A Beginner’s Guide to SEO Reporting

How tin you beryllium to your boss, client, oregon different stakeholders that you’re not wasting your clip with your SEO efforts? The champion mode is to stock regular SEO reports with them that way the show of your SEO campaign.

SEO reporting mixes insights, actions, data, strategy, and connection each into 1 document. It sounds similar a batch to instrumentality in—but erstwhile you cognize the basics, you’ll beryllium capable to study connected SEO successful your sleep.

In this beginner’s article, I’ll screen the basics of reporting for SEO and amusement you what to see successful your SEO reports.

So what makes a bully SEO report?

In the past 10 years, I’ve created and work galore reports, and I’ve noticed 1 thing: the champion SEO reports are data-led, actionable, and persuasive.

1. Data-led

Good SEO reports are grounded successful high-quality data. You request to get arsenic adjacent to the “truth” arsenic possible. The bully quality is that you tin get each the accusation you request from 3 free tools.

• Google Search Console (also referred to arsenic GSC, GWT, oregon Webmaster Tools)
• Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tools (also referred to as AWT)
• Google Analytics (also referred to as GA)

2. Actionable

Reports request to pb to utile actions. Put yourself successful the shoes of your stakeholders—they’ll expect you to supply an enactment for each penetration you discover.

Here are a fewer communal examples:

3. Persuasive

If you privation to prosecute your brag oregon lawsuit successful SEO, you indispensable beryllium persuasive successful your SEO reporting.

Aristotle astir apt isn’t the archetypal idiosyncratic you deliberation tin assistance you with SEO reporting, but an Aristotelian triangle is simply a bully reminder of what to see if you privation to marque your reports much persuasive. 

• Pathos: usage logical reasoning, facts, and information to contiguous water-tight arguments. Use SEO tools to backmost up your reasoning.
• Ethos: found your credibility and morals done results. If you enactment with different clients successful a akin industry, you tin usage this to assistance found your credibility. If you privation to marque changes connected the website, stock quotes from Google’s Search Essentials to amusement that what you are suggesting is portion of SEO champion practices
• Logos: marque your reports archer a story. If competitors person beardown performance, usage it to trigger your lawsuit into action

Lastly, usage precocious modality language. It sounds complicated, but erstwhile you constitute your report, retrieve to usage higher modality words similar “would” and “will” alternatively of little modality words similar “could” and “might” erstwhile you deliberation thing is definite oregon likely.

For example:

Original representation source: https://cdn.teachstarter.com/fileserver/2021/02/Modality.jpg

If you’ve been asked to make a regular SEO report, it’s hard to cognize what to see if you haven’t made 1 before.

SEO reports tin beryllium presented successful antithetic formats: spreadsheets, dashboards, and Word documents, but usually, the astir fashionable format is slides. Choose immoderate format you deliberation champion suits your lawsuit or boss.

To commencement your report, interruption it down into sections and find which parts are the astir applicable to the website you’re reporting on.

Here are the astir important things you should see successful your report:

This is the archetypal conception I would person successful my report, but it’s besides the past 1 I constitute (it’s hard to summarize the cardinal points of an full study if you haven’t yet created it).

Executive summaries are designed for elder stakeholders who don’t person clip to flick done a agelong report. They privation to cognize the astir important points. So you request to support this conception casual to understand.

In slug points, an enforcement summary summarizes the cardinal points from the full report.

Organic postulation and analytics information springiness a bird’s oculus presumption of a website’s show implicit time. This information is often visualized successful a graph adjacent the commencement of galore SEO reports.

Most SEO reports visualize show utilizing GSC, GA, oregon Ahrefs’ Overview data. This information tin beryllium displayed arsenic a screenshot oregon exported and turned into a chart.

Here’s an illustration of comparing Google Search Console (GSC) clicks twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth (YoY). You tin usage GSC erstwhile reporting connected a tract you ain oregon person entree to the GSC profile.

And here’s different illustration of Site Explorer Overview showing YoY performance:

If you can’t get entree to GSC oregon GA, past Ahrefs tin amusement your website’s SEO show implicit time. This is utile for tracking competitors’ Organic traffic performance.

The cardinal constituent you privation to pass astatine this signifier is the website’s full show implicit time. Is the question positive, negative, oregon determination successful between? And, crucially, what does this mean for the website?

