SEO Reports: Which Metrics Matter & How To Use Them Well via @sejournal, @HelenPollitt1

As SEO professionals, reports are a cardinal portion of our connection toolbox.

We walk clip moving workshops and penning summaries of enactment and task plans. These are each portion of our process for gaining buy-in and showing worth from the enactment we’re doing.

Our reports are conscionable arsenic important.

Where We Go Wrong

The occupation that we sometimes tally into arsenic SEO professionals is not reasoning astir the study arsenic a connection tool. We instrumentality shortcuts, expecting the information to talk for itself. We don’t interest capable astir however it tin beryllium taken retired of context.

If done right, SEO reports volition proceed to reenforce the messaging we’ve been giving done our training, proposals, and pitches.

When done wrong, SEO reports origin confusion, sometimes panic, and, overall, a sinking consciousness of distrust from our stakeholders.

What Is The Report For?

When creating reports, we indispensable place what the study should show.

If we are reporting connected the result of a circumstantial project, past we request to see the archetypal hypothesis.

What were we aiming for successful that project? What were the promised milestones and the measures of success? They each request to beryllium included – adjacent the metrics that don’t look truthful good.

Is this a regular report, similar a monthly update connected performance? If so, we request to see each the areas of SEO that we are straight affecting, arsenic good arsenic areas extracurricular of our power that tin assistance explicate immoderate increases oregon decreases successful performance. There is simply a request to springiness the discourse successful which our SEO enactment operates.

This should signifier the starting constituent from which we take the study metrics.

Aspects Of A Good SEO Report

A bully SEO study volition assistance pass penetration and the adjacent steps. It should person capable item to assistance the scholar marque decisions.

Include Relevant Data

Reports should see information that is applicable to the taxable being reviewed.

They should not overwhelm a scholar with unnecessary information.

Keep Them Brief

Reports should beryllium little capable that pertinent information and penetration are casual to find.

Brevity mightiness beryllium the quality betwixt a study being work and being ignored.

Keep the information being reported succinct. Sometimes, a illustration volition amended illustrate the data than a table.

Remember The Audience

Reports should beryllium tailored to the needs of the recipient. It whitethorn beryllium the study is being produced for different SEO professional, oregon the managing manager of the company.

These 2 audiences whitethorn request precise antithetic information to assistance explicate the advancement of SEO activity.

The needs of the report’s scholar to marque a determination and place the adjacent steps indispensable beryllium considered. A chap SEO whitethorn request the details of which pages are returning a 404 server error, but the managing manager apt won’t.

Make Them Easy To Understand

They should not see unexplained jargon oregon expect readers to infer meaning from statistics.

Write reports with the recipient’s cognition successful mind. Liberal usage of jargon for idiosyncratic not successful the manufacture mightiness enactment them disconnected speechmaking a report.

Conversely, jargon and acronyms volition beryllium good for idiosyncratic who knows SEO and tin assistance to support reports brief.

Keep Them Impartial

SEO reports are a signifier of interior marketing. They tin beryllium utilized to item each of the bully SEO enactment that’s been carried out.

Reports should beryllium honorable and unbiased, however. They shouldn’t gloss implicit negatives.

Decreases successful show implicit clip tin item captious issues. These shouldn’t beryllium omitted from the study due to the fact that they don’t look good. They are a cleanable mode of backing up your adept recommendations for the adjacent steps.

Provide Insight

Data unsocial is apt to beryllium unhelpful to most.

Reports shouldn’t conscionable beryllium figures. Insight and decision indispensable beryllium drawn, too.

This means that, arsenic an SEO expert, we should beryllium capable to adhd worth to the study by analyzing the data. Our conclusions tin beryllium presented arsenic actions oregon suggestions for a mode forward.

Reporting On Metrics Correctly

Metrics utilized incorrectly tin pb to mediocre conclusions being made. An illustration of this is the “site-wide bounce rate.”

A bounce is typically measured arsenic a sojourn to a website that lone led to 1 leafage being viewed and nary different interactions occurring.

Bounce rate is the percent of each visits to the tract that ended up arsenic a bounce.

The bounce complaint of a leafage tin beryllium useful, but lone truly if it is being compared with thing else.

For instance, if changes person been made to a page’s layout and bounce complaint increases, it could constituent to determination being a occupation with visitors navigating with the caller layout.

However, reporting connected bounce complaint of a leafage without looking deeper astatine different metrics tin beryllium misleading.

