If you work on the SEO of your website, think about these efforts should be part of your ongoing strategy. Regardless of whether it is a customer, your manager or your team, it is the best way to create an SEO report. This helps you justify your efforts to keep an eye on the performance and find out what needs to be addressed next. And it’s not as difficult as you would think. In this blog post we explain what SEO reporting is and lead through the process step by step.
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps to increase more traffic to your website and improve your brand image. It should be part of the marketing strategy of everyone whose aim is to expand his (online) audience. SEO is originally geared towards performance in the organic search and now comprises much more than that. It helps you to build a strong brand name, become an authority in your area and to be visible on the platforms on which your audience can be found. All of this means increasing customer loyalty and expanding your business.
What exactly reports SEO?
The SEO reporting is best described as the assessment of your online marketing efforts and the presentation of the results in a report. This can be a report that you create for yourself, your team, your management or a customer. A company often has a certain template that regularly carry out SEO reporting (e.g. every month). This can be done in the form of a DIA decoration, an online document, an Excel leaf or an online dashboard. But it can also be any other reporting tool with which you feel comfortable or your company uses for presentations.
In an SEO report you will find metrics in connection with the performance of a website and other marketing activities related to SEO. In this way you can track how your SEO strategy is carried out and where changes are required. For this reason, an important part of an SEO report is the interpretation of metrics and conclusions that result from it.
What you should include in your SEO report
Regardless of whether you create an SEO report for internal use or for your customers, it is good to have a template. In this way, you can compare current findings with previous ones, regardless of the frequency with which you will report. Of course, you can make changes to this template on the way. However, if you have a template, you save time and help you to recognize bigger problems and opportunities over time.
Of course, it depends on your business goals, which is included in your SEO report. The most important thing is that your SEO report reflects your (or that of your customers) goals. This should understand how your marketing efforts contribute to achieving these goals and what measures have to be taken. However, there are some foundations that most of us want to include.
A general data overview
Start with an overview of the most important data for your company or your website. This gives you an idea of how you are doing immediately. In particular, if you report regularly, this overview or your customers will be given how the website (and the online business) processes. You can also include data from the previous period (or in the previous year) for comparison.
Website data that are included:
- The number of visitors to the website
- Number of purchases (or other measures that people should take)
- A visualization of your traffic over the selected period
- Keyword rankings for some important pages
- A traffic overview according to the source or medium
- The type of visitors (new or returning)
Data on (content) performance
The general overview provides a brief insight into the current state of the game, but to find out how you have arrived there, you have to enter into more detail. For this reason, your report should contain a more detailed insight into the content. Make sure you contain data on your most important pages such as product pages, popular blog posts or other landing pages that attract many people.
Collect data such as page views, visitors, commitment, events, income and traffic sources. You don’t have to involve everything because this will be overwhelming and will probably lead to people lose interest. Take a look at the data of your most important pages, select the numbers that notice (growth or decline), and add them to your report. It can be tempting to concentrate exclusively on the positive figures, but also involve the negatives to paint a realistic picture. This speaks for your credibility, makes it easier to recognize problems before you get out of control and help the company in the long run.
Other elements that are included here can be found an overview of new backlinks in the website, statistics in connection with the health of the website and the Kern -Web -Vitals and an overview of keyword rankings. However, remember that the keyword rankings can change every day, and the obsession with individual ranking ranking does not help your entire -Seo. Use these average values to get an idea of whether your overall ranking sinks and what you can do to get your organic traffic again.
Activities of earlier period
If you have looked at the data, it is time to summarize what was going on this month (or in the time of your choice). Use this section to emphasize how many contributions on social media have assumed, how the audience interacted with them, which blog posts were written or updated and how their ongoing ads are executed. However, you can also insert other online or offline marketing activities to show what was done.
If possible, you can integrate this with all the tips in traffic or commitment. Or it can help you explain why some areas have attracted less attention than others. In any case, use this to understand the data and to emphasize the hard work that was done by the team.
A summary with recommendations
Always end your SEO report with specific action points that come from the evaluation of this month. It helps to begin with a summary of the “heights and depths” that were raised in the previous report. For example, if you have found a noticeable decline in ranking lists and thus organic traffic on one of your most important pages, it makes sense to concentrate on the following weeks. And make improvements based on their findings. Or if a new type of social media post were very good, another action point could be to create a number of you and check whether you can maintain this success.
This last part is also a moment of reflection on a larger level. Are you still on the right track with the business goals or certain SEO goals that you have set yourself? And don’t forget to go through the action points that you have come up with in the previous SEO report. Could you do this? Are some of them still in progress? Or are there blockers where you need help? Make sure you end an action plan for the coming month and a team (or a customer) that is on board with everything that is discussed.
Creating a SEO report: step by step
After you know what you want to include, let us talk about how you can start with your SEO reporting. Before you move the data together, it is important to set clear KPIs and create a setup that works for your company.
