The Do’s & Do Nots of SEO Reports

As the internet evolves, one thing remains the same, the importance of search engine optimization [SEO]. In the world of digital marketing, the number of so called SEO experts increases by the hour. However, finding the right one has become difficult and is similar to finding a needle in a haystack. To find the right SEO expert for your business, you need to look at two things, their success stories and the way they provide reports to you. In this guide, we’ll take a look at a few things a professional SEO report should provide and some things it shouldn’t.

How often should you receive SEO Reports?

As we all know, SEO has become a very important aspect of digital marketing. It helps our businesses generate organic traffic rather than relying on paid advertising. It also helps put our content in front of the people that can benefit from it the most. To understand if our SEO efforts are working correctly or need to be adjusted, we need to receive reports on the regular. So how often do we need to see these reports? We recommend getting a monthly report on the minimum. The report should be provided to you, the business owner or marketing director, and summarize everything that has been done for the month. It also should include a few more components which we will highlight in this post.

What to include in your SEO Reports?

We’ve generated quite a few SEO reports for our clients and have come up with a list of components that need to be included in every SEO report we provide. Here is a summary of that list.

• Overall progress on goals
• What activities have been accomplished
• What needs to be tackled next
• Technical SEO summary
• Rankings and tracked keywords
• Top performing pages
• Backlink summary
• Local SEO summary
• Conversions summary

The list above is a good overview of our current SEO efforts and what needs to be done to improve. You should also be receiving analytics metrics to determine if your SEO efforts are effective. Now let’s take a look at what your SEO expert needs to be doing in their report.

The Do’s of SEO Reporting

As an SEO Expert, we should be focusing on the following in our reports. We should be simplifying it for our clients, for them to easily understand what has been done so far.

• Focus on a few important metrics
• Show progress over time ( compare results to previous months )
• Include a list of what has been accomplished
• Include a list of what needs to be accomplished the following month
• Create the report on a monthly basis
• Simplify the language so anyone can understand
• Guide our clients through each component of the SEO report
• Stick to a simple template for reporting

The Do Not’s of SEO Reporting

Now that we have read the do’s of SEO reporting, it’s time to understand what we shouldn’t be doing in our reports.

• Never assume our client is an SEO expert
• Confusing our client with too much data
• Use too much technical jargon
• Reporting on metrics that do not matter
• Ignoring issues and negative trends
• Set unrealistic expectations
• Write lengthy explanations rather than using graphs, charts and bullets

SEO reporting isn’t complicated and can be super beneficial if done correctly. Using the lists above, you can get a better understanding of your own SEO reports and if they are meeting your needs. Let us know if your reports are covering all these points we have mentioned or if they’re hitting every point in the Do Not list.

If you’re in need of digital marketing services, we’re here to help. We’ve been recently ranked in the top Digital Marketing Agencies in Toronto by DesignRush. Reach out to us today to get your FREE digital marketing proposal and let’s grow your business online together.