[how to] 5 steps to logically plan / forecast your SEO trajectory for an ecommerce business

or just how I do it, but let me know if there are ways to improve!

Before we start, just getting this out of the way:

“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Now, let’s look at the SEO planning process - typically done for fiscal year / mid-term planning / due diligence:

1 Keyword data extraction via Google Keyword planner
2 Separate brand / non-brand metrics
(impressions, website traffic, average order volume, conversion rate%)
3 Apply benchmark growth of the industry (or market) & of the company
4 Calculate realistic impact of new keywords for upside potential
5 Apply into your overall plan for sensibleness

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1 Keyword data extraction via Google Keyword planner
This process should be self-explanatory, if not see here for Google SERP for “keyword planner how to use”.
Recommend to extract pre-pandemic data as well to see the growth trajectory most likely has changed pre-/mid-/post- pandemic.

2 Separate brand / non-brand metrics
Using data from 1 Google Keyword planner, compile data from Google Search Console & Google Analytics to separate out brand from non-brand. Specifically search impressions, click through rate%, traffic share%, AOV, conversion share% (conversion rate%)

3 Apply benchmark growth of the industry (or market) & of the company
-industry or market growth is utilized for non-branded terms growth rate
-company growth is utilized for branded term growth rate
(+ any additional assumed PR upside, if any)

4 Calculate realistic impact of new keywords for upside potential
Research new keywords with the trusty Google Keyword planner “Discover new keywords” to add into the plan.
Any new keyword should be validated with a measure of keyword difficulty (how realistic it is to rank for the keyword), with tools such as Ahrefs to double check and assigned a realistic click through rate%
(i.e.- 10th rank is approx 1.3% CTR%, by SEOclarity)

5 Apply into the overall plan & check for sensibleness
Usually organic planning should be done before paid channels or new projects, as organic is the source of low-cost growth & at the core of planning, but in case the overall plan is being done in parallel, apply the overall website conversion rate% improvements, and compare your outputs with paid & direct plans, etc to see if the organic trajectory is not too far off compared to the other parts of the plan.
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And you’re done.

All-in-all, the above should take one day for the initial draft plan for a single-region business(more complicate for a global business), and should be revised at least a few times to incorporate new perspectives / macro trends that were not originally reflected.

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—A couple of pre-requisites:
-this process assumes that few years worth of data is available, the process would differ for an industry / business without this data set
-this process does not incorporate Google Discover, which would need to be added to the plan as necessary (recommend adding in downside risk, as Discover is highly dependent on the Google algo)

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Jo — Inazuma Digital founder, consultant & digital marketing expert