1. Set up your KPIs
The first step is to define KPIs that stands for important performance indicators. This should be measurable goals based on the marketing goals and/or the business goals within the company. In order to give a simple example, a corresponding KPI can be to increase traffic to your website in order to increase your organic traffic by 10% this year. Other popular KPIs are conversion rate, overall ranking, click rate, bounce rate, side loading time and fire-proof/non-brand traffic.
Realistically make these KPIs, especially if you provide expectations to a customer and think about the progress in your SEO reports to stay on the right track. I would recommend not to concentrate too much on maintaining certain rankings or data on certain pages. Ranking lists are exposed to highly external factors and can change daily. If you enlarge too much on one side, you can lose the perspective. Of course, a decline in traffic is something for an important side that you can keep in mind and can be a reason to make some adjustments. But think of the entire KPIs and consciously of the overall picture while optimizing what is necessary without being obsessed.
2. Set up the structure for your report
Choose a tool for your SEO reporting. This can be a presentation tool that your team often uses, an information collection tool like Excel or an analytics dashboard or one with which your customer is familiar. Simply make sure that you can set it up yourself and make improvements if necessary.
Add the sections discussed above: a general overview, data on performance, marketing activities and a summary with recommendations. I would suggest watching your KPIs to find out exactly what you want to display in general overview and data in the area of performance section. If your main KPI increases your conversion rate, make sure that you add the data to this KPI into the general overview.
Test your new report by filling out the data of this month (or in what time you choose). Take a look at the next step in how you can do this. However, this helps you to find out whether the setup works for you in its current form. Always optimize if necessary, whether that is straight or a few months in the line. This report should work for you, you should not jump through tires to understand it.
3. Collect and fill the data
It is time to access the data you need. There are some tools that you can use. For the general overview and the data for performance, you can mainly rely on Google Analytics and Google Search Console. In order to get a simple overview of your marketing activities for this month, your own marketing calendar and the platforms on which you have posted give you the necessary findings.
Data on the website website
We will use Google Analytics and Search Console for the general overview and the data for performance. Here you will find data such as visitors, commitment, number of purchases (you have to set this as an event), visualizations of your data traffic, keyword ranking, traffic overview according to the source/medium and type of visitors. Statistics in connection with the health of the website and its core -web -vital vital can also be found in the Google search console. If you want to get an overview of your backlinks, Semrush can offer you that.
Remember to bring these numbers into your report, remember how you present them. Do not just throw everything in and overwhelm others and others with raw data. Mark important data and create visualizations of certain data to break the text wall. You can only copy and insert and add a few graphics and add them. Use of a diagram to display the general traffic or district diagram to display data traffic according to the source/medium, can already make a big difference.
Write down what speaks to you while filling the data. What was a success this month and what areas need areas that need more attention? And if you see something that you cannot explain immediately (a decline in traffic or a contribution that has an enormous amount of views), try to find out what happened there so that you can answer questions that will inevitably ask people to you.
Data on marketing activities
If you have a marketing calendar, this is a great way to think about what you published last month. Use this to summarize how many blog posts, social media posts, videos, newsletters and other marketing activities you have worked together. This includes other activities such as participation in events, workshops, the phenomena you have made or maybe even print media.
When it comes to blog posts that you have published, you can highlight you that use data from analytics and search console to explain how it works before. Or you can simply add the numbers and give an idea of the overall effect of this content. Remember that content takes some time to be noticed by humans. So don’t be annoyed if he hasn’t done so much yet.
Also use this section to evaluate your social media posts and videos that you have uploaded to channels like YouTube. I would recommend going to the platforms on which you posted content and use your analysis tools to see how well you have done. This shows you which content works best and helps you to draw conclusions from data from the source itself.
With other marketing activities that have taken place this month, it really depends on the activity, as they can be mentioned in their report. If it is an offline event or a workshop, try to get feedback from (potential) customers for your experience. When it comes to print media, you can try to find an impression of the impact on how many people you contacted you after seeing. Just think about these things in advance to get an idea of the effects of these activities.
4 .. evaluate and take measures
If you have added the relevant data and have summarized your marketing efforts, it is time to evaluate properly. Go through your report and write all patterns, problems, successes and opportunities. Add this to your overview and compare these results with those you found last month (or in the months before) to recognize major problems and success. In this way, you can properly evaluate your results and convert it into implementable recommendations and action points.
When you have completed your SEO report and know which actions come out, it is a good idea to present it internally. Or to your customers. This helps you to understand what you (and the team) worked on and will probably trigger a discussion that will help you find out what you should start first. After dividing this report with the relevant people and agreed on the next steps, you should plan it so that you are not lost. Make a realistic plan for yourself or the team and take up the action points to set everything in motion. And plan in the next SEO report to keep this cycle going!
Diploma
Every good SEO report, whether this is for itself or a customer, begins with clear KPIs. Make sure you do it before evaluating your SEO efforts. In this way you can set up a proper template for the report and find out which data you have to see. Use the right tools to get the data you need, but do not be lost if you try to report on everything. Show the relevant data and present it to the responsible parties to bring everyone on board. Use all of this to find out what your next steps are and follow the action points to ensure that you continue to concentrate on the right things. Happy SEO reporting!
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