{"id":19144,"date":"2022-05-12T12:31:11","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T12:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nobraineragency.com\/seo\/https-www-nobraineragency-co-uk-blog-blog-what-to-include-in-your-seo-reports\/"},"modified":"2023-11-22T12:15:49","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T12:15:49","slug":"what-to-include-seo-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobraineragency.com\/seo\/what-to-include-seo-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"What to include in your SEO reports"},"content":{"rendered":"
If you\u2019re responsible for reporting on SEO performance to stakeholders, it can be really tricky to find the right balance of what to include. <\/strong><\/p>\n One of the great things about SEO<\/a> is that so much of it is trackable and can be reported on; but just because you can, doesn\u2019t mean you should!<\/p>\n There are several traps that are easy to fall into when it comes to SEO reports which can end up wasting time, resource and being bad for team morale if no one wants to read your report – so deciding on the right elements to include is really important and can help not only show the value of your SEO strategy to the business, but also help get better \u2018buy-in\u2019 from stakeholders for future SEO ideas<\/a> and plans.<\/p>\n There will always be some variation in what is best to include in SEO reports, depending on the nature of your business, the SEO strategy that you\u2019re implementing and what matters to the wider business, which can make this a tricky area to pin down.<\/p>\n In this article, we look at some of the common issues with reporting on SEO, how to tailor an SEO report for your specific needs and how to ensure that your SEO reports communicate the most important information to stakeholders.<\/strong><\/p>\n The purpose of an SEO report is ultimately to summarise the important<\/strong> metrics that show the impact of your activity on the business.<\/p>\n It shouldn’t just regurgitate data that can easily be found on analytics platforms, it needs to provide meaningful context and insight that ties performance to specific activities and the effect it\u2019s having on business results.<\/p>\n Many people tasked with reporting on SEO start off with a report template that they\u2019ve either used before or have grabbed online from someone else.<\/p>\n There\u2019s absolutely nothing wrong with using an existing report template as a starting point but it\u2019s important to be aware of some of the common pitfalls of sticking to someone else\u2019s roadmap for your SEO reporting. These can include:<\/p>\n We would recommend asking yourself the below questions when putting a report template together to ensure that the metrics and KPIs you include are right for your specific business and the audience of the report.<\/p>\n Keyword ranking reports can be contentious when it comes to whether they should be included in SEO reports or not.<\/p>\n Having a bunch of target terms in the top positions in SERPs could be considered \u2018success\u2019 in some ways, but can you measure and report on the specific impact that this has had on the business targets and objectives?<\/p>\n Ranking well is great, but it\u2019s attracting relevant organic traffic (that converts) to your website that really matters to the business<\/strong>, so it makes sense that this is what you should focus most attention on in your reporting.<\/p>\n Only you can decide if ranking reports are important to your stakeholders and whether ranking info should therefore be included in your wider SEO report, but our advice is to keep it as simple and top-line as possible, when needed at all.<\/p>\n There are generally several data sources used in SEO reports because there sadly isn\u2019t a single tool or platform that can give you everything<\/em> you need.<\/p>\n There are usually site performance metrics pulled from Google Analytics (or an alternative analytics platform), along with Google Search Console data and often a third-party tool that can easily report on areas of the SEO strategy such as growth in backlinks and website authority\/rating.<\/p>\n The key metrics to use when it comes to analytics data will vary, depending on the specifics of your business, the SEO strategy you\u2019re implementing and what the overall goals are, but will often include areas such as:<\/p>\n Using Google Search Console, you can report on data such as the impressions and clicks that certain keywords and pages are achieving, highlighting increases in SERP visibility over time.<\/p>\n Using a third party backlink tool, such as those from SEMrush<\/a> or Ahrefs<\/a>, can help you report on elements of your SEO strategy such as digital PR<\/a> or other link building activity<\/a>, but it\u2019s important whenever possible to tie this back to tangible SEO results, such as organic visibility improvements on keywords used for anchor text in links gained, as well as correlating with things such as increases in domain authority.<\/p>\n The most important rule of thumb when it comes to SEO reports is to ask yourself what the stakeholders are interested in and what is going to be the most meaningful for them, as this will help ensure that you only include the most useful information and don\u2019t spend time working on areas that aren\u2019t going to be of value.<\/p>\n Bringing everything back to the business\u2019 objectives and the difference that the SEO strategy is making to these should always be the major focus of reports, to help highlight the value and ROI that this channel is bringing.<\/p>\n If you\u2019d like to speak to our SEO team about how we can help your business, we\u2019d love to hear from you. Get in touch using the form below.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019re responsible for reporting on SEO performance to stakeholders, it can be really tricky to find the right balance of what to include. One of the great things about SEO is that so much of it is trackable and can be reported on; but just because you can, doesn\u2019t mean you should! There are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19147,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat should an SEO report achieve?<\/h2>\n
Common problems with using a complicated SEO report template<\/h2>\n
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Questions to ask when pulling an SEO report together<\/h2>\n
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Should you include a keyword ranking report in your SEO reporting?<\/h2>\n
Which key metrics should be included in SEO analytics reports?<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nOther important metrics to include in SEO reports<\/h2>\n