If you employ an SEO agency to plan and implement an SEO campaign with the objective of your website securing improved rankings on Google, there must be a feedback mechanism in place so that you can be kept informed of that SEO campaign’s progress. The most effective tool for this feedback is an SEO report.
SEO reports provide you with insights into many aspects of your SEO agency’s work and allow you to see how it is progressing. Each agency might use a different template for its SEO reports, but in general, they will include data and the metrics relating to how your website’s ranking is performing before and after the work the SEO agency has undertaken.
Types Of SEO Report
In most cases, there are two types of SEO reports produced. These are the “Initial SEO Report” and the “Ongoing SEO Reports”.
Initial SEO Report: As you might expect, the initial SEO report is not used to measure how your SEO agency is performing, but rather how any previously SEO has worked or not. It will outline your current rankings and can be used as the starting point against which any future SEO can be measured.
Ongoing SEO Reports: An obvious title, and as it suggests these are the reports which outline the data and metrics of your SEO campaign as it proceeds. The usual timeframe for these to be produced is monthly, although that can be adjusted in agreement with your SEO agency.
What You Should Expect To Find In An SEO Report?
There will be differences between the SEO reports each SEO agency produces, and it will be worth discussing with them what you would like to include in it. The SEO reports may also be influenced by the type of business you have and the objectives you have for your website. Some of the metrics and information most commonly included in SEO reports will be:
- Website Bounce Rates
- Visit Durations
- Traffic Volumes
- Rankings On Search Engines For Individual Keywords
- Lead And Traffic Sources
- Website Conversion Rates
- Website Page Visits
- New Content Added
- Visitor Demographics
- User Experience Assessment
- Backlinks Added
- Website Metadata
We must reiterate that no two SEO agencies will have identical SEO reports so you must ensure that the information you want from the SEO report produced is agreed in advance with your SEO agency.
Why SEO Reports Are Important?
An SEO report’s function is not simply so you can check that your SEO agency is ‘doing their job’. Whilst it does that by default, your use of the report and the reasons for wanting it should go further than that.
Measuring Success: We mention this once more as it is so important. No SEO campaign operates on a straight line with no variations for the simple reason that Google’s rankings are constantly recalculated, plus your completion may also be doing SEO. An SEO report is your to what; is working well, and what is not, and where additional optimisations can be made
Greater Return On Investment: Employing an SEO agency is an investment in your business and one that usually runs to several thousand dollars. You want to maximise your ROI and that is best achieved by your SEO strategies being data-driven and decisions made having considered all the available evidence your SEO reports provide you.