Analyzing Traffic Forecast data with SE Ranking

SEO and Content Marketing Expert at SE Ranking. Yevheniia blends strategic thinking with hands-on research to create insightful content on SEO, marketing, and AI in search.

Published on: Oct 31, 2024

The traffic forecast is the potential volume of traffic that keywords can attract to a website. You can roughly estimate it by analyzing the correlation between keyword search volume and current SERP rankings. While no solutions on the market can predict website traffic with 100% accuracy, SE Ranking’s tools definitely come close.

How the traffic forecast is calculated in SE Ranking

We provide traffic forecasts in both project and stand-alone tools within the SE Ranking platform.

Organic traffic forecast for your project

For project tools like Rankings, My Competitors, and Insights, we use the following formula to define the traffic forecast metric (T):

T = FRI1*I2

where
F is the keyword search volume based on Google Keyword Planner data;
R is the current website ranking for the target keyword;
I1 is the adjusting index for search engines: Google I1=1; Yahoo I1=0.3; Bing I1=0.3 (Google gets around 3 times more traffic than Bing and Yahoo);
I2 is the index that shows the maximum amount of traffic you can get with a certain website SERP ranking position.

This metric gives a general understanding of the traffic your website can get through the keywords you add to the project for tracking.

Organic traffic for any website and keyword

You can also come across the Organic Traffic metrics in stand-alone tools like Competitive and Keyword Research, Content Editor, and SERP Checker. This is an estimated amount of organic traffic (clicks) that a website or webpage can receive from organic search per month.

We use an AI-powered algorithm to calculate estimated monthly traffic that considers keyword rankings, search volume, and CTR.

SE Ranking also applies ungrouping techniques to extract the most accurate search volume values and calculates CTR values taking into account SERP features, branded keywords, search intent, and other parameters. Moreover, we use machine-learning techniques to make our calculations dynamic in response to parameter changes.

How to see the traffic forecast in SE Ranking

Traffic forecast in project tools

To get a traffic forecast, you must first create a project, add all necessary keywords as well as the search engines where you wish to track them. If you’re having a hard time finding relevant keywords, use the Keyword Research tool before analyzing potential traffic. You’ll get lots of suggestions and a whole range of other important data.

1. Traffic forecast for all sites added to your account

On the main Dashboard, you can see every active website that you have under your account. Keep in mind that the data displayed for each website on the Dashboard shows the traffic forecast for all tracked search engines.

2. Traffic forecast by search engine, region, and keyword in Rankings Tool

To get more accurate traffic forecast data, check it for each search engine separately. To do this, select a website, go to Rankings → Detailed and select “Traffic forecast”.

3. Traffic forecast for your rivals in My Competitors Tool

You can view the traffic forecast of your direct rivals by selecting a project and going to My competitors report.

4. Traffic forecast insights on your competitors, their keywords, and pages

Another project tool where you can see the Traffic Forecast metric is the Insights Tool. Among the different data points that this solution provides, you can see:

• Competitors who either entered the top 10 from below or moved more than three positions within it along with the potential traffic they can get.
• Competitive keywords that started to rank in the top 30 of organic search during the last month.
• Competitive pages that started ranking in the top 30 during the last month along with keywords and estimated traffic they can bring.

Traffic forecast in stand-alone tools

1. Estimated organic traffic in Competitive Research Tool

To see the traffic forecast for any domain just enter it into the Competitive Research tool. You’ll see all the data in the Overview dashboard, including estimated organic traffic and organic traffic distribution by country.

2. Estimated organic traffic in Keyword Research Tool

This tool analyzes keywords and collects all the important keyword metrics, including estimated organic traffic.

3. Estimated organic traffic in SERP Analyzer

SERP Analyzer tool collects top-ranking pages for a particular search query as well as their potential traffic and other relevant SEO metrics.

4. Estimated organic traffic in Content Editor

Content Editor provides traffic forecast data on competitors who rank for the target keyword.

How traffic forecasting can help you or your clients

The traffic forecast is an indispensable tool when it comes to predicting the outcomes of your SEO strategy and optimizing spendings. You can use forecasting data to:

• Determine keyword ROI, identify gaps in strategy, as well as find the weaknesses of competitors.
• Evaluate how much time and money you will need to invest to promote products or services.
• Provide clients with accurate sales projections.

Whether you are a business owner doing SEO for your website or an SEO specialist who is working with clients, a traffic forecast will help you see opportunities to get better results across different marketing channels.

Final remarks

Forecasting organic traffic is a more clear process than you might have imagined before reading this article.

With the help of SE Ranking, you can build surprisingly detailed traffic estimates to finetune your marketing campaigns and SEO strategy. The tools we mentioned will give you fast and accurate results that show how much traffic and sales you can expect.