Whether you’re doing SEO for a large company or a small-scale freelancing, reporting is one of those things that’s essential to your role but will swallow up all your time if you let it.
That’s why we’ve spent a lot of time coming up with the best reporting template, to show top-level stats upfront and prove real value to your clients as fast as possible.
Today we’ll share this report with you – and show you how you can easily replicate it using 100% free tools (that you should already be using).
Now, it’s worth noting up top there are a million different tools and formats you can use for your reports – this is just what we’ve found works best.
Our goal for reporting is to prepare the best overview possible with the least effort involved in preparing reports – so we can focus on actually driving results.
What to Include In an SEO Report in 2022:
1 – Overall Performance Stats
First up, we like to include a stats summary of all our key organic search metrics and how they performed compared to the previous month. This data is all drawn from Google Analytics and Search Console.
That includes the following stats:
- Sessions from organic traffic
- New sessions as a percentage
- Average pages per session
- Bounce rate
- Average session duration
- Overall goal completions (leads or sales)
- Total clicks from SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)
- Total impressions from SERPs
- Average CTR (clickthrough-rate) for SERP results
- Average ranking position in SERPs
We also include, in graph form, the following stats for the past 90 days to show short-term progress in more detail:
- Organic users over time
- Organic goal completions over time
2 – Keyword Performance
Next, we include a summary of all our keyword rankings – to show overall progress on that front.
First, an overview of the number of ranking keywords that we can pick up – to show how many keywords the site is ranking for overall, approximately how much traffic they bring in and approximately how much value they’re adding overall.
Then we include an overview of our average ranking positions – to show how our keyword rankings are distributed and progress in increasing overall rankings.
Lastly for this page, we include a list of the top keywords bringing in the most organic traffic to the site – to show where the most value is coming from and whether or not it’s in line with our strategy.
3 – Competitive Performance
Thirdly, we include an overview of how our SEO strategy is performing against our competition. You can show this however you like, but we like to graph our relative position to other search competitors using overall traffic on the Y-axis and the approximate number of organic keywords they’re ranking for on the X-axis.
This gives a good overall view of where we are in relation to these competitors.
Next, we provide a more in-depth list of search competitors, going by keyword overlap, showing a breakdown of their total number of keywords and the keywords we’re closely competing for.
4 – Top Organic Landing Pages
Lastly, we show the top pages bring in the most organic traffic to the site. This is most relevant for customers where the focus is on pushing traffic via content marketing – as this lets us show the tangible value the content is bringing in once it breaches this top 10 list.
And that’s it!
In the spirit of keeping it simple, and succinct, that’s all we include in our SEO reporting template. Feel free to add more, or less, as you think is best – but we think this gives a great overall summary of where your client is at.
As mentioned previously, we also have a separate list of reports on-hand in case they want more detail on any of these items, for example a full list of ranking keywords versus the keyword list we’re targeting.
How to Copy Our Free SEO Report Template
We use Semrush to automate all the data collection for our reporting – as this saves us a little extra time each month when dealing with a lot of clients.
This is a subscription service that costs money each month – but it is worth it if you intend to pursue SEO via content marketing long-term.
However, we’ll also include instructions on how to copy this template using completely free tools – Google Analytics (GA) and Google Search Console (GSC).
So, either load up Semrush and go to the reports builder, or create a template into which you can copy-paste screenshots from Google Analytics and Google Search Console and we can get started.
What Makes a Good SEO Report?
A good SEO report should:
- Prove real value instead of focusing entirely on vanity metrics
- As an SEO, your primary job is to add real value to the business, and the easiest way to demonstrate this is to show the bottom-line impact your services are having – whether that be on sales or leads.
- Be concise and easily understandable
- Nobody has the time or interest to read a lengthy report. Not to say you shouldn’t provide one if the client specifically requests it, see the next point.
- Be scalable to the needs and level of knowledge of the client
- Always leave room to expand upon the data in your report in a separate document, for example, know how to export a full list of keywords and their respective rankings instead of a summary if the client requests that.
Conclusion – The Best SEO Report Template in 2022
So what makes the best SEO report template in 2022? Well, it’s simple, one that:
- Is quick to compile so you can focus on what matters
- Is easy to expand upon where needed
- Provides a high-level overview of the stats that really matter.
We hope this helped you set up your own report template to do just that. Remember though, there is one size fits all solution when it comes to reporting. Think about how best to prove value from the specific work you’re doing from your clients – and let that guide you.
If you enjoyed this article or found it helpful, check out more e-commerce marketing content on the inSyte blog or listen to the inSyte Podcast.
This article was brought to you by Syte.
We’re a specialist e-commerce and lead generation digital marketing agency dedicated to driving up your bottom line.
If you need any help running your business’ search ads effectively, feel free to reach out with the form below or check out our case studies page to see what we’ve been able to do for our clients.
