When you set up a Forecast scenario and define your goal, the system displays a Goal Chance which indicates the goal's probability of success on a scale of Realistic to Too ambitious. This helps you adjust your SEO rank goals and optimize them to be achievable enough while also yielding good returns of a considerable number of additional sessions.
How it works
Behind the scenes, the Goal Chance takes into account three main parameters:
the Difficulty of the tracked website to rank in Top 10 for the selected keywords
the keywords' target ranks
the progression speed of the selected keyword groups towards their target ranks
Here's how we process each:
For each keyword, the Difficulty metric measures, in three levels (Easy, Medium, Hard) how difficult it is for the website to rank in top 10 for the keyword.
The target ranks are categorized into three ambition levels: Top 1-3, Top 4-5, Top 6-10. Higher the rank, higher the ambition level.
We calculate a baseline progression speed in no. of months (1 month to climb every 10 positions outside top 10 and 1 month to climb each position within top 10) for each keyword (based on their current and target ranks). We then calculate the ratio between this baseline and the progression speed you set, to ascertain how ambitious your set progression speed is, compared to the baseline.
Once all the parameters are reduced to the same scale, we calculate a goal chance that indicates the keyword's chance of achieving the target, expressed in values of Realistic, Ambitious, and Too Ambitious.
After calculating the goal chance at a keyword level, we then aggregate the values for the keyword groups you select in your scenario.
Note: The Difficulty metric and current ranks for each keyword are already processed by SEOmonitor's Rank Tracker, and the Forecast leverages this data through a deep integration between our products.
The Forecast shows the group difficulty (easy, medium, or hard) and a breakdown by keyword:
At a group level, we take into account the average of keywords' difficulty weighted on their search volumes. Keywords with higher search volumes weigh more than those with lower search volumes because they have a higher impact on additional sessions.
The higher the difficulty and the target rank, the more ambitious the goal chance will be.
With the Goal Chance feature, you can easily understand your chance to rank in the desired top positions on hundreds or thousands of keywords.
Calibrate the chance by balancing the keyword difficulty and the target ranks for each keyword group you want to focus on, and decide the goal's worth based on your resources and how much value it would generate for your client's business.
You can also remove keyword groups with a hard difficulty level from the scenario, to lower your target and make your goal more realistic. This doesn't mean you'll never want to include them in your forecast. Instead, these may be keywords you can choose to optimize for later.