Any ideas how to set goals and how to predics mertics?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Chris Boggs: here is a quick "Projection Model" I have used: 1. Take last three years month-by-month traffic (sessions) average to use as the baseline which likely includes seasonality. 2. Apply multipliers to the traffic growth over time. If you think you can grow 2-5 % first month, 5-7% more the second month, and so forth. This multiplies the original. 3. Create "Conservative, Moderate, or Aggressive" growth lines based on anticipated SEO spend + total available keyword volume (X.05 or so to target an aggressive CTR of 5% or go less with the multiplication) 4. Consider other limiters that may slow the growth, suh as strong competitors versus weak etc. This then creates a nice chart showing three lines with expected growth over the next 12 months (starting any time since seasonality is included above) Thoughts? BTW I am travelling so may be slow to reply.
• 
  Ammon Johns: THIS, above all, is why I say that there is no alternative for experience. With experience, you know what sort of gains you can expect to make, and can make fair and honest predictions based on that experience. Without it, you`re having to make up numbers to some extent, and then bet your future relationship with this client on being able to deliver those numbers. In addition to what Chris Boggs has suggested as a basic projection model, you need to adjust that by the nature of the business you`re dealing with, what efforts they`ve put in so far (if they`ve never done much marketing then you can and should predict significant growth, but if they are years in, incremental is going to be more likely). You also need to carefully refer back to everything promised or implied (or even assumed) in getting the client in the first place. What sort of growth were they asking for, and what did you suggest you could do? Just remember that raw traffic is a poor metric. Including the ability to raise conversion rates, or push more on higher-price (higher profit margin) products and services, allows you to make serious impact to their profit outside of just ranking for more keywords.
• 
  Michael Martinez: If they are asking for a "hypothesis" then you can set up some experiments and say, "Well, let`s test THIS hypothesis. Here is what we can try and what we want to happen." If they are really looking for experimental SEO you may be in a sweet spot.