SEO reports and tracking are major sticking points for everyone in the industry.
Data you consider important may be less valuable to C-suite executives.
Or you don’t have enough data to clearly and concisely present growth, changes, and important events.
Reports must tell a story. Without the right data, you’ll end up with a confusing plot that won’t go down well.
Before you can start reporting and tracking data, you need to collect it, which requires using the right tools.
Most SEOs use a combination of different tools to properly collect, track, and report data.
The most important include:
You can also use third-party tools to track keyword growth, positions, and more, such as:
You will find many paid third party tools to help you with reporting and tracking.
However, you must be aware of the limitations of each tool.
For example, Google Search Console only stores data for 16 months, so you need to think about it if you expect to provide lengthy reports showing data beyond that threshold.
I am assuming that you are already using these tools. However, if you don’t have any of these tools, check them out and add any necessary coding to the website to start tracking.
Otherwise, without the data these tools provide, you will blindly embark on your SEO journey.
Tracking events (even non-SEO ones)
Once you have your tools and analytics in place, you should start tracking important events.
SEO is all about driving organic traffic to a website and generating revenue, but you also need a way to track your progress.
Some of the things I recommend for tracking are:
Tracking website changes and updates can demonstrate the value of the work you are doing and can be extremely insightful as the site continues to grow.
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Separating brand vs. non-brand keywords
Now that you’re tracking events, it’s time to look at keyword separation.
Providing customers with a long list of thousands of keywords will not bring them any benefit. Many of these keywords may not bring much value at all.
What you should do is try to segment your keywords into:
Brand keywords include company and product names, and many businesses want to track this when focusing on their branding.
Nike is a good example of a strong brand where users search “Nike running shoes” and “running shoes” to find their products.
However, if you are working with large keyword datasets, you may want to start separating the keywords further by:
You can then segment these keywords by page, URL, or section if you want to further clarify the data and display it in your report.
Coming through keyword lists is time-consuming, but it accounts for most of the work in your reports.
Customers want to see what keywords they are ranking for and where their traffic is going on the website.
However, there is one data point that is more important than any other when it comes to tracking – sales.
Track revenue drivers
Revenue is what every stakeholder is eye-opening and is the main eye-catcher in a report.
There are a few things you should do here to present sales in a way that everyone can understand and appreciate.
Period-over-period comparisons
Comparisons are a great way to show growth over time.
For example, companies earn a majority of their Q4 sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Everyone is looking for a deal, and it’s a period filled with valuable data for your reports.
I recommend looking at the data for a two-year period so you can show:
Showing how higher search engine rankings were able to increase sales by 25% this Black Friday compared to the previous Black Friday is invaluable when creating reports.
Sales drivers
Sometimes it is difficult to decipher which keywords were responsible for the increase in sales.
Tools may not allow this level of refinement when sifting through traffic, and this is where the IT team can help.
Evidence that keyword X, which went from rank 19 to 2, resulted in 17% higher sales for a product shows how investing in SEO increases sales.
You can also segment data for events, e.g. B. Traffic that resulted in calls, email signups, consultations, etc.
Supply the correct data to the right stakeholders
You have collected and segmented your data in a meaningful way.
But while some data points will be valuable to you and your marketing team, others may be dismissed by the C-suite.
Suppose you have created a report that contains the following:
Marketing teams will appreciate this data, but a C-suite manager will be curious to see how the 10% increase in traffic translated into an increase in sales.
If you don’t meaningfully tie this information to company revenue, the C-suite won’t be interested in your reporting.
You want to create reports that touch on the key data that specific stakeholders want to see.
Save your SEO data for future use
Your reports today will be referenced for the next year or two and will help tell the story of the company’s SEO growth.
Save the collected data as it contains valuable information that you will use in the future.
I’ve built my own custom tools to backup Google Search Console data for future reference after the 16 month limit.
I suggest you do the same as most of the reporting work you will do even if you change companies.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Ludwig Makhyan is a Search Engine Land contributor covering organic and technical SEO. His background is in web development and digital marketing. Ludwig has over 20 years of experience in website design, programming and promotion. He is co-founder of MAZELESS, a SEO agency for businesses.
