How we calculate ranking estimates

Why show an SEO ranking estimate at all

Most SEO tools promise either nothing or everything. We think a planning number is useful as long as you can see how it was made. So before you pay, RankSites shows three things per keyword: the estimated weeks until it reaches page 1, a projected position curve, and the monthly visits you could expect once it’s there. All three are labelled estimate, and all three come from the model below. The code is short enough to read in a coffee break.

The four inputs

1. Keyword difficulty, 0–100. Our estimate of how competitive the results page is. Every suggested keyword comes with one.
2. Starting position. Your current Google position if we know it. If we don’t, the model assumes you are outside the top 100 and starts you at position 100.
3. Campaign intensity. Blog drafts per week count 1.0 each, backlink targets per week count 0.6 each. The defaults (2 drafts, 5 targets) score 5.0. The maximum (7 and 7) scores 11.2.
4. Site authority, 0–1. We use the technical audit score as a weak proxy. A site we know nothing about sits at 0.5, which is neutral: it neither speeds up nor slows down the estimate.

Weeks to page 1, in words

First, difficulty sets a base: a floor of three weeks, plus up to forty more, scaled by difficulty raised to the power 1.6. The exponent matters. It means doubling the difficulty more than doubles the wait, which matches what actually happens on competitive pages. A difficulty of 20 gives a base of about 5 weeks; 50 gives about 16; 80 gives about 31.

Then intensity and authority set a speed: 0.55, plus 0.08 for every point of intensity, plus a quarter of how far authority sits from neutral. At the default cadence that works out to 0.95. At maximum cadence it’s about 1.45. It never drops below 0.4, because audits and rank checks keep running even if you set drafts and backlinks to zero.

Weeks = base ÷ speed, rounded, never less than 2. At the defaults: difficulty 20 → 6 weeks, difficulty 50 → 17 weeks, difficulty 80 → 33 weeks. Push both sliders to 7 and the difficulty-50 keyword drops to 11 weeks. Keep in mind that more drafts only help if you actually publish them.

The curve and the visits

The projected curve is an exponential approach from your starting position toward position 10, timed so it crosses onto page 1 roughly when the weeks number says. After that it drifts toward a settle point — position 3 for easy keywords, 5 for medium, 8 for hard — rather than racing to #1. That’s why the line flattens.

Visits use a standard click-through table by position: roughly 27% at #1, 11% at #3, 2.5% at #10, about 1% on page 2, and nothing below that. Monthly visits at page 1 are the keyword’s search volume times the CTR at its settle point. The campaign-wide “visits at day 90” figure adds up volume × CTR at each keyword’s projected week-13 position. Confidence is simply a difficulty band: high under 30, medium under 60, low above.

Why it’s conservative

• Unknown starting positions are assumed to be 100, even when a site already ranks somewhere.
• Authority stays neutral until an audit says otherwise; existing links and brand searches earn no credit.
• The CTR table is an industry average and ignores rich results that could send more clicks your way.
• Hard keywords are penalized non-linearly, so the long end of the range stretches rather than compresses.
• There is a two-week floor. Nothing is ever projected to rank next Tuesday.

In practice, long-tail keywords sometimes move faster than the number says. We would rather you be pleasantly surprised than plan around a date that slips.

Why it’s still not a guarantee

The model can’t see your competitors’ next moves, Google’s algorithm updates, indexing lag, whether the posts you publish are actually good, or whether you sent the outreach. Google decides where pages rank; we don’t, and neither does anyone selling you a guarantee. That’s why the dashboard tracks real positions next to the projection. Compare the two, and if reality is lagging, change the plan. Cadence changes apply from the next 30-day cycle.

What to do with the number

Use it to choose keywords (pick a few high-confidence ones so you see movement early), to size the cadence, and to set expectations with whoever is waiting on results. Don’t quote it to a client as a delivery date. If you want the fundamentals first, start with What is SEO automation?