If you’ve worked with digital marketing or SEO agencies before, you probably already know the typical metrics and information they might include. When you think about those reports, did you actually know what that data was telling you?
You want to know if the SEO work that’s been done is having a measurable impact on your business and its bottom line. The report might show something like organic traffic increased by 15%, the website gained 10 backlinks, and 20 keywords moved onto page one.
These results sound good but if you’re not seeing that difference in the leads or customers you’re getting, it’s not telling you what you need to know.
Your commercial results from SEO
A good SEO report shouldn’t just be a collection of numbers listing visibility metrics. The first thing you should see in your report is how organic search is contributing to your commercial objectives.
If your monthly report shows you:
- Organic traffic, enquiries and leads
- Qualified leads
- Sales and revenue generated through organic search (where tracking allows)
- Performance against your agreed KPIs
It’s easier to compare outcomes month on month and know that you’re seeing a return on your investment through SEO.
Whereas more organic traffic looks good on paper but it’s not necessarily better if your website is only attracting people that have no intention of buying from you. Connecting Google analytics with CRM and sales data can be helpful for showing you the quality and commercial value of the leads you’re currently getting.
That doesn’t mean visibility metrics aren’t useful because they can be, as long as they’re providing context for the tangible outcomes for your business. They can also raise questions that help you address a problem you weren’t aware of in your customer’s journey.
For example, one month your SEO report might show a 30% increase in organic sessions, but no increase in enquiries or leads. Instead of celebrating the growth in traffic, the report could then add next steps to investigate further and see if the new visitors are relevant.
If they are, why aren’t they enquiring? Are they landing on the right pages and are the pages giving them a compelling reason to convert? This is useful information that your agency can use to look at your website design, technical elements, and the copy on the pages, alongside the SEO, not just showing you numbers going up and saying job done, everything’s great.
Are you being found for the right searches?
Once you’ve got a clear insight into the overall impact SEO is having on your business, that’s a good time to dig into the data behind it.
Google Search Console metrics like impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), and average position tell you how people are finding your website. Each one can provide valuable information around the visitor journey and where the gaps and opportunities might be.
Your website might be doing well with impressions but if the clicks aren’t corresponding then you may be appearing for more searches not not attracting enough attention for visitors to click through.
Also, improved keyword rankings don’t automatically mean your SEO is attracting more potential customers. This is something we’ve seen a lot with our clients.
Their previous SEO reports would show great results around increased visibility, but it would be for blogs and informational searches that aren’t related to the products or services they were providing.
Those ranking improvements don’t do much in terms of getting more customers and making money for your business. An SEO report should focus on the searches with commercial intent.
It’s also important to separate branded and non-branded search performance. Branded searches include your business name, while non-branded searches are queries people use when looking for the products or services you offer.
More branded searches could reflect growing awareness of your business, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re reaching more people who are discovering you for the first time through Google.
If you know where you stand with the searches your prospects are making for products or services like yours, you can then work on ranking your website higher for those terms and turning those prospects into customers.
Which pages are driving results and which ones are holding you back?
Top-performing pages is a useful data point to see in a monthly SEO report, again as long as there’s relevant context for it.
By letting you know which pages are doing well in terms, you’ll have a better idea of what your best selling products or services are and where to dedicate more time and energy to.
But there’s also value in knowing which pages have untapped potential and those that are losing performance. If they’re important to your business then the report should make it clear that action will be taken to review the pages and find ways to improve them.
The important thing is that every finding in the report is connected to an opportunity or recommendation. It’s not just data for the sake of having data to show.
How should AI search be reported?
More of your potential customers are asking tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode for recommendations, which means they could be shortlisting your business without ever visiting your website. Until recently this was hard to measure, but there’s now enough data for your monthly SEO report to cover it properly and build some awareness around your AI SEO/GEO visibility.
Google Search Console has a report showing how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Google Analytics now puts visits from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude into their own “AI Assistant” channel. Together they show where you’re appearing in AI search and whether those visitors go on to enquire. We can then use this data to track conversions (like leads or sales) from each source made on your website and attribute it to the channel.
AI visibility still needs the same context as the rest of your report, though. Being mentioned 2,000 times a month means very little if it isn’t bringing you enquiries, and if that’s the case, your report should explain why and what’s being done about it.
Any technical SEO issues that could impact performance
It’s helpful to know the overall health of your website and if there are any technical SEO problems that could affect organic performance. But you don’t want to just see a list of crawl errors and terminology you don’t understand.
If there’s been a big change in the data and a drop in leads or customers and the cause for that is a technical issue then an SEO report should flag it.
Generally though, a summary of any technical elements that the team have worked on and what they mean for your performance is enough.
What is your agency working on?
When you’re investing in SEO, you want to know what your agency is working on every month to maintain and improve performance. The results and opportunities found in the data should create the priorities for the next month of work.
We understand how important this visibility is at RedCore, which is why every client we work with has access to a shared monday.com board. So, you can log in and see exactly what we’re working on in real-time. You don’t have to wait until the end of the month for your report to summarise the work.
What shouldn’t be included in an SEO report?
If you’re working with an agency and are currently receiving SEO reports, you should know what information is helpful and the things you may want to question further when reviewing your report.
It’s not necessarily that there’s any data that shouldn’t be included in an SEO report. The main thing is the context around it and making sure you understand what it means for your business. When numbers are included you should be told how to interpret them.
For example, traffic increases, generic domain authority scores, automated website health scores, and backlink quantities without quality could be insightful information. If it’s used in the right way and you’re also made aware of why it’s relevant and what it’s doing to support your commercial objectives.
Monthly SEO reports should show the difference in your revenue
Your monthly SEO reports should give you a good insight into how your investment in organic performance is contributing to your commercial objectives, and what needs to happen to maintain or improve those results.
It’s not just about showing you flashy surface-level metrics that in isolation may not tell you much of anything. Every piece of data should have a purpose and relevance to getting your business more customers and increasing revenue.
If you’re unsure what your current SEO is delivering for your business, we can help.
Speak to our team or request a free proposal from us to see what’s doing well and where the opportunities are to improve SEO performance for your business.