Believe it or not, predicting SEO Singapore performance can still be incredibly volatile. 

SEO

SEO

Frequently, customers request predictions before investing so that they can evaluate their ROI before becoming involved. This, then, puts the agency in a position to provide a solid, credible case for the business while also emphasizing that what’s being presented are possible eventualities, not guarantees.

From the moment you begin working with your client, it’s paramount to establish clear and achievable expectations. The key is to simultaneously maintain a balance between managing clients’ expectations and giving them enough information to remain excited and invested. 

Consider, if you will, an example: your Director of Customer Service wishes to emphasize the benefits of a business case to pitch the sale more effectively. Conversely, your CEO wishes to place more emphasis on internal assessments and ensuring their accuracy. So, how do you choose which approach to follow?

The truth is, you don’t have to choose between one or the other. Instead, by taking advantage of the proper forecasting techniques in your SEO Singapore proposal, you can equally highlight both, and in effect, prove the value and worth of your services.

For Your Customers & Their Business, What Does SEO Success Look Like?

Before your clients are confident enough to invest in your SEO services, they’re likely to require a thorough explanation of your strategy as an SEO service provider. Your SEO strategy is a way to showcase your skills and describe precisely how you plan to generate website traffic, direct sessions, promote conversions, and how the combination of the three can lead to better interactions and higher profits. It’s entirely up to you to distinguish between the different elements of SEO (i.e., business metrics, keyword rankings, traffic, etc.) and ensure the client understands how you plan to impact those elements.

Once your customers understand your strategy, you can begin researching the best keywords for your clients and find out what keywords the client would like incorporated. As you research keywords, there are several significant questions to keep in mind:

  • What’s the customer’s industry trend? How does it affect your keywords now, and looking forward, if at all?
  • In terms of market visibility, where does your client’s business stand compared to their competitors?
  • What phase of growth (or plateau) is the customer’s business currently in?

Identifying Areas Of Growth And Opportunity

Competition And Keywords

Next, it can be helpful to do a bit of digging into your client’s competitors. Though many businesses often forgo comparing themselves, doing so allows you to understand better what potential customers will find and see when they’re actively seeking your client’s business online. And, in effect, it gives you a more well-rounded understanding of search queries and intent.

As you research your SEO proposal, keep a list of keywords containing any overlapping keywords, unique keywords, and non-overlapping keywords. Later, you can use this list to do a deep dive into the SEO data-reliant components of said keywords like their correlating seasonality, search volumes, and more. Additionally, you can use this list when you compose your proposal to assist you in making decisions about which keywords you’ll include.

Frequently, clients will already come into a meeting with some specific keywords in mind, and it can be difficult to express why the keywords they’ve chosen won’t have their intended effect. In having your keywords prepped ahead of time, you’re essentially giving yourself a cheat sheet that you can use to explain which keywords do suit their intentions and how they perform.

Market Visibility And Share

The next area of your client’s business where you can identify opportunities is in evaluating their share of the market using the visibility metric. The visibility metric measures a business’s potential for growth compared to total industry shares and the shares held by similar companies in said industry. You can calculate the visibility metric of a client’s business by weighting their impression shares against search volumes.

Remember, the visibility metric is shown as a percentage, so as long as a business’s visibility is under 100%, there are always opportunities to grow and expand. Take, for example, a company with 70% market visibility. While their visibility already indicates popularity, you can capitalize on that pre-existing online presence to increase market visibility by introducing high-volume keywords.

How Data Transparency Creates Realistic Timelines

Taking all of the previously discussed research into consideration, you can begin modeling timelines. Your timeline should essentially be an outline of possible traffic performance and non-brand organic traffic outcomes for your clients. A well-crafted timeline should offer a comprehensive look at what your clients can expect from your services within a six or twelve-month timeframe.