Next to the chart, supply a fewer lines of commentary connected the performance.

For example:

• Organic postulation is up 5.5% MoM but down 3% YoY
• Organic postulation was higher than expected this month. This is owed to {reason}
• There was a Google algorithm update astatine {date} that impacted our integrated hunt traffic

Once you’ve established the authorities of integrated traffic, the adjacent task is to excavation into the keyword rankings to recognize which keywords are driving the astir traffic.

Clients oregon stakeholders seldom privation to spot each of the tracked keyword rankings for their site.

Usually, they privation to see:

• Winner and loser keywords from the clip play – which keywords improved and which declined?
• A keyword presumption dispersed – for example, XX keywords fertile successful positions 1-5, XX presumption fertile successful positions 6-10)

You tin usage assorted keyword tracking tools to bash this, but you’ll request a instrumentality similar Rank Tracker to regularly way your keyword rankings.

Let’s spot however we tin see these elements successful our study utilizing Rank Tracker.

To find keywords that person improved:

• Head to Position
• Select Improved

To presumption loser keywords, repetition the process but prime Declined.

Once you person exported the keywords, you tin contiguous them successful a elemental array and adhd a slug constituent commentary. 

To spot a keyword presumption spread, prime a clip period, past click connected the Positions tab, and it volition amusement however galore keywords fertile successful each position.

You tin visualize this successful a illustration implicit clip similar below, oregon you tin instrumentality a screenshot from Ahrefs and see it successful your report. 

On the aforesaid dashboard, you tin get the header metrics similar share of voice, mean position, and SERP features.

If you’ve dabbled successful SEO, you’ll cognize that links are a reasonably large woody for SEO. So, however bash you study connected them successful an SEO report?

SEO clients and stakeholders usually privation to cognize 2 things:

• The fig of outer links you acquired during the clip period
• The prime of those links

Luckily, Ahrefs’ Site Explorer tin assistance you study connected some elements.

But earlier we dive excessively overmuch into the details, let’s spot however we tin get an overview of the past calendar month.

To do this:

• Head to Calendar connected the sidebar
• Click connected the Referring domains tab
• Check Dofollow
• Best links: Only

You could see a screenshot of this heatmap successful your study to supply a wide overview of the past clip period.

To find the fig of links acquired from the past calendar period, bash the pursuing successful Site Explorer:

• Select Dofollow
• Select New
• Set the clip play (I’ve utilized the past 30 days, but you tin usage a custom range to get the nonstop dates for the erstwhile month)

Once you’ve added these settings, you tin spot we’ve acquired 3,446 domains during this period.

If we privation to item the prime of immoderate of the links, we tin bash this successful the study arsenic well. Just scroll down to spot each the domains.

Here’s an illustration of a high-quality link Ahrefs.com acquired during this period. It has a domain standing (DR) of 93. This is the benignant of nexus that would beryllium worthy sharing successful an SEO report.

Once we’ve shown this is an important link, the archetypal question stakeholders mightiness inquire is, what is the Washington Post linking to connected Ahrefs?

If we click connected that link, we spot they’re linking to our SEO basics article.

This would beryllium a invaluable penetration to stock successful the SEO study due to the fact that it shows that this benignant of contented is susceptible of earning high-quality links.

Business cases for creating caller contented tin beryllium hard astatine the champion of times. By highlighting high-quality links successful your SEO report, the worth of contented becomes much evident to stakeholders, and they’ll beryllium much inclined to summation concern in SEO.

As good arsenic reporting connected links you’ve acquired, it’s worthwhile to study connected links you’ve lost.

Sometimes, you tin suffer links accidentally by making tract changes. You tin study connected this utilizing Ahrefs’ Broken backlinks report.

We tin spot that Ahrefs has a breached backlink from Neil Patel… alas.

Reporting connected method SEO is often harder than it looks. For SEOs, it’s casual to get mislaid successful the details, but astir stakeholders aren’t arsenic funny successful the details arsenic you are and conscionable privation to cognize 1 thing: is their tract successful bully method health?

To reply this question, you tin tally a Site Audit crawl and cheque the website wellness score.