For instance, if the changes to the leafage were designed to assistance visitors find accusation much easily, past the summation successful bounce complaint could beryllium an indicator of the caller design’s success.

The quality successful bounce complaint cannot beryllium utilized successful isolation arsenic a measurement of success.

Similarly, reporting connected the mean bounce complaint crossed the full website is usually misleading.

Some pages connected the website mightiness person a precocious bounce complaint but beryllium perfectly fine. For others, it indicates a problem. For example:

• A contact page mightiness spot a batch of visitors bounce arsenic they find a telephone fig and permission the tract to telephone it.
• A homepage oregon merchandise leafage with a precocious bounce complaint is usually a motion that the leafage is not gathering the needs of users, however.

Reports should look to gully conclusions from a scope of metrics.

Metrics Need Context

Few metrics tin beryllium utilized successful isolation and inactive alteration close penetration to beryllium drawn.

For example, deliberation of crawling and indexing data.

A study connected the fig of URLs that are being crawled by Googlebot sounds similar a just metric to show the method wellness of the website.

Though what does it show, really?

An summation successful URLs crawled could bespeak that Googlebot is uncovering much of your site’s pages that it antecedently couldn’t. If you person been moving connected creating caller sections of your site, this whitethorn beryllium a affirmative trend.

However, if you excavation deeper and observe that the URLs Googlebot has been crawling are the effect of spam attacks connected your site, this is really a large problem.

In isolation, the measurement of crawled pages doesn’t springiness immoderate existent discourse connected the method SEO of the site. There needs to beryllium much discourse successful bid to gully reliable conclusions.

Over-Reliance On Metrics

There are different metrics that are relied connected a small excessively overmuch successful SEO reports – measures of the authority of a leafage oregon domain, for instance.

These third-party metrics bash good successful guessing the ranking imaginable of a leafage successful the eyes of hunt engines, but they are ne'er going to beryllium 100% accurate.

They tin assistance to amusement if a tract is improving implicit time, but lone against the calculations of that reporting tool.

These sorts of metrics tin beryllium utile for SEO professionals to usage arsenic a unsmooth gauge of the occurrence of an authority-building project. However, they tin origin problems erstwhile reported to managers, clients, and stakeholders.

If they are not decently informed of what these scores mean, it is casual for them to clasp connected to them arsenic the extremity for SEO. They are not.

Well-converting integrated postulation is the goal. The 2 metrics volition not ever correlate.

Which Metrics Matter?

The metrics that should beryllium utilized unneurotic to exemplify SEO show beryllium connected the intent of the report. It besides depends connected what the recipient needs to know.

Some clients oregon managers whitethorn beryllium utilized to receiving reports with definite metrics successful them. It whitethorn beryllium that the SEO reports provender into their ain reporting, and arsenic such, they expect to spot definite metrics.

It is simply a bully thought to find retired from the study recipient if determination is thing successful peculiar they would similar to know.

The study should ever nexus backmost to the brand’s concern and selling goals. The metrics utilized successful the study should pass if the goals are being met.

For instance, if a favored store’s selling extremity is to summation income of “non-slip favored bowls,” past metrics to see successful the SEO study could be:

• Overall postulation to the pages successful the www.example.com/pet-accessories/bowls/non-slip folder.
• Organic postulation to those pages.
• Overall and integrated conversions connected these pages.
• Overall and integrated income connected these pages.
• Bounce complaint of each of these pages.
• Traffic measurement landing connected these pages from the integrated SERPs.

Over time, this study volition assistance place if SEO is contributing to the extremity of expanding income of non-slip favored bowls.

Organic Performance Reports

These are reports designed to springiness a representation of a website’s ongoing SEO performance. They springiness top-level penetration into the root and behaviour of integrated postulation implicit time.

They should see information that indicates if the business, marketing, and SEO goals are being met.

An SEO show study should look astatine the integrated hunt channel, some connected its ain and successful narration to different channels.

By doing this, we tin spot the interaction of different channels connected the occurrence of SEO. We tin besides place immoderate trends oregon patterns.

These reports should let the scholar to place the interaction of caller SEO enactment connected integrated traffic.

Metrics To Include

Some bully metrics to study connected for integrated show reports include:

Overall Visits

The fig of visits to the website gives thing to comparison the integrated hunt visits to.

We tin archer if integrated postulation is decreasing whereas wide postulation is expanding oregon if integrated postulation is increasing contempt an wide driblet successful traffic.

It is imaginable to usage wide postulation sojourn information to discern if determination is seasonality successful the website’s popularity.

