SEO reporting is an art that comes in handy to evaluate your SEO performance, find the weak points and recommend improvements.

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the need to evaluate your performance is essential to know which aspects need improvement.

Meanwhile, creating an SEO report for your clients can be challenging at times because each website will have a unique report.

So, whatever your goal is, these SEO reporting tips will guide you to produce an excellent and comprehensive SEO report.

What Is SEO Reporting?

SEO reporting tracks a website’s data and key performance metrics. It is instrumental in developing a strong and effective digital marketing strategy.

By collecting and understanding the right metrics, companies will know which efforts bring in more customers and what areas need improvement for the best ROI.

An SEO report can be created either manually or automatically (using websites designed for the purpose).

The manual process can be time-consuming and stressful because you will need to start collecting data using multiple SEO tools while the other option is faster.

However, you should note that a manual SEO report is more reliable than the automated one.

The time interval for SEO Reporting can be monthly, yearly, or a particular period you worked on the website.

It can also be goal-oriented, depending on your client’s requirements.

There are many aspects of SEO reporting but following these tips below should give you a head start. Everything listed below must be included in your SEO report.

Traffic Sources

Every business and website owner needs traffic before generating leads or sales.

Meanwhile, evaluating traffic sources matters a lot. Your client’s SEO report should contain the website traffic source report.

You need to know where the visitors are coming from and know the source that converts the most.

This will help your clients understand which traffic sources are worthy of spending more time, resources, and money.

A good tool to evaluate a website traffic source is Google Analytics. Go to Insight > Reports > Overview to get the general website performance.

On the overview page, you can get stats, such as:

• Top countries of your website visitors. (Traffic Source by country)
• Top referrals (traffic source by referrals)

Meanwhile, if your client owns an eCommerce store, using a tool like MonsterInsight is recommended to track the Top Conversion Source.

Conversion Rate

Even if you have a million traffic in a day and there are no conversions, then it’s useless.

The conversion can be in the form of sales, sign-ups, ads revenue, or others depending on your goal with the traffic.

An SEO report showing the website conversion rate will help the owner know if there is a need for some adjustments. It also helps them focus on the channel that converts best.

Meanwhile, using the Goal Tracking Feature on Google Analytics can help you monitor the conversion rate of a particular goal.

Follow the steps below to create a goal with Google Analytics:

1. Sign in to Google Analytics
2. Navigate to Admin
3. Click on Goals
4. Tap on the ‘+ add new goal button’
5. Enter the goal details

Also, below are types of Goals present on Google Analytics:

• Destination – choose this goal type to monitor page view or screen view conversion.
• Event – Select this goal type to monitor conversions like eBook download, video play, sign-ups, form submission, and button clicks
• Duration – for monitoring time spent on page
• Pages/Screen per Session – To track the number of page views per second

Page Speed

Page speed has a lot to do with user experience. If a website page speed is poor, it will lead to the loss of potential clients.

So, speed is an important metric that needs to be tracked and recorded on your SEO report sheet.

Including it in the SEO report will help your client confirm whether or not they are behind their competitors in terms of speed.

Meanwhile, to check for website speed, you need to visit the Google Page Insight Tool to analyze its speed on mobile and desktop. Visit the page, type in the website URL, and analyze.

If test speed shows that the website is slow, you can suggest some solutions to the owner in the report.

Ranking & Backlinks

Ranking for desired keywords on the Search Engine Result Page (SERPs) is the dream of many website owners running SEO Campaigns.

High ranking is a good performance indicator, and backlinks are known to boost ranking.

However, not all backlinks are created equal, so focusing on quality is important.

Therefore, the rankings and backlinks report should not be missing from the SEO report.

Other ranking factors include On-page SEO, Technical SEO, and other aspects of Off-Page SEO.

You can create an in-depth report that shows the backlinks sources, quality, and type.

Also, ensure that the website’s best performing keywords are shown in the report.

This data can bring the client awareness to their money pages and weak pages.

It also makes them know if their backlink campaign efforts are effective.

To check your website ranking and backlinks, you should sign up with the Google Search Console.

You can use other tools like SEMrush, Moz Pro, and Ahrefs to track ranking and backlinks performance.

Future Recommendations

It is not enough for your SEO report to show the performance data of a website.

The report should also suggest recommendations that will help the website grow and have a better performance in the future.

Recommendations should include actionable steps for each of the analyzed sections on the SEO report to make the report more valuable.

Conclusion

There are other aspects you can include in your SEO report by using the Google Analytics Tool, such as page-Level Traffic and Time On-Site.

The information obtained from SEO reports is essential when it comes to growing a website and increasing profits.