You might think of SEO as one of the most pivotal pillars of SaaS growth. And it is. But before you sink the time and effort into building and executing an SEO strategy, it’s helpful to know what success could look like and where to focus your resources. This is where forecasting comes in handy. 

Here’s how to forecast your early SEO growth, understand the ROI, and connect with the right people to help you make the results a reality. 

What does SEO forecasting mean? 

SEO forecasting involves predicting future rankings, organic traffic, and value derived from your SEO strategy. It can help you estimate conversions and revenue spikes, as well as help predict how you’ll continue to measure against your competition. 

While there is no one “correct” way to forecast SEO, there are general rules of thumb that determine how to get the most accurate results when predicting specific metrics. Do keep in mind that it will never be exact, especially as search engine algorithms continue to evolve and change. But instead, quality SEO forecasting should be used to help businesses understand where to focus their SEO efforts. 

Why is SEO forecasting important for your SaaS business?

There are many benefits to planning ahead and estimating your SEO impact. Three of the main areas you benefit from include: 

• An edge over the competitors: Use case studies and other partnership content to show potential customers that teaming up with your brand means boosted brand awareness for them. The extra organic reach might be the deciding factor for who wins a customer’s business. 

• Smarter resource allocation: Do the forecasting results tell you your blog is driving measurable organic traffic to the site? Insights like these reveal where to focus your efforts and allocate more labor resources. 

• Improving investor relations: It’s easier for investors and other stakeholders to trust in your growth if you can show them predictive revenue growth down the line. Quality SEO forecasting is a vote of confidence for the future. 

Search engine results pages (SERPs) are constantly evolving with changing algorithms, so having a way to set expectations provides more direction for your team and more predictive analytics for your stakeholders.

3 SEO metrics to forecast before you implement a strategy

1. Organic traffic

If you’re an in-house SEO expert or a freelancer looking to land a new client, predicting future organic growth is a great way to measure your SEO investment.

There are two primary methods for forecasting organic traffic: statistical forecasting and keyword forecasting. 

Statistical forecasting involves analyzing historical data to determine future trends and is generally a more technical approach to forecasting SEO efforts. Unless you have a massive backlog of historical data and understand how to use it to identify trends and patterns based on SEO changes, it might be a muddier, more challenging route.

Keyword forecasting, however, helps you predict future traffic based on your current keyword rankings. It involves four steps. 

1. Conducting keyword competitor analysis and finding gaps in your content strategy. 

2. Using keyword tools like Semrush or Moz to analyze keyword search volumes. 

3. Folding high-intent words into your content strategy, leveraging blogs and landing pages.

4. Using the average click-through rates (CTR) for different ranking positions to predict organic traffic.

Essentially, you could use this formula: 

Estimated monthly traffic = Total keyword search volume x CTR.

2. Organic click-through rates (CTR)

Organic CTR measures the percentage of users who click on your web links from the search results. It excludes brand-related search terms and paid ads, and tells you how effective your search result offering is compared to others for the same query. You can calculate organic CTR using this formula: 

Organic CTR % = Organic clicks x 100

Industry benchmarks and your brand’s historical data will help you determine what your organic CTR could look like, but keep in mind that the growth is dependent on search engine algorithm consistency. 

3. Conversions

Lastly, SEO forecasting can help you predict your growth in conversions or sales. You can do this with the following formula: 

Estimated new conversions = estimated page traffic x average conversion rate

You can find your conversion rate in your Google Analytics account. Let’s say you have a website that sells umbrellas, and you’ve already estimated that if you rank 2nd for “new vinyl umbrella,” you will gain 800 potential customers. Let’s also say you can convert around 7% of your web visitors, as that’s the average CTR based on your website performance data for the last year.

If you create a landing page specifically targeting that keyword, the estimated number of conversions from that landing page would be 800 x 7% = 56. 

This formula would tell you to make that new landing page a high-priority content initiative, and where you should focus your efforts in the short term. 

Is SEO forecasting accurate?

The short answer? Not completely. 

While SEO forecasting can give you an indication of where future growth is headed and how it translates to revenue, the results are beholden to the ever-evolving search ranking algorithms.

SEO forecasting is also complicated by online user behavior, competitor strategies, and other factors that can cause even the most accurate forecasts to deviate from their intended course. 

At the end of the day, an SEO forecast should be treated like a compass, and not a definitive map. It will show you SEO potential and the general direction of where to head, and not a pinpoint destination. 

Forecast and strategize with a professional team

Regardless of what your forecast is telling you, you should still make an effort to improve your SEO efforts. The most effective way to do that is to connect with a professional team that helps with on-page SEO, technical SEO, forecasting, content marketing, and more. 

At Placeholder SEO, we check all of those boxes. We do a deep dive into your business goals, create a comprehensive audit, and develop a tailored SEO strategy that's proven to drive results. To learn more, book a free strategy call with our team today.