#3 Steal My Quick And Dirty SEO Forecast Methodology

If there’s one thing that search marketers suck at, it is forecasting. And if you started your SEO career agency-side, you’ll likely never have forecasted before.

Well, that changes today.

“But .. I’m afraid my numbers will be wrong —”

If there’s one thing I want you to walk away with today, it is this.

There is not a single accurate forecast. There is no such thing.

You see, every single day, analysts give recommendations and the stock market responds. All you need to do is tune into CNBC, Bloomberg, and other media outlets to hear analysts give you their forecasts.

And guess what?

They’re rarely right yet the market continues to follow their advice.

Do you know what makes a financial analyst from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase different from you?

If you think it is getting a finance degree from a prestigious school — you’re wrong.

There is no difference.

All you need is a methodology and conviction.

Now, methodology is relatively easy to learn and I’ll show you how shortly.

Conviction, however, this is what many of you struggle with and I know many search marketers suffer from imposter syndrome because it is becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of the SERPs.

So how do you put forward numbers with conviction?

In short, conviction comes from a sense of confidence. And confidence comes from doing the work and knowing you’ve done your best to factor in multiple assumptions in your calculations.

That’s it.

Forecasting in SEO has absolutely nothing to do with being right or wrong.

You’re simply applying your expertise and experience to provide guidance for decision makers who don’t have your expertise and experience.

“Ok, so how do I get started?”

Ah, good question!

I created my first SEO forecast at Optus and this was the approach I took:

Put the next 12 months in columns (e.g., Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, .. Jun, etc)
Assign a factor in each row (e.g., brand spillover, Black Friday, incremental ranking for non-generic keywords etc)
Apply assumption to each month based on one or more factors that could impact organic traffic in any way (i,e., up or down).

And this was the end result.

The principle is the same no matter what type of business you’re forecasting organic growth for (e.g., ecommerce, SaaS, b2b, financial services).

Start with your inputs and your outputs.

That is, what are the activities, events, or things that you believe will either drive search traffic up or down in any given month?

Here are some inputs to get you started:

Informational content: If you’re publishing or updating existing top-of-funnel content, when can you expect rankings to improve and how much search traffic uplift do you expect from this activity?
Product or service landing page ranking: If you’re driving internal links and inbound backlinks to your commercial pages, when do you expect rankings to improve and how much search traffic uplift do you expect from this activity?
Branded search: If you know Marketing will be putting dollars behind awareness campaigns, you can estimate when you expect a flow-on effect on branded traffic based on when the timing of said campaigns.
Seasonality: Every industry and business has peak, low, and shoulder seasons. Factor these into your forecast.

And can you separate these into brand searches and non-brand searches?

Of course you can!

Now, let’s be clear. SEO has no influence on brand search growth — you cannot manufacture brand search.

But do you know who can?

Paid and owned social.

So get their input, start a conversation, and build a bridge between SEO and the wider marketing business unit.

“But how much should I increase incremental growth?”

Look, there’s no right answer to this question and this is where you need to stand behind your assumptions.

If there’s one piece of advice I can offer you, it is this.

Incremental uplifts may appear insignificant but when you add them up across 12 months, the aggregate YoY growth turns out to be substantial.

Therefore, if you feel a small increase (1-3%) won’t appeal to decision makers, don’t worry. You’re being conservative and anchoring your assumptions in reality. And what you want to emphasise is the QoQ and YoY gains as this will help decision makers size the investment against the forecasted return (aka, ROI).

Generally speaking, I’ll apply a 0.5% to 3% month-on-month incremental.

Now, this is probably a good time to remind you that traffic is a noisy metric.

How much of that traffic can the brand convert?

That’s the real question that leadership, your client, or decision makers want to know.

And since you’ve broken your forecast down by inputs, the output (conversions) can be manually calculated for individual factors.

For example, branded searches tend to correlate to higher conversion rates whereas information queries and top-of-funnel searches rarely convert at 1%.

Again, all you’re doing is applying a list of assumptions to specific conditions, and in doing so, it will make your forecast easier to defend.

“But what if we can’t hit the numbers because my planned activities are delayed?”

I’ve mentioned this many times in my newsletter that in-house SEOs have zero ability to execute changes on a website.

Thanks for making it this far!

If you’re a search marketer wanting to transition to an enterprise role, you’re going to want to subscribe to

What exactly is Journal of an Enterprise SEO?

A lot of people think in-house SEO is boring.

They’re not wrong, but they’re not exactly right either.

Hello! I’m Daniel K Cheung, the author of this newsletter. In 2022, I made the jump from a $130,000 salary agency-side to a $149,000 one at Australia’s second-largest telecommunication company.

Ever since then, I’ve come to respect the role, learned to roll with the challenges, and look forward to the incredible potential of B2B enterprise SEO. I want to share my journey because getting hired was a huge milestone in my career.

Every week, I will be sharing tips, including:

How to get a job as an SEO at an enterprise
How to increase your sphere of influence
How to get the most out of your 1:1s with your manager
Mistakes to avoid in your performance review

So whether you’re at the beginning of your SEO career, about to apply for an enterprise role, or have just started and are finding it really difficult to get things done, I’m writing this for you.

See you next time!