What to Look for in an SEO Report

If you work with an experienced Internet marketing agency, they should provide you with monthly reports on the most important metrics for your business. This will allow you to focus on what matters without getting overwhelmed by thousands of individual statistics. If you’d like to speak with someone directly, you can contact us online or call 888-601-5359 today to speak with one of our experts!

Here’s what you should look for in a good SEO report:

Basic SEO metrics

Any good SEO report will provide a few basic metrics, including:

• Traffic
• Bounce rate
• Average time on site
• Visited pages
• Rankings for important keywords

These are some of the easiest metrics to understand, regardless of your amount of experience with digital marketing, and they will typically be right at the beginning of the report. They don’t take long to process, and they provide an overall view of your site.

However, it’s significant that you don’t get too caught up in these surface-level metrics. They don’t tell you nearly as much about your business as the rest of the metrics on this page and should be taken only as general indicators of performance.

Most valuable pages

Your SEO strategy is designed to bring in organic traffic, but there are many ways to look at how well it’s accomplishing that goal. One of the best is by tracking which of the pages on your site attract and keep the most visitors.

This not only shows you where your strategy is succeeding, but also shows room for improvement when combined with metrics like bounce rate. If certain pages are attracting searchers but not convincing them to visit other pages on your site, there’s a clear opportunity to revise the page to be more effective.

Conversion data

One of the main goals of your SEO strategy is undoubtedly attracting more traffic to your site. However, the actions that your visitors take once they arrive are just as important, if not more important, than the fact that they found you in the first place.

That’s where conversion data becomes critical. This information tells you how many of your visitors are taking steps towards becoming customers, whether that means filling out contact forms or picking up the phone and calling you.

Lead and revenue attribution

With traditional marketing, it’s sometimes difficult to determine what strategies are working and what aren’t. Unless you directly ask your customers how they heard about you, you have no way of knowing whether they saw a billboard, heard a radio ad, or noticed an ad in the paper.

With online marketing, however, that isn’t the case. Lead and revenue attribution will let you know exactly where your leads and sales are coming from— like search engines, recommendations, emails, or other sources— which can help you decide where your advertising dollars are best invested.

Custom information

Experienced marketers know that every business is different, and a one-size-fits-all strategy isn’t a good idea. The same goes for reporting.

You know your business better than anyone else, and you likely have certain metrics that are specific to your site and strategy. For example, you may want detailed information about:

• Traffic reporting by channel
• Your average cost-per-lead (CPL)
• Ecommerce reporting

Let your agency know what metrics you want to see, and they should be able to come up with a way to track and deliver the information you need. And if they can’t, it may be time to consider working with an agency that is more willing to work with your business’s goals.

Ready to make the most of your SEO reports?

With all the advanced marketing data available today, it can be difficult to determine which metrics and figures are the most important for your business. If you haven’t already, take the time to discuss these metrics with your marketing department or agency, and figure out a marketing agency reports structure that works for you.

At WebFX, we understand the importance of keeping our clients in the loop on their SEO strategies, which is why we offer comprehensive monthly reporting. Contact us today to speak with a strategist about how we can help improve your online marketing success—and show you results every step of the way.