Site Audit scores your website from 0-100 aft the crawl based connected its method SEO wellness status. If the people is low, it means determination are immoderate method issues to be fixed.

As good arsenic moving a Site Audit crawl, you tin cheque successful GSC to spot if determination are immoderate method issues with leafage indexing oregon leafage acquisition (like core web vitals or HTTPs).

Usually, if everything is fine, determination isn’t immoderate request to study connected it. Unless your stakeholder oregon lawsuit is technically focused, keeping the method portion of your study arsenic concise arsenic imaginable is best.

If you make contented regularly, assessing its show successful your SEO reporting is important—otherwise, you won’t cognize whether you are wasting your time.

In my experience, erstwhile it comes to content, stakeholders privation to know:

• What the best-performing contented was during the clip period
• What integrated postulation it drives
• What opportunities beryllium successful the contented space

For smaller contented projects that person little than 1000 URLs, you tin usage Portfolios to way these keywords.

I usage Portfolios myself to way the show of my articles successful Ahrefs.

Once you’ve acceptable up your Portfolio, caput to the Top pages study and click connected Compare pages. On this page, you tin get a bully ocular screenshot to stock successful your study of contented performance, oregon if you want, you tin Export the information and illustration it yourself successful a spreadsheet.

In summation to reporting connected your site’s performance, it tin besides assistance to study connected your competitor’s performance.

This gives stakeholders a amended knowing of the integer scenery they are operating in: who they’ll vie with successful SERPs, and who they should look to for inspiration.

You tin bash this successful 30 seconds by heading to Site Explorer and typing successful your rival successful the hunt bar.

Then click connected the Organic competitors report, and you’ll get an overview of the apical competitors successful your space.

If you privation to adhd circumstantial competitors, you tin bash truthful utilizing the Custom tab.

This study is adjuvant arsenic it gives you a client-friendly ocular practice of your competitors’ performance. But much importantly, it shows your competitors’ keywords and their overlap with your ain site, helping you to marque strategical SEO decisions to outrank them.

In the SEO report, I would screenshot the apical fractional to see successful my study and past export the information from the bottommost fractional of the array to filter retired the much elaborate accusation that would involvement the stakeholders.

Ahrefs makes it casual to find things to amended successful its Opportunities report. This study tin place content, links, and method opportunities successful a azygous click.

Here’s an illustration of the contented opportunities it can find:

• Low-hanging effect keywords: shows keywords betwixt positions 4-15 successful Site Explorer that could beryllium casual to rank for.
• Featured snippets: shows keywords betwixt positions 2-8 successful Site Explorer wherever the people doesn’t fertile for a featured snippet
• Top suggestions from Content gap: shows keywords that the target’s apical 10 competitors fertile for, but the people doesn’t
• Content with declining traffic: shows pages with declining postulation successful the past six months that could bash with an update
• Pages lone published once: shows aged pages that person debased postulation that mightiness request an update

If you enactment done this report, it’s casual to spot opportunities for the website you’re reporting connected that you tin stock with stakeholders.

Lastly, astir SEO reports volition stock an update connected the advancement of their SEO campaign: the enactment that’s been completed truthful far, the adjacent stages of the process, and the milestones you purpose to hit.

The champion mode to bash this is to stock advancement done an SEO roadmap Gantt illustration showing your full SEO campaign.

Rather than messing astir with a spreadsheet, I usually caput to Canva and usage 1 of their premade templates.

But if you privation to spell down the spreadsheet route, you tin usage our Google Sheets template.

You tin rapidly accommodate these templates for your purposes, giving stakeholders a bully thought of what enactment has been done connected the relationship and what is coming next.

Final thoughts

SEO reports are important arsenic they enactment arsenic your virtual insubstantial trail, documenting your advancement to the apical of Google. Without them, it tin beryllium hard to beryllium each the enactment you’ve enactment successful to get to the fig one spot.

But for galore clients, SEO is conscionable 1 tiny constituent successful the selling mix. They aren’t arsenic funny successful the minutiae of SEO arsenic you are. So, if you privation to triumph your clients implicit connected the worth of SEO, amusement them the opportunity, entreaty to their emotions, and crushed your decisions successful industry-trusted data—like Ahrefs.

Got much questions? Ping maine on X. 🙂