Traffic Visits By Channel

The fig of visits coming from each selling transmission helps you place if determination is immoderate interaction from different channels connected SEO performance.

For instance, caller PPC ads going online could mean the cannibalization of integrated hunt traffic.

All Traffic And Organic Traffic Goal Completions

Have visitors completed the goals successful the website’s analytics software?

Comparing integrated and different postulation extremity completions volition again assistance place if the integrated postulation is completing supra oregon below-average extremity completions compared to different channels.

This could assistance find if SEO enactment has arsenic overmuch of a affirmative effect arsenic hoped.

Page Level Traffic

If determination are definite pages that person been worked connected recently, specified arsenic caller contented oregon keyword optimization, see integrated postulation metrics for them. This means going granular successful your reporting.

Report connected integrated postulation implicit time, conversions connected the pages (if appropriate), and actions carried retired from that page. This tin amusement if caller enactment has been palmy successful expanding integrated postulation to those pages oregon not.

Organic Landing Page Sessions

These are the pages that visitors arrived astatine from the integrated SERPs. They place which pages are bringing the astir integrated postulation to the website.

From here, pages that person not been optimized but amusement imaginable to thrust postulation tin beryllium identified.

Revenue Generated

If you tin straight nexus the enactment you are carrying retired to the gross it generates, this is apt the astir important metric you tin include.

At the extremity of the day, this is what your brag and your boss’s brag apt attraction about. Is SEO making much wealth for the company?

Keyword Ranking Reports

A enactment connected keyword rankings reports: Consider what they amusement earlier including them.

An wide study of “your tract is ranking for X keywords” doesn’t springiness immoderate adjuvant penetration oregon substance for a mode forward.

• Which keywords?
• Are those keywords driving postulation to the site?
• Are they worthy optimizing for further?

Metrics To Include

Keyword ranking reports should show maturation oregon diminution successful rankings for circumstantial keywords the tract is being optimized for.

Ideally, information should beryllium pulled from first-party tools similar Google Search Console to springiness arsenic close an denotation of ranking arsenic possible.

Rather than focusing connected idiosyncratic keywords, you whitethorn privation to look astatine trends. That is, is your tract increasing successful visibility for presumption that convert?

For example, demonstrating that the website has moved from ranking successful archetypal presumption for 10 presumption to ranking successful archetypal presumption for 20 presumption does not show however that mightiness interaction revenue.

In the property of generative motor optimization, marque is becoming much important.

Perhaps including a conception connected marque searches and however they are utilized to navigate consecutive to products would beryllium beneficial.

Taking my favored store example, I mightiness not lone privation to spot however my website would fertile for “helens favored store” but besides for “helens favored store feline bowls” and “helens favored store canine beds.”

This helps you analyse however your marque is increasing successful estimation for your products and services. These searches amusement that visitors are truthful assured they privation to bargain from you that they privation to navigate consecutive to your site.

Technical Performance Reports

Good SEO show requires a website that tin beryllium crawled and indexed easy by hunt engines.

This means that regular audits request to beryllium carried retired to place thing that mightiness forestall the close pages from appearing successful the SERPs.

Reports are somewhat antithetic from audits successful that a method audit volition look astatine a batch of antithetic factors and analyse them.

A thorough method audit tin beryllium vast. It needs to diagnose issues and methods of improving the site’s performance.

Depending connected the assemblage of a method report, it whitethorn request to selectively item the issues. It should besides amusement the occurrence of erstwhile SEO work.

The cardinal to knowing which metrics to see successful a method study is knowing what’s happened connected the tract truthful far.

If enactment has been carried retired to hole an issue, see metrics that bespeak the occurrence of that fix.

For instance, if determination has been a occupation with a spider trap connected the tract that has been remedied, past study connected crawl metrics and log files.

This mightiness not beryllium indispensable for each method report, but it tin beryllium utile successful this instance.

If the tract has problems with loading slowly, past metrics astir load velocity volition beryllium important for the method report.

A bully mode to convey the metrics successful a method SEO study is by including prioritization of actions.

If the metrics amusement that determination are immoderate urgent issues, people them arsenic such. If determination are issues that tin hold oregon beryllium fixed implicit time, item them.

Technical SEO tin consciousness overwhelming for radical who aren’t experts successful it.

Breaking down the issues into priorities tin marque your reports much accessible and actionable.

Metrics To Include

There are definite metrics that whitethorn beryllium utile to see arsenic portion of a method show report:

Server Response Codes

It tin beryllium prudent to support way implicit clip of the fig and percent of pages returning a non-200 effect code.

