You know you need to invest in your business’ SEO, but you are still unsure how to quantify your investment and more importantly forecast growth. Moreover, Google has made significant changes over the years, making it harder to develop a clear picture of your market size and performance.

So, what do you have to try and solve the problem of forecasting and ROI?Firstly, businesses can still receive ranking data through Googles API, meaning that they know with some accuracy where they are appearing on Google for specific search terms. In Google Search Console, businesses can also see partial traffic statistics for these keywords, along with impressions and more importantly click-through rates.

Preparing a forecast for SEO: The first step in preparing a forecast is gathering meaningful keyword data. The data needs to be substantial enough to provide a decent snapshot of the marketplace, covering the main keywords as they relate to the products and services. The number of keywords will purely depend on the size of the selected industry, 500 keywords may be acceptable for a niche retail business, but the financial sector may use up to 10,000 keywords to map out an accurate forecast.

Secondly, businesses need to know their visibility for the keyword set they’ve selected. Once the data is collected, it will be evaluated and divided into keywords, search volumes and their relevant ranking position on Google.  Now, a Click Through Rate (CTR) model is applied to understand how much potential traffic the business is receiving.

Lastly, the forecasting growth is calculated. The business needs to make some estimates on growth based on competition and investment. According to our marketing researchers, if a market is extremely competitive, 3-5% traffic share growth is typical, if it’s less competitive or the business is investing significantly, then 10-15% is feasible. The business needs to decide on the traffic share they want to achieve, and track growth over a 12-month period.

Let Catch the Beat manage and monitor your progress with our tailored SEO strategy that will best fit your brand!