When a website has history, it's a lot easier to estimate what an SEO campaign can do in terms of expected visits, ranking, etc. However, with a new website (new domain, new business, new website), it's much harder. What are some tips for estimating traffic for keywords? Google's Keyword tool shows 10-100 searches per month for most keywords, which seems very low. I want to be able to show the value in SEO, but I'm having a hard to estimating information without any historical data to look at. Thoughts?
I don't see how it makes a difference whether the site is new or old. The visitors aren't going to check you site age before determining whether to click on your site in the SERPs. There are many variables like Rich Snippets, Searchers intent, Title and Description, etc. What keywords are you checking? Are you looking globally, or just in one location?
Matthew, Correct, the end-user doesn't care about the age of a site. What I'm referring to is having historical data to go off of. For example, if ABC.com has been online for 2 years and is wanting to start a campaign, we have access to the past 2 years of data to see how customers found them, queries, conversions, etc. However, a new website doesn't have this data to view. Therefore, it takes more of an estimation. My questions is regarding tips, tools, or idea on how to do this more effectively. Yes, the idea is for a local business, not national. So search volume is small for that reason. But it almost seems too small. Surely in a town of over 130,000, people would be searching for "window repair" or "window installation" (both are mere examples) more than 10-100 times per month.
Google Keyword Tool isn't accurate especially for local results. To get a good estimate run an Adwords campaign for your chosen keywords.
kjh, thanks for the tip! I understand the Keywords Tool isn't accurate, but your idea of an Adwords campaign is great. Do you think that would be something that could gather good information in a week's time? Obviously, the more time you let it run the better, however, would a week suffice for a preliminary test?
As you said the longer the ads run the better but some data is better than none. Don't forget about seasonal work/keywords. Depending on what kind of business/location the traffic may be higher during one season than another. Ex. a roofer in the northeast isn't going to get much traffic/work with snow on the roofs in the winter. Yet during the summer the traffic/work will spike.
Just check the trends to see how the keywords are all over the years and think about what can happen in an year!