An audit of the tract should find precisely which pages are not returning a 200 effect code.

This accusation whitethorn not beryllium utile to the recipient of the method show report, truthful it whitethorn beryllium amended to see it arsenic an appendix oregon not astatine all.

If the measurement of non-200 effect codes reduces implicit time, this tin beryllium a bully indicator that method issues connected the tract are being fixed.

If it goes up, past it tin beryllium summarized that further enactment needs to beryllium carried out.

Page Load Speed Times

It tin beryllium adjuvant to study connected an mean of page load velocity times crossed the site. This tin bespeak if the site’s load velocity is improving oregon not.

Perhaps, what is adjacent much utile to study connected is the mean load velocity of the apical 5 fastest and 5 slowest pages. This tin assistance to amusement if determination are definite templates that are precise quick, arsenic good arsenic the pages that mightiness request further improvement.

Any Data That Shows A Need To Act

This is truly important to include. If an mistake connected a tract volition forestall it from being indexed, past this needs to beryllium highlighted successful the report.

This mightiness beryllium antithetic from study to report.

Metrics could beryllium crawl data, tract downtime, breached schema markup, etc. Also, see including these metrics successful consequent reports to amusement however the fixes person impacted performance.

A Word Of Warning

In my experience, method SEO metrics tin beryllium received successful 1 of 2 ways: either the metrics are not considered relatable to the stakeholder’s role, and therefore, they gloss implicit their importance, oregon they absorption connected them arsenic an country of SEO they tin understand.

For example, Core Web Vitals. We cognize that Core Web Vitals are not that captious for rankings. However, I person experienced galore developers focusing lone connected Core Web Vitals arsenic a measurement of however well-tuned the website is from an integrated hunt perspective.

Why? In my opinion, due to the fact that SEO pros person started reporting connected them more, and they are an casual method SEO constituent for stakeholders to recognize and influence.

They marque sense, are easy measured, and tin beryllium optimized for.

Unfortunately, arsenic a effect of this, they are sometimes fixed undue importance. We nonstop engineers to walk full sprints trying to rise the Core Web Vitals scores by tiny amounts, believing each small 1 counts.

When reporting connected method SEO, see however you pass the worth of the metrics you are reporting on. Are these captious website wellness metrics? Or are they “nice to know”?

Make definite you springiness the afloat discourse of the metrics wrong your report.

Link Building Reports

A nexus gathering run tin output benefits for a website beyond boosting its authorization with the hunt engines.

If done well, links should besides thrust postulation to the website. It is important to seizure this accusation connected nexus gathering reports, too, arsenic it is simply a bully measurement of success.

Metrics To Include

• URLs Of Links Gained: Which links person been gained successful the reporting period?
• Links Gained Through Link Building Activity: Of the links gained, which ones tin beryllium straight attributed to outreach efforts?
• Links Driving Traffic: Of the links gained during the period, which ones person resulted successful referral traffic, and what is the measurement of visits?
• Percentage Of Valuable Vs. Less Valuable Links: Of the links gained successful the period, which ones are possibly marked arsenic “nofollow” oregon are connected syndicated and canonicalized pages?

You whitethorn beryllium tempted to see a leafage oregon domain spot people successful these reports. If that helps to pass the effectiveness of an outreach campaign, that’s understandable.

Remember, however, that links from highly applicable websites volition inactive payment your site, adjacent if they bash not person precocious authority.

Don’t fto your outreach efforts beryllium discarded due to the fact that the links gained don’t people precocious with these metrics.

Conclusion

The champion mode to conception a study connected SEO is to see it a story. First, who is the audience? Make definite you are penning your study successful a level of connection they volition understand.

Create a narrative. What bash you privation these metrics to say? Do you see each the twists and turns, and are you being honorable astir the metrics you remark on?

Make definite you bring the study to a conclusion. If determination is enactment to beryllium taken from it, what is that action? Highlight and reiterate thing you privation stakeholders to retrieve arsenic a cardinal takeaway from the report.

Finally, question reviews connected your reports. Ask your stakeholders to springiness you feedback connected the report.

Determine if it meets their needs oregon if further discourse oregon information is needed. Essentially, this study is for them. If they aren’t getting worth from it, past you are doing your SEO enactment a disservice.

More resources:

• 7 Essential Insights For SEO Client Reports
• Essential GA4 Reports You Need To Measure Your SEO Campaigns
• State Of SEO 2025

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