Most Ahrefs users will be familiar with our traffic graphs. They show the estimated search traffic for any website or page over time.
Here’s the graph for ahrefs.com:
1 organic traffic
Having historical data like this is useful for analyzing the past performance of a website or web page, but what about future performance? Is there a way we could use the data to forecast organic traffic growth or decline?
Let me answer that with another graph:
2 ahrefs traffic forecast
That blue line is the future traffic prediction for Ahrefs. The blue shaded area is the upper and lower uncertainty level (basically, there’s an 80% probability of our forecasted organic traffic being within that range).
Even better, this graph took all of two minutes to make using Ahrefs data and open-source scripts.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to create graphs like these to predict future performance for your website, pages, and competitors.
Why forecasting is important
Why use third-party data in forecasting?
Forecasting with SEO data: use cases
Adjusting script settings & details
Why forecasting is important
SEO forecasting lets you use data to make predictions, such as future traffic levels and the value of that traffic. It assumes that past patterns are likely to continue and can help you allocate resources, prioritize SEO efforts, and make adjustments before it’s too late.
The workload like this whatsapp number list allows both the vendor and the affiliate to focus on. Clicks are the number of clicks coming to your website’s URL from organic search results.
The reasons why you’d want to do this vary depending on your situation.
If you work in enterprise SEO, you’ll usually have to make projections of how much you’ll grow SEO and increase revenue once or twice a year. The company will also set goals for you and your team. If there’s a discrepancy between your estimates and company goals, you can argue for more resources. Say you project an uplift of 15% year over year (YoY) at the current effort and resource levels, but your target is 25%. Your expected impact doesn’t align with expectations. In this case, you can push for a lower target or more resources to meet the company’s goal.
If you’re at an agency, SEO forecasting can help with sales or predict the future impact for a client. Most companies want to know when they will be a market leader or beat a particular competitor. Suppose a forecast shows they lag behind their target at current effort levels. In that situation, it’s easy for a salesperson to justify an increased budget for projects, a shift in strategy, or additional hours that will allow them to close the gap or overtake competitors. Adding a forecasting chart to a sales pitch can help elevate things above other agencies and justify your requested budget.