What is a Achievable SEO Growth Rate?

[jombay]

Hi Mozzers,

I have a question for you today.

What is the achievable SEO growth rate (non branded SEO) for a typical job portal style site if you are also taking into consideration there is a blog with a lot of useful content being produced on a daily basis?

How has your SEO growth rate been? Is it normal to think that the non branded traffic can grow by 1000 visitors or more a day each month?

if I hit 1000 visitors per day this month, then 2000 visitors per day next month, 3500 visitors per day the month after that and so on?

I know it's difficult to give numbers like this. Assuming it's a 1000 visitor growth, that mean it's a 50% or more SEO growth each month.

it will be interesting to know how your growth rate has been.

Thank you.

[gcdtechnologies]

Hi Mohit. As you say it's very difficult to give numbers - every website and every niche is different. A fantastic website with little or no SEO already done might see a 50% increase in traffic in the first month, but in my experience that's far from typical.

The usual pattern for sites I work with is a slow overall increase in the first three months (discounting short term spikes) followed by more rapid growth in the next few months. As sites gain links and regular visitors, traffic increases more quickly.

Good luck.

[DougRoberts]

It's really difficult to provide a answer here as there are just so many variables and I think it's important to be realistic when talking to the client. SEO doesn't work like a tap that you can just turn on to get more visitors.

As Alice mentions, for a new site I've seen the same thing with slow initial growth until you hit a tipping point and the site achieves some rankings that have some reasonable traffic. At this point there can be a surge of traffic followed by (hopefully) steady growth at a slower rate afterwards (but you're got to keep building the content etc) to avoid hitting a plateau.

It does of course depend on factors such as visitor demographics, size of the market niche you're operating in, competition etc.

I've worked on one site where the entire market for the service being offered is less than 1000 people in the UK. (Assuming we're working to get qualified traffic then you can see that we're never going to get high month on month growth)

Also watch out for other factors such as seasonality or weather. (I've had one site have record visits due to the wet summer in the UK. Now there's the first glimmer of sunshine I've got a traffic decline on my hands.) Are the number of people looking for jobs affected by external factors such as the economy and the time of year? When are companies likely to recruit? How do holidays, annual budget cycle etc play a part?

The key to making any prediction traffic wise is to understand the target audience. Knowing when you need to broaden your appeals or come up with other services/products in order to bring in new visitor and keep the traffic (and the business growing).

Taking your job portal as an example - how many people are looking for a job or looking to recruit and could use the services it provides? What competition is there? How much of the total market are you likely to appeal to?

Hope this helps!