8 Tips To Create An Informational SEO Report

Intro

SEO reports, much like work reports, are primary resources for your clients, managers, or bosses to track the progress of your work and its impact. It is not just about merging metrics to look presentable, but attaining metrics that are real and correct, showing the progress of your content to your clients.

As an SEO Analyst, you must understand how essential reporting is— for driving improvements, making better campaign decisions, and monitoring your website's performance during a specific period.

While this may appear to be a simple and even basic concept in theory, SEO reports are far more complicated than they appear. It should be as beneficial to SEO as it is to your clients.

What Is An SEO Report?

An SEO report provides a holistic view of the key metrics that reflect a website's performance in search engines.

Every SEO report might not be the same, but there are essential things contained in an SEO report. They are:

• SEO KPIs: these are values used by marketing teams to measure the performance of their website for organic search results.
• Backlink growth: Backlinks serve as valuable votes from other websites that tell the search engines that your content is credible and trustworthy.
• SEO health: this gives you a credible look at the state of your SEO.
• Organic search traffic: this showcases the efficiency of at least one area of your SEO strategy.

Now that you know what an SEO report is, here are some easy tips to create one.

9 Tips For Creating An Exceptional SEO Report

Creating an SEO report goes beyond simply exporting a few metrics and submitting it to your client. Follow these actionable tips to create and optimize your reports:

1. Establish Your SEO Goals

While SEO is an important marketing tool, you must determine what you want to achieve. Doing this will assist you in narrowing down which SEO metrics to track and taking the necessary actions.

Your goal may be to improve the ranking for specific keywords, increase search visibility, or even provide what your clients desire.

Meet with the clients to learn about the marketing strategy they desire. Include tangible business goals and explain why you chose them as your goals.

2. Choose The Appropriate Reporting Tools

Seeing how important SEO is and your client's goals, choosing suitable reporting tools will play a huge role in helping them make the right decisions. You should find tools with comprehensive features and necessary metrics that you plan to add to your report.

Select basic tools for monitoring the website and marketing performance, such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Those tools will provide you with relevant website analytics that is critical for building your SEO strategy and tracking your results over time.

Then, you should also get a few additional third-party SEO tools like Ninja Reports for more detailed SEO analysis. Its Keyword Rank Checker Online tracks keyword rankings for your project in real-time, allows you to analyze your current positions, and gather additional keyword data valuable for SEO reporting and building actionable SEO strategy.

3. Select SEO KPIs You Need To Include In Your Report

Most businesses want to see metrics and conversions, show numbers you can rely on, and easily track over time. Strong KPIs can save your company time, provide insights, direct management, and keep your company on a long-term growth path.

Define those SEO KPIs that you could track with selected SEO tools. Some examples are organic traffic, bounce rate, keyword rankings, click-through rate (CTR), backlinks, and other data needed for your report.

4. Use Charts And Tables

Using graphical representations helps to communicate information easily. First, nail the metrics of your report and also the presentation. Correctly represent data so that it could tally.

It's very important to keep your reports short and succinct. They should contain vital points and shareable charts and graphs.

If charts and graphs aren't your things, look for a freelancer to help you out. Don't underestimate the power of visually appealing data to please and boost your credibility with your clients.

5. Include An Executive Summary

An executive summary is a brief introduction and overview of your report. It allows anyone who reads it to understand the nature and relevant information needed in the report. From merely looking at it, your clients should be able to tell if the SEO goal is attainable.

Summarize the work you've done and how you went about it. Your SEO report summary should be on the front page for easy access.

6. Gather Your Backlinks

Backlinks are vital for your website if you want to receive free visitors from search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. A Backlink forms when one website links to another website.

Search engines recognize this and consider that website credible to appear in search results. Google, for example, has classified certain domains, such as government and academic websites, as trustworthy.

Gather all the links you have built in your SEO report, and make sure to add the domain authority metrics on your SEO report, including the new and lost referring domains.

7. Schedule Time To Analyze Your Performance Before Creating The Report

Before you customize an SEO report, analyze the matrices and numbers to see how well you ranked and performed.

Take time to understand and assess your performance before creating for your clients. That will enable you to answer any questions the client may have.

8. Educate Your Client Before Delivering The Report

Imagine giving a medical statement to a literature lecturer; he would barely understand it. Most clients are so busy that they don't have time to learn about SEO reports. Making a phone call to brief them will help them understand your efforts in the report. Remember, the assumption is the lowest form of knowledge.

Clients that are new to the internet market might need to understand what SEO is. So start by explaining the acronym and all the "behind the scenes" work you've been doing.

You could use relatable analogies so that all the metrics and information you'll be dishing out won't sound foreign to them.

Conclusion

Creating an excellent SEO report might take a bit of your time, but with the effective tips above, you can cut the effort in half.

Start by outlining your SEO goals before choosing a tool. Select only essential KPIs and represent them with charts and visual elements for better understanding. Don't forget to give a prior lecture on the SEO terms to your clients, if you're working with one.