Stop reacting; start predicting

Folashade says: “The best and most successful strategy will be to shift from reactive SEO to proactive SEO.”

What would be an example of reactive SEO compared to proactive SEO?

“Reactive SEO is when you're reacting to trends, reacting to your competitors' moves, reacting to keyword spikes, and reacting to every Google algorithm change.

Proactive SEO is when you're intentionally shaping what the search could be, what the feature could be, and using predictive analysis and behavioural forecasting.”

What do predictive analysis and behavioural forecasting entail?

“Like I said, reactive SEO is when you're reacting to trends and waiting for that data to come out before making any moves. Proactive SEO is when you already have that data and you leverage it. You actually start to look for trends and patterns in the data that you have to predict what's going to happen in the future.

For example, imagine that you had predicted or anticipated that AI was going to be a big deal early last year, and you started to create content around it, related to your niche. You would obviously be considered an authority, and you'd rank better now.

Essentially, predictive analysis is looking at the data that you already have, seeing the beginning of a trend, and then predicting what that trend is likely to be over the next year or so. Then, you map your potential customers' behaviours to that because those will be the reasons behind those trends.

It's about looking at that data that you've got and trying to use it to anticipate what those customers are going to search for in the near future.

Any business can do this. You don’t even have to be technically savvy or know how to code to do the predictive analysis. There are already tools that can do that for you. You just need to take advantage of this for your business and move forward with it.”

What tools do you use, and what data do you look at within these tools?

“First off, you need to think about the data that you have and leverage that data. You've got Google Analytics data that tells you what your users' behaviour is like, but you've also got Search Console data that tells you what the current performance is like. You can look at this data, do some analytics around it, and focus on what the behaviour and performance could be in the future.

Apart from that, you can also think about market trends. Google Trends is a great tool for that. You can take your topic, look at it on Google Trends, and see how it has been performing in the past year. You can also use that to forecast what you expect to happen over the next year.

You've got Ahrefs as well. They've got a column called the growth forecast, which shows you the potential performance around your keyword over the next 12 months. Taking advantage of this data and using that to forecast what's going to happen in the next month and the next 12 months will be very useful.

When you have this data, there are other things you can look out for. You can look at seasonality. Different businesses have different times of the year when they make more sales, so you can look at that, especially if you've got your own data. That's going to be very helpful.

You also have cultural trends. Pinterest does this very well. Pinterest will already tell you what's going to trend next year. You can look at that and start to create content around that ahead of time.”

How do you prioritise and decide on what data to focus on first?

“First of all, focus on your own data. Your data is gold, especially if you have two, three, or five years' worth of data. That’s really going to help you see the patterns in what customers may be searching.

You've got your clicks and your impressions from Search Console. You've got time spent on page and all of that from analytics. Look at that and start to consider what behaviour you might expect from your users if you posted that kind of content again. Start to do some more digging.

Another thing I would mention is, if you've got this data, you can also think about doing some coding on Python or R. You can use tools like Prophet and the ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) algorithm to forecast some of this data. Also, Random Forest (RF) is a machine learning algorithm that can help you identify the high-impact factors to look out for.

However, there are also simple ways that you can do that. You can go on Google Trends or you can go on Ahrefs and look at the growth forecast, which is very easy to do.”

How do you use time on page as a metric to forecast what's going to happen in the future, and why does it matter?

“It would depend on the content that you're trying to create. If you are working on content that is quite similar to what you've created in the past, you can predict what is going to happen if you create content like that again.

If you notice that customers were not really spending so long on the page or were not interacting on that page, then it might not make sense to consider creating that kind of content again.

Time on page is a way to analyse how your current content is performing, and it helps you decide on what content to focus on in the future.”

What are machine learning models like Random Forest and XGBoost, and how do you use that data?

“Random Forest and XGBoost can be very useful when you're trying to look out for high-impact factors in your data. They are mostly useful for the analytics data, and really understanding the behaviours and trying to pick things out.

If you wanted to just focus on your clicks or your impressions for certain pieces of content, you might want to use Prophet or ARIMA. Like I said, you can also just go on Ahrefs or Google Trends and look at market data as well. That's particularly relevant when you don’t have as much data on that topic.”

How often should you be building future-proof content strategies with data-driven planning, and how long should you spend on that?

“I would say that you should do that once a quarter. Once your quarter is completed, you will have data, and you will want to see what you've done over that period, but you can also use that data to look at what you can do next quarter and over the next two quarters.

It depends. It should be done at least twice a year, but it all depends on how much time you've got. With some of these tools, it really shouldn't take that long, especially if you've got the scripts down and it's something that you do often.”

How do you know what metrics to focus on from an ROI perspective, and is that more challenging now, with the user journey being broken up by AI search and social?

“It can be quite complex now, but you can still get some data from your analytics, even if they find you on ChatGPT or another AI model. It's important to still look at that through your analytics data.

Also, SEOs shouldn't be working in silos. Yes, we care about rankings, but we should also really think about the customer journey as well, and there are other departments you can work with. You can provide some of this data to your product team because you have customer insights that would be very relevant or useful to them.

You can also work with marketing teams. Think about the campaigns that they might want to produce in the next month or the next year. You can work with them because you already have those insights. You can also work with your data team on predictive modelling, and things like that.

It's important to tie your efforts to the wider business goal. Think about the customer journey and how you are going to help them, at least by providing that information before they start to search for it.”

Should an SEO take the lead in sitting down with other teams, articulating what they find, and gathering information from those other teams?

“It's important that all teams work together. If the SEO team has the opportunity to get the insight first, then yes, they could take the lead on that with the other teams.

Show them how you are finding this information and how it's going to be useful to them. It's important for all of us to achieve our marketing goals.”

How do you discover opportunities for the future that aren’t based on something that you have produced in the past?

“With any predictive modelling or forecasting, you need to remember that it's not 100% certain. It's just giving you a direction you can run towards. At times, it might not work, but most of the time we find out that it does.

That's another reason why I mentioned market trends. There will be times when you have not written about certain things before. It has to be related to your business or your niche, but you might see those things come up in Google Trends. Obviously, there are other social listening tools that you could think about using as well.

You can explore those options and use other market data, rather than only focussing on your own, if you have not produced content on that in the past.”

Do you have direct conversations with customers and ask them to provide thoughts and insights on what they may want in the future?

“Yes, definitely. That's one of the most important things we should do as SEOs: getting those customer insights and using them to adapt our strategies.

If you have a topic or some content you want to produce, it would also be useful to run that through the customer insight team and get more data on it. That way, you're able to customer-proof it before you publish it.”

Are you seeing any trends in terms of what type of content works best in 2026?

“We all know that writing about how AI could help you with your business or your customers is one of the major trends that we're seeing now.

Being proactive in your SEO will also help you to know what your customers are going to be looking for. Really, it will depend on your business, but AI is the buzzword right now.”

Folashade, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“You need to think about how to anticipate your customers’ needs before they turn to queries on any search engine at all, with the data that you have access to.

Stop reacting; start predicting. Leverage the data that you have and produce content before the demand spikes, and think about how you can tie SEO to your broader business goals and strategies.”

Folashade Uba is an SEO Analyst at A.P. Moller – Maersk. Find out more over on LinkedIn.