or twice a year to improve your SEO performance and increase your profits. The company will also set goals for you and your team. If your estimates diverge from the company's goals, you can justify the need to allocate additional resources. Let's say you expect to grow 15% per year (over the previous year) while maintaining your current level of effort and resources, but you are given a target of 25%. What you expect is not what is expected of you. In this case, you can insist on reducing targets or devoting more resources to achieving company goals.

If you work at an agency, predicting SEO metrics can help with sales or predicting the future impact on a client's business. Typically, businesses want to know when they will become the market leader or surpass a certain competitor. Let's say the forecast shows that they are behind their goal at their current level of effort. In this case, the sales professional can easily justify increasing the project budget, changing the strategy, or allocating additional time to close the gap or beat the competition. Adding a predictive schedule to your proposal can help you rise above other agencies' proposals and justify your requested budget.

Why use third-party data for forecasting?

Most SEO predictions rely on first-party data sources such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console. If you want to accurately evaluate the performance of your site or page, then it is undoubtedly best to use this data. Use one of these sources if you need very detailed information or need to forecast seasonal variations.

The only problem is that SEO is not a single-player game. What you really need to know is how much better your site or page will perform compared to its competitors. If you see that your competitors may be outperforming you in SEO, this will impact your strategy and resource allocation. And the only way to get competitive data is to use third-party sources.

You may wonder how reliable third-party data is for forecasting. The way the data is calculated does not allow you to see daily or seasonal variations, but it is useful for finding patterns and predicting long-term trends. In addition, we recalculate previous data and update our graphs to avoid errors that might otherwise occur due to data or calculation updates.

Ways to Use SEO Data for Prediction

Forecasting future traffic

Forecasting future traffic costs

Forecasting future competitor traffic

Forecasting the future value of competitors' traffic

Predicting future traffic to competitors' pages

Predicting traffic changes due to Google core update

These predictions are based on a simplified view of SEO data. Many changes may occur on your site and on the sites of your competitors - some pages may be removed, others may be added, targeting new key phrases. More complex forecasts may take into account things like changes in search volume, search result characteristics, keyword phrases you're targeting, etc. Also, our forecasts do not differentiate between branded and unbranded traffic, although you may want to differentiate between these data.