and SEO reporting are key issues for any industry professional.
Information that you consider important might not be as valuable for C-suite leaders.
You may also not have sufficient data to clearly show significant changes, growth and other events.
Reports should tell stories. You’ll have a complicated plot and it won’t go down well with the public.
You must first gather the data to begin tracking and reporting it. This will require that you use the appropriate tools.
Many SEOs combine a variety of tools in order to collect, track, and report the data.
Here are a few:
Third-party tools can be used to monitor keyword growth and positions, as well as other factors, like:
- Ahrefs
- Semrush
- Moz
There are many third-party tools that can help with tracking and reporting.
However, you must be mindful of the limitations of every tool.
Google Search Console, for example, only keeps data for 16 month. This is something you should consider if you plan to produce long reports with data beyond this limit.
These tools should be in your arsenal. If you don’t have these tools, go through them, and then add the coding to your website so that tracking can begin.
Without these data, your search engine optimization journey will be a blind one.
Event tracking (even those that are not SEO)
Once you have your analytics and tools in place, it’s time to start tracking important events.
SEO refers to driving traffic organically to your site, and then generating revenue . However, you will also require a tracking system to monitor your progress.
Voici quelques-unes of the items I suggest tracking:
Site updates and changes can help you to demonstrate your value and provide valuable insight as the site grows.
Find the Daily Newsletter Search Marketers Rely on.
Brand keywords vs. other keyword phrases
Once you have started to track events, now it is time for the real work of keyword separation.
Clients will lose value if they are provided with thousands upon thousands of keywords. Many keywords might not bring in enough value.
You should segment your keywords into the following:
- Keywords for brands
- Keywords that are not branded
When focusing on branding, many companies will want to include brand keywords that also contain the product and company names.
Nike is an example of a powerful brand. People might type “Nike running shoes” or “Nike shoes” into Google to locate their products.
You may need to separate keywords more when you work with huge keyword databases.
- Useful keywords.
- Keywords for transactions
- Use generic keywords.
If you wish to clarify and present the data in your report, then you can segment keywords by URL or page.
Although keyword list research can be time-consuming and tedious, it is the majority of your work for reports.
The clients want to know which keywords are ranking and how much traffic they have.
But, there’s one data point that matters more than the others when it comes to tracking revenues.
Track revenue drivers
The main focus of a report is revenue. It is what makes everyone’s eyes open.
To show your revenue, you will need to do some things in this area.
Comparisons of periods-over-periods
Comparatives can be a powerful way to demonstrate growth over time.
Companies make a large portion of their Q4 revenues on Cyber Monday and Black Friday, for example.
Everybody is looking for deals, which means that there’s valuable time for you to compile your reports.
It is recommended that data be viewed for at least two years in order to show the following:
- Weekly growth (WoW) or the same week as previous years
- MoM (Monthly growth) or the same month as in previous years
- Quartly growth (QoQ) or the same quarter as previous years
- Annual growth.
- Seasonal growth
Reports are valuable when demonstrating how search engine ranking can increase sales by 25% this Black Friday, compared to previous Black Friday.
Sales drivers
It can sometimes be difficult to identify which keywords drove sales.
This level of detail may not be possible with tools, so the IT department can assist you.
IT teams can help:
- Browse through the logs.
- Identify sales.
- Use keywords to track sales. This may need customizations.
Investing in SEO can increase revenue by demonstrating that X keyword has moved from rank 19 to 2 and led to 17% more sales of a product.
Segment data can be used to track events such as traffic leading to phone calls, sign-ups for email, or consultations.
Provide the relevant data to the appropriate stakeholders
Your data has been segmented and collected in a meaningful manner.
While some data points are valuable for you and your marketing staff, other data might not be .
Let’s say, for example, that you have created a report showing the following:
- Changes in technical SEO
- Organic traffic has increased by 10%
- Faster site speeds.
- Increased time per page
- Etc.
This data will appeal to marketing teams, while a C-suite executive might be interested in why there was a 10% increase in traffic.
The C-suite will not be interested in reporting if you do not tie the information to the revenue of the company.
Reports should focus on key information that particular stakeholder groups are looking for.
Keep your SEO data safe for future reference
In the coming year, your reports will be referenced and will tell the story about the company’s growth in SEO.
Keep the information that you gather because you will need it in the future.
To backup Google Search Console data, I created custom tools that I could use to refer to the information beyond the 16 month limit.
This is a good idea as it will help you with most reporting tasks, even when you move companies.
These opinions are not necessarily those of Search Engine Land, but they do reflect the views of the guest author. Here are the names of staff authors.
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