How do you read SEO reports?
The SEO score is displayed first and lets you know how well optimized your website is. The next items include how many factors tested that passed, how many associated with warnings, and how many failed. If tests have been run with unresolved results, they will appear in the list box.
What is a good SEO score? A good SEO score is between 80-100. A score in this area indicates that your website meets the highest search engine optimization quality standards in the areas of technical SEO, content, user experience and mobile usability.
How do you do SEO reports?
Create your SEO report in 6 steps
- title card. This is the very first step in your SEO report. …
- Table of Contents. As the name suggests, this page is simply a table of contents to help you structure your SEO report.
- Overview. Customize this template and make it your own! …
- metrics. …
- Organic Traffic. …
- backlinks.
Whats an SEO report?
What is SEO Reports? SEO reports track your website’s SEO performance. It tells you what SEO marketing efforts are working (e.g. identifying specific keywords for organic search) and recommends opportunities for growth.
What does an SEO report look like?
In summary, the perfect SEO report should: look good and be easy to read, with an excellent UX (user experience). contain the logo of your customer or your company. Be accessible in the format your audience wants. Include all the data from the tools you already use for your SEO work.
What does a SEO report contain?
What is an SEO report? An SEO report is a summary of SEO metrics that illustrate your website’s performance. Reports typically cover areas such as total organic traffic, conversions, backlinks, and technical site health. However, you can customize the report to suit your goals.
What does a SEO report contain?
What is an SEO report? An SEO report is a summary of SEO metrics that illustrate your website’s performance. Reports typically cover areas such as total organic traffic, conversions, backlinks, and technical site health. However, you can customize the report to suit your goals.
What are the 4 main components of an SEO?
Knowing and understanding each of the 4 main components of SEO is crucial to improving a brand’s search results. Each component builds on and complements the others. The stronger the connections between each of the 4 SEO components – technical SEO, on-page SEO, off-page SEO and content – the better the results.
What is an SEO report?
What is SEO Reports? SEO reports track your website’s SEO performance. It tells you what SEO marketing efforts are working (e.g. identifying specific keywords for organic search) and recommends opportunities for growth.
What are the 3 types of SEO?
The three types of SEO are:
- On-Page SEO – Everything on your websites – blogs, product copy, web copy.
- Off-page SEO – Anything that happens outside of your website that helps with your SEO strategy – backlinks.
- Technical SEO – Anything technically done to improve search ranking – Page indexing to help bot crawling.
What are the three types of SEO? The three types of SEO are: On-Page SEO – Everything on your web pages – blogs, product copy, web copy. Off-page SEO – Anything that happens outside of your website that supports your SEO strategy – backlinks. Technical SEO – Anything technically done to improve search rankings – Website indexing to aid in bot crawling.
What is a SEO report?
What is SEO Reports? SEO reports track your website’s SEO performance. It tells you what SEO marketing efforts are working (e.g. identifying specific keywords for organic search) and recommends opportunities for growth.
What are SEO reports? What is an SEO report? An SEO report is a summary of SEO metrics that illustrate your website’s performance. Reports typically cover areas such as total organic traffic, conversions, backlinks, and technical site health. However, you can customize the report to suit your goals.
Why SEO report is important?
SEO reports play a crucial role in developing a strong digital marketing strategy. Gathering the right data and knowing how to sort and understand the information can let marketers know which efforts are bringing in customers and which areas need improvement to deliver quality ROI for the business.
What is SEO example?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of driving targeted traffic to a website from a search engine’s organic rankings. Common tasks related to SEO are creating quality content, optimizing content around specific keywords, and building backlinks.
What is SEO in simple terms? Search Engine Optimization is the science of improving a website to increase its visibility when people search for a product or service. The more visibility a website has in search engines, the more likely the brand is to win business.
What is SEO and how it works?
Well, SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” which is the process of getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural search results on search engines. The aim is to improve the position of your website on the search results pages. Remember, the higher the site ranks, the more people will see it.