In addition to creating your timelines, you can also use this juncture in your process to examine any variables that might impact your keyword lists. Somethings to consider are:

  • Seasonality and year-to-year trends
  • Long-tail keywords and their effect on expected results
  • Inertial traffic patterns 
  • Perception of traffic vs. actual traffic data
  • Exponential or linear calculations of performance in time
  • CTR curve calculations for 10 top positions for device segmentation
  • CTR curve calculations for 10 top positions for different SERP feature combinations

Applying this type of forecasting module to your SEO Proposal gives you the chance to make estimations of conversions and sessions rather than focusing on ranks. 

On the other side of the spectrum, let’s take a look at SEOmonitor’s forecasting module. SEOmonitor’s forecasting module multiplies predictions of additional visits by each keyword’s corresponding conversion rate to forecast other conversions. The benefit of this module is that each keyword can be individually analyzed and verified for input and output.

Whichever model you choose, providing a timeline is a way for you to express your predictions tangibly and in a way that the client easily comprehends. Include multiple variations and go through them with your customers to show how diversifying keywords can influence traffic scenarios and ultimately translate into increased value. If there’s a specific scenario that you’d like to showcase to the client, consider also including models of your client’s traffic as it is, juxtaposed with models of your client’s traffic with your proposed SEO campaign, to highlight the differences. Just be sure to explain your calculations, assumptions, and the variables with clarity and repetition to ensure their expectations remain reasonable.

What’s The Right Budget For Your Client’s Business?

Now, you’re ready to set objective goals to gauge the results of your SEO Proposal. Having simple, logical benchmarks allows both you and your clients to evaluate SEO performance and see the benefits of your work. Basically, it lets them know what it is they’re paying for.

Furthermore, you can use Google Ads to compare the SEO results and performance your client would receive for their budget to what you’re offering them to demonstrate the worth of your SEO Proposal. You can also use this comparison to help establish your retainer price and determine budgetary benchmarks moving forward with the client. Finally, for already accepted proposals, you can still use forecasting scenarios like the one described above to keep yourself accountable, assess a client’s budget versus their goals, and negotiate KPIs.

How To Assess Ongoing Campaigns & Accepted SEO Proposals 

The goals and benchmarks that make up your SEO Proposal define what success will look like for your client. However, to know if you’re meeting those benchmarks, you’ll have to track the results of your SEO campaign as it progresses. 

Revision and adaptation are natural in life, and the same is true for your SEO Proposal. Throughout your SEO campaign, it’s vital to pay attention to any changes made in content, context, and strategy. As these changes tally up, re-forecasting your original proposal is incredibly beneficial. Whether it be internal reviews, introducing new keywords, or an additional feature the client would like optimized, re-forecasting gives you the opportunity to take a complete inventory of what’s been accomplished and make more accurate, detailed predictions for the client.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules for how often you should re-forecast your SEO Proposal. An excellent general rule of thumb to go by, though, is to re-forecast whenever there are any major world / cultural changes (i.e., the COVID-19 Pandemic), spikes in data, and shifts in client needs. As far as the basis of time is concerned, your SEO Proposals should never go longer than a month or two without being re-evaluated for re-forecasting. Re-forecasting is crucial in establishing client relationships and is your chance to demonstrate the value of your SEO services and offer further or alternative services.

In Conclusion…

There is no such thing as a universal SEO Proposal, but every SEO Proposal can be perfected and improved upon. SEO Proposals keep you accountable for your work while providing your clients with the confidence they need to invest in you and your skills. 

By using a forecasting methodology that you can trust, you:

  • Define success for your campaign, yourself, and your clients in clear terms of visibility, rankings, conversions, traffic, etc.
  • Establish a budget that mutually benefits the client and you without exploiting either party
  • Maintain control and direction of your SEO campaigns to ensure positive outcomes for you and your clients

The forecasting module from SEOmonitor supports you and thousands of SEO agencies by doing all that and more with data you can rely on. SEOmonitor takes seasonality, year-over-year trends, and more variables into account for you. And, it also comes with a Proposal Builder, thanks to the Google Slides integration, so you can quickly and easily turn your SEO Proposal into a presentation and start pitching your campaign.