Potential Clients Requesting Guestimate at Additional Traffic

what can I possibly tell them

[djmad_wax]

I'm working on a contract for a big client. I submited a plan of optimization which lays out what needs to be done. They are asking me how much additional traffic they can expect if they lay out the cash for inktomi, google adwords, PPC, pay for submission via altavista/lycos etc....

what do you tell clients with a question like this? My track record speaks for itself, and I can show before and after figures for other clients, but I dont know how to guesstimate an actual figure...

any idea's??

[bigjohnt]

You are right. You cannot guesstimate an actual figure. My usual answer is "More. A lot More"

You can finagle a guestimate by using what you really expect from the paid options, and you'll just have to use your "gut" for the rest.
How well are they situated right now? How aggressive are the tactics their competition deploy? Is there an upward trend in the product category? A seasonal one? All these would have to be factored in, and at the end, its a "dart toss", like picking stocks.

I would never put a traffic figure into writing. Too many variables.
Managing the clients expectations is one of the toughest parts of this profession.

[dstanovic]

djmad_wax,

I cannot answer your question as I do not believe anyone could as a factual statement ;)

Too many variable from everything including: product or service,competition,season of the year, etc.....

One bit of advice. I would "NOT" pay for inclusion to INK, Fast/Lycos, Altavista etc unless they have very deep pockets and can pay to submit their entire site. Otherwise they will neglect any of the content on the non-paid pages of the site. You are better off getting links from some sites that do well in those SE's and be spidered/crawled deeply.

My 2-cents

Edited: I see bigjohnt beat me to it, of course I am only using one hand typing since I broke my wrist and thumb :)

[edited by: dstanovic at 10:19 pm (utc) on June 3, 2002]

[djmad_wax]

yeah... deep pockets yes. I recommended only inktomi.. and I'm pretty sure my big "you must change the page content to place well" warnings will be ignored.

lol

well thanks for answering. I'll try to answer it and let you know how it goes...

[bigjohnt]

OWWWWW!
That sure does slow down productivity. Sounds like a skateboarding injury to me...
[Edit based on reply]
There's is your "out". When I first started doing this, one of the things they needed to understand was that our success was quite dependent on what they were willing to change.

[edited by: bigjohnt at 10:31 pm (utc) on June 3, 2002]

[agerhart]

If the potential client has asked for a "guesstimate" of search engine traffic that can be obtained, than it is in fact feasible to give them a very rough estimate of search engine traffic that the SEO campaign will result in.

For Google, utilize their Google Adwords tool to get number of searches per day and per month for each of your target keywords. After you get the total number of searches per month for all of your target keywords, there are a few things to keep in mind. The competitiveness of each keyword is one thing that must be remembered. If you can foresee that a certain keyword(s) will be easy to obtain a top 3 ranking, than the estimated conversion rate will be higher than the rest of the more competitive keywords.

Take the total number of searches per month for each keyword and apply the estimated conversion rate. This will result in a very rough estimate of traffic that will be obtained for your keyword, or keyword list. While this is a rough estimate, with the right research, track record or history of results obtained, the estimate can become closer and closer.

This can also be done with Wordtracker for the other search engines.

There are obviously many, many variables that play a role in a calculation like this one, but, if the potential client wants to see a number or a "guesstimate", this is one of the solutions.

<added> It always helps to put the projected increase in search engine traffic in a nice graphical layout that they can look at. </added>

[edited by: agerhart at 3:22 am (utc) on June 4, 2002]

[Robert Charlton]

This has been a problem for me, too. Clients want success stories, and MBAs want studies and statistics to justify expenditures. And to some extent, it's understandable. I've had one marketing person I tried to work with insist that I come up with return-on-investment guidelines, claiming he couldn't sell me otherwise... and he was right.

I wonder... how do print advertisers, for example, come up with any ROI figures? Ditto for other media.

There are threads on the board, by the way, about experiences people have had with Google Adwords... perhaps some of the other PPCs too.

I don't know what you might say about crawler-based engines. You might conceivably be able to do it after the fact for specific clients, but most won't release that kind of information. I feel it's completely impossible to generalize. I'm not even sure how you could give a range. And what would best case mean? Probably not much....

>>If you can foresee that a certain keyword(s) will be easy to obtain a top 3 ranking, than the estimated conversion rate will be higher than the rest of the more competitive keywords.<<

agerhart - Are you taking this from the study quoted by Overture? If you are, I've always been slightly suspicious of that study, because of Overture's desire to sell top three spots, which generally go for a lot more than the rest. I have no facts to back up my doubt... just a feeling.

[DrCool]

I have analyzed rankings compared to different search numbers (Wordtracker, Overture, Google) and never been able to come up with any definitive numbers. For example, a keyword with a #1 ranking on Yahoo might get around 25% of the traffic that Overture says that keyword gets per month. Another keyword might get 50% and another maybe 10%. There is no way that I know of to come up with exact numbers but as agerheart says you should be able to look at the numbers from Overture, Wordtracker, and AdWords and combine that with your experience and come up with a very rough number.

I would advise you to never put a number of any sort on a contract and over emphasize the fact that any number you give them is a very rough guess and there isn't anything concrete to back the numbers up.