SEO Forecasting in Google Sheets
Summary
Broadly, I think you can put SEO forecasts into three groups: • “I’m feeling optimistic — add 20% to this year” or similar flat changes to existing figures. • Statistical forecast based on historical data, when you extrapolate from previous trends and seasonality to see what would happen if everything remained constant (same level of marketing activity by you and competitors, etc.). I mentioned that type two above is very challenging, and this is because of the highly non-deterministic nature of SEO and the generally poor quality of detailed data in Search Console and other SEO-specific platforms. As I mentioned above, the implicit assumption of a forecast is that historical context carries over, unless you explicitly include changed scenarios like COVID lockdowns into your model (more on that in a moment!). You can probably make a better go of this for the relevant factors for your business, but there are a few important things to keep in mind with this tab: • It’s fine to leave it completely untouched if you don’t want to add these extra variables.