Web Traffic Prediction - Best Practice

[afroken]

We are about to embark on a redesign to fix some very simple usability issues and improve the SEO on a website we have just acquired.

I have be given 9 months worth of generic Google Analytics data. But I'm not sure how it is possible to predict a rise of X visits/page views based on the new SEO measures and on what the present stats show.

Anyone got any pointers - examples - gifts from the gods on this query?

[cgrantski]

If you don't have info on the SERPs for major likely keywords and estimates of numbers of searches done for those keywords, then you can't do very much predicting with your traffic stats. If you're in position #50 now and you think you can get to #2 and you know there are 50,000 searches per week on that term, then you have a chance of guessing how many additional visits that will bring if you are willing to guess the clickthrough rate for your #2 position.

If you're in position #1 now and then your traffic will be about the same as now unless the # of searches increases for some reason.

Hopefully somebody has some old ranks data for the list of target keywords that you yourselves are undoubtedly developing.

[afroken]

the website is a contacts database with a massive longtail of niche contacts in a small industry sector. But there has never been any SEO benchmarking handed over. I guess I'll have to sign-up with Keyword Tracker or the like - yay.

Any other angles on this anyone?

I'd hate to predict daft figures.

[afroken]

I suppose a more structured approach could be to split things into a quadrant of four data sources that would in turn provide a more robust view into the future: -

A) Present traffic trends - I already have this in the GA data a benchmark

B) Keyword search volumes -
Helps estimate the possible level of traffic available online

C) Sector trends -
Using Hitwise/ComScore sample data for your industry and hence support or appose our performance status noted in (A).

D) Long tail analysis of keywords vs. content pages -
To find out if you have enough pages to support your long tail of keywords and hence reap the extra traffic stated in (B)

Any thoughts?