How to Build an SEO Reporting Template

Last modified on: September 11th, 2022

Not sure what to include in an SEO reporting template? Here are some potential sections and metrics that you can use to build an SEO report template.

What is An SEO Report?

SEO reports provide insight into the opportunities, progress, and performance of SEO efforts. There's a lot that goes on in SEO work, so SEO reports help to synthesize all the various factors and metrics that are important to monitor over time.

SEO reporting can provide guidance and direction on SEO strategy and help stakeholders better understand the SEO efforts and results.

What to Include in An SEO Report Template?

Since everyone's reporting needs are different, there is no one-size-fits-all or best SEO report template. Depending on the business and situation, a simple SEO report template might be all you need, while an enterprise might require more in-depth reports.

There are also different types of SEO reports such as one-off audit reports that use a unique reporting template and SEO performance reports that commonly use a monthly SEO report template as a part of SEO packages.

However, there are some sections and reporting metrics that are common in most templates used for search engine optimization reports.

Here are some potential sections to include when creating an SEO reporting template:

Report Summary

A report summary or overview of progress and performance is a good starting point at the beginning of an SEO report. A summary is useful for providing key points about progress and results.

A summary at the beginning of an SEO report helps whoever is receiving the report understand what the report contains including the following sections and details.

Traffic Overview

An overview of web traffic channels is a key section to include in SEO reports. While you probably want to prioritize organic traffic, you can show trends in how traffic is changing over time across channels.

Example traffic channels include organic search, direct traffic, referral traffic, and paid search traffic.

Organic Conversions

Conversions from organic traffic are another important metric to include in an SEO report. A conversion happens when a website visitor completes a desired goal or conversion action.

Example conversion actions include phone calls, form messages, e-commerce sales, and email subscribers.

Page Report

A page report provides insight into which pages are generating traffic and helps figure out which page topics are popular and which pages could be improved with internal links between other pages to improve navigation.

You can also use page data to break down which pages are generating conversions, leading to visits of other pages, and page bounce rates.

Keyword Rankings

Keyword rankings are a fundamental aspect of SEO reports that help show progress towards increasing search visibility, search traffic, and conversions.

Tracking organic rankings also offers insight into which pages should be optimized more, or which related topics and keywords with search volume are worth writing about in existing or new content to improve search presence and ranking visibility.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) data is a helpful SEO tool that provides key data to include in SEO reports to better understand and report on a website's Google search presence.

GSC provides data such as the pages indexed in Google, any page indexing or performance issues, links, clicks, impressions, clickthrough rates, and average position.

SEO reporting software often provides Google Search Console integrations or ways to combine that data with other SEO data.

Backlink Overview

Depending on the SEO service provided such as a link building service, you might want to monitor and report on a site's backlink profile, including links gained or lost.

Example backlink metrics include the referring domains gained or lost, backlinks gained or lost, backlink quality, the anchor text used in the links, and any traffic from links.

Recommendations

If you have any recommendations for your client or stakeholder that they might be willing to act on to support SEO results, this is good info to share near the end of your SEO report.

Conclusion

The SEO reporting template ideas above should help you create a perfect SEO report that is versatile and useable for different types of stakeholders.

When you have an SEO report template of reusable sections, you can easily add, remove, or alter each section to suit different needs and reporting preferences.

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