The Forecast module estimates how much additional non-brand organic traffic would be generated if you achieve a specific SEO goal over a particular timeframe.

An SEO forecast helps you validate your SEO opportunity, pitch to clients, and justify your proposal's budget. To achieve this, you need to present results to your stakeholders in business metrics (such as cost and revenue), just as the Keyword Planner does for Google Ads. Let's see how we help you do that for SEO through Forecast.

The purpose of the Forecast is to estimate growth in non-brand organic traffic, express it in business metrics and help you track the SEO goal and follow through with it.

We use the keyword data from the Rank Tracker and the ranking target you set as the SEO goal to compute how many additional sessions, conversions and revenue would be generated if the goal is completed over the specified timeframe. To do this, we first filter out the brand traffic to focus on the non-brand organic traffic. We then use our forecast algorithm to predict the amount of additional traffic you'd get.

Start by creating a scenario to make your business case tangible. Your main controllable inputs are keywords and target ranks. So, choose the keyword groups from the Rank Tracker and set ranking targets over a timeframe to set an SEO goal. Additional sessions are displayed as you set your goal to help you calibrate it.

We then do a precise calculation at a keyword level, taking into account the key variables that influence the forecast: search volume, the effect of SERP features on CTR, Year-over-year, seasonality, device segmentation, and long-tail effect. You can see how we calculate metrics in each step and control the variables with custom inputs or by excluding those which don't apply to your case.

You can then view the additional sessions, conversions and revenue generated for the scenario. Use the Scenario Navigator to create new scenarios and analyze the forecast data for each one.

Read more on how to visualize forecasted results using Forecast scenarios.

To explain your SEO strategy to your team and stakeholders, create scenarios showing future SEO results. You can see how much it would cost to achieve this goal through Google Ads alone (on Ads Equivalent), and agree on a monthly budget.

Based on the difficulty of the website to rank in the Top 10 for the selected keywords and your rank goal, we calculate a Goal Chance metric that indicates your chance of achieving the set goal, from Realistic to Too Ambitious. When creating the forecast scenario, tweak your SEO goal until you have a good balance between the number of additional sessions and how realistic the goal is (see how the Goal Chance changes when you adjust the target rankings).

Note: You can adjust the SEO goal anytime from the left sidebar by selecting Adjust SEO Goal.

You can check the estimated additional traffic and the estimated monthly performance trend in the "Overview" tab.

Go to the "Detailed" tab to explore your forecast at a keyword level. Check the keyword data, the SEO goal, and the additional traffic for each keyword included.

In this example, we used the dropdown to select the Revenue metric and see the keyword-level impact on the set SEO goal. You can also select Sessions or Conversions based on your focus.

The Forecast module calculates the estimates in terms of business metrics, and makes it convenient for you to include them in your proposal. Pitching the value of the SEO project in these terms, alongside other key metrics such as Ads Equivalent, helps you justify your approach and get your clients' buy-in.

Once you've decided which scenario to pursue, set it as the Objective for your campaign. This way, you can constantly track your progress by comparing the actual sessions with the estimated ones.

The Objective Status helps you understand if your campaign performance is on track with its non-brand organic traffic objective.

To keep progress in check, track the Objective Status of each campaign in the Agency Dashboard and run comparative analyses of the actual non-brand traffic and the estimated one in the Organic Traffic module.

With SEOmonitor's Forecast, you validate your SEO opportunity, pitch to clients, and track your campaign's objectives. Showcase how achieving specific SEO goals could impact your client's business—measure and track SEO success in additional sessions, conversions, and revenue.

Our precise Forecast takes into account almost anything that can influence the performance of the non-brand organic traffic so that you can validate the SEO opportunity with your team, pitch tangible business cases to your clients, set realistic expectations, and justify the SEO budget.