Four Steps to Better SEO Reporting

It’s hardly contested that improvement of Google rankings through SEO is a critical component of internet marketing. From the moment the PageRank algorithm was launched from ten 4GB hard drives stored in LEGO brick cases, it has held its place as one of the most important considerations for online marketing. Named for Larry Page, co founder of Google, PageRank decides which sites appear for the 100 billion global searches conducted online monthly.

Those who purchase SEO services know that their results are important. That’s why it’s up to providers to communicate clearly with their clients about progress. SEO reporting is one of the most important aspects of search engine marketing, as it allows site owners to adjust their performance based on data. The onus is on SEO providers and resellers to demonstrate that strategies are working. Quality SEO reporting is an art that is not easily mastered. Here, we’ll provide a few suggestions for providing clients with the data they need.

What SEO Reporting Should Do

SEO reporting should answer all of these questions:

• Are the efforts being made helping you reach your organic search goals?
• What SEO tasks were completed this month in relation to your goals?
• What effect did those efforts have on your web presence for organic search?
• What new opportunities are there for optimization of organic search?
• Are there any new competitive threats?

It’s your job to set up your data and metrics to answer those questions, prove progress, and prepare for success in the next month.

Four Steps for Better SEO Reporting

1. Set Expectations Though most experts know that SEO isn’t just about ranking first for the best keywords, many clients don’t. Communicate early in the relationship that SEO is about more than ranking and that Seo reporting won’t totally revolve around rank data. The major metrics that can be used to demonstrate the effect of your efforts are organic traffic, organic position, conversions by keyword, and on and off site indexed pages.

2. Set Goals Take note of your starting point to make SEO reporting more useful later on and then agree upon certain goals. Be sure to include those goals in monthly SEO reporting meetings to remind the client what the overall reason for the investment is. Benchmark certain metrics that support your goals and include those benchmark values in the monthly report.

3. Use Analytics Whether its through Google, Coremetrics, Omniture, or some other analytics system, it’s important to set up some simple goals to begin with. A good place to start might be time on page and two or more pages visited. Look at the keywords bringing those conversions, discuss them with your client, and look at ways to better optimize for them.

4. Set Metrics and Drive Action There’s no point in metrics without action items. The goal is to continue discovering opportunities through metrics that can translate into continuous action items. For example, sort your keywords from highest to lowest converters and then use that data to support additional keyword research, optimization of pages on the site that are ranking lower for high conversion keywords, and increasing the budget to write content.

SEO reporting is certainly more art than science and should be viewed as an excellent opportunity to support your efforts. Give it the time and attention it deserves, and you’re sure to reap the benefits.