What Is Predictive SEO And How Do You Use It In Marketing?

Everyone needs assurance that they're doing the right thing. Whether you're enrolling in a program or driving for the first time, you would want to know that your efforts would pay off. Sometimes, it's possible to tell someone that they're doing the right thing and that they're going in the right direction. Other times, though, you cannot say for sure. For instance, you usually have to wait a while to see if your SEO strategy would pay off. However, if you use predictive SEO, you might be able to write about topics that are not yet trending but will drive traffic later.

What Is Predictive SEO?

Predictive search engine optimization helps you forecast what consumers will need or want to see in the future and create content before others do. The label makes it sound mystical, but it is far from it; predictive SEO uses data and past insights to create and optimize content that will perform better in the future.

Most creators are reactive; they wait for a topic to trend or be popular before producing content. When you use predictive SEO, you cover topics before they are popular, which future-proofs your website. Instead of waiting until the topic has become saturated with content, you can get ahead of the curve and write about something before the rest do. If you want to succeed in predictive SEO, here are some things to remember.

Check Keyword Searches Constantly

Keywords bring people from the search engines to your website. If you monitor searches, you will see the topics and keywords that interest people. Since things do not become popular overnight, you will see which topics gain traffic over an extended period. 

If the topic starts to interest many people, it will show a steady rise in clicks and impressions on your Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools. If you see a rise over three to six months, you should see what else you can write about that topic. Monitor keyword searches, clicks, and impressions through Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Analyze The Page Traffic

Look at the traffic your website pages generate. The higher the traffic, the more demand for a page's content. Conversely, a decrease in traffic means people are less interested in something compared to a while ago. If you notice an increase in page traffic for a particular article, create new posts about similar or related topics.

Just like with keywords, you can use Google and Bing's tools for page traffic. However, they only show search traffic through clicks, not external links or type-ins. For a holistic picture of your website traffic, you can use Google Analytics.

Google Analytics lets you study your website visitors' behaviors and identify the best ways to keep engaging with them. Through Analytics, you have access to metrics like purchase probability, churn probability, and revenue prediction. 

Purchase probability indicates the likelihood that an active user will covert within the next seven days. This metric covers users who were active in the last 28 days on your website. However, it currently only applies to in-app purchases or e-commerce purchase events on your website. 

Churn probability is just the opposite; the likelihood that a user will be inactive on your site in the next seven days. Revenue prediction shows your website's earnings from a particular user who has been active in the last 28 days. Tools like these can help you improve the SEO for your website and allows you to deliver better content.

Monitor Social Media For Trends

Social media influences the popularity of topics greatly. When an influential user posts a message or a photo, it can potentially reach thousands of users. The more people share a post, the wider its reach becomes. Browse top social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get inspiration on trending topics. 

Analysis tools like BuzzSumo also help. These show you top posts per keyword on major social media sites. Note, though, that topics often die out quickly on social media unless people have a sustained interest in the topic to begin with; as such, you shouldn't rely solely on it.

Use Google Trends For Inspiration

Predictive SEO benefits greatly from Google Trends, a tool that shows the relative popularity of keywords. It can display graphs on how popular a keyword has become over time, and there is also an option to compare the popularity of multiple keywords in specific geographic locations. Trends also show popularity ratings, indicating how many more searches the keyword generated than others on a particular date.

By default, popularity settings show data throughout one year. This feature is helpful if you're planning content based on the previous year. For example, if the rating for a topic increased over the past year, you could count on it to trend upwards in the future. As such, you might want to create posts on the topic.

There is also data going back to 2004, a perfect jump-off point if you want to write a deep dive or a long-form piece on a particular topic. Google Trends also has custom settings if you are looking for a specific word's popularity in a given timeframe.

Use Google Alerts For Keyword Planning

Set up Google Alerts for your main short-tail keywords; that way, you will get an alert when someone publishes something about your keyword. If you have Alerts on, Google will send you a link through email to the published content. Setting up keyword alerts will help you familiarize yourself with developments related to the phrase. It also allows you to monitor breaking news about your keyword.

Conclusion

Website rankings inevitably change, which means what was popular today will not be popular in the future. If you only write things that are popular now, you will risk your content becoming irrelevant in the future. Use predictive SEO when coming up with content; if you know how people's searches are trending now, you'll find it easier to anticipate what they will be looking for in a few weeks or months.

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