A great question which differs from company to company, the main point of any SEO report should be to show you how your campaign is performing, however, don’t let companies pull the wool over your eyes.
Any report should be able to show you where you are doing well and most importantly where you are not. Our team have put together a little guide to help make sure your SEO company is giving you the report you need.
Key points and snapshots
Any monthly SEO campaign will have highlights; this may be irregular spikes in traffic, increases in conversions, increases and declines in rankings and any useful updates which you as the client find important to your business model, this takes the reporting process far beyond an automated toolkit pumping out ranking reports.
A unique monthly report will show you how proactive your SEO campaign manager is and what he is doing to consistently improve your websites ROI.
Keyword ranking report
Any campaign will need a keyword ranking report, if your ranking for your chosen key phrase is not improving its highly likely your overall traffic will be following the same trend, keeping an eye daily will frustrate any business owner, the only way to see substantial movement is monthly as Google will definitely indexed you at least once during that period meaning changes and updates will be cached.
It’s also important to keep an eye on your long tail rankings, most SEO campaigns will not even start to show results for six months for major keywords, keeping an eye on long tail phrases related in your market will help you see if your campaign is starting to give some form of improvement.
Traffic reporting and statistical breakdown
Let’s face it, getting on to page one is great but not if your major phrase is not providing loads of traffic, any SEO companies goal, alongside ranking your phrase should be increasing your overall visitors. Increases in visitors is what will make you money, not ranking high for one major term that will only provide a small amount of traffic.
Most SEO experts will want to show you where your traffic is coming from, always use Google analytics, this is the most comprehensive tracking system available. Using analytics will help your SEO expert statistically analyse where you are or are not performing well, what areas need attention and what phrases are providing traffic but proving to be a waste of time.
Time and time again we hear from our clients that there previous SEO company has increased their traffic by xxxxx, however this has not led to the bottom line, cash back in the bank. The main thing you should ask, is your site making money? Are you targeting the right phrases and should you be using your budget a little smarter on phrases with higher conversion value?
Any SEO expert should be analysing your analytics monthly to give you sound advice on what they feel the best direction is for your company.
Link Building reports
All
SEO campaigns should have a form of link building involved whether it’s the right or wrong way of link building is another matter!
You should receive a report showing the URL of the link, the page rank; IP address, anchor text and where the link is pointing too, this will help you see what work the SEO company is putting in to increase your domain authority in your chosen market.
SEO content reports and targeting
Each campaign will involve SEO content, this will usually start off being homepage, landing page and category page content, designed to increase your pages balance towards your chosen phrases. You should be able to be involved in this process to make sure the content fits in with the tone and style of your site. Each page should be sent to you for a preview before uploading as every site owner thinks differently.
All the phrases in the content should be pre-agreed with yourself.
Most campaigns will also involve content refreshing; this is designed to give Google new information and help them see your site growing with relevant useful information.
Conversion tracking and diagnosis
Whatever happens with your rankings, conversions are your key to making you more money, setting down some defined conversions goals from month one will help you see the earlier, smaller increases as well as giving you an idea if your site is improving at all, again, it’s great to rank high for chosen phrases but not if they don’t convert as this won’t make you money.
Your SEO Company should be able to advise you off the basic tracking elements, usually this will consist of full ecommerce tracking, allowing you to see what phrases are getting sales etc. Or the main contact forms and other points of contact should be tracked to ensure your website is increasing its click to lead ratio.
Monthly conference calls
Ensure you get at least a monthly call with your SEO account manager, make sure he knows your goals without being prompted by you first, the main point of this call is to go through your report and also plan the next steps, if they don’t know where they are with your campaign you can be sure it is going to be a disaster!
In Summary
Follow our little guide and always be ready to ask your SEO company lots of questions, make sure they show you the successes and the failures, every SEO campaign will have setbacks the main thing to make sure is your SEO company know what they are, if they don’t they can’t fix them!
For more information about our SEO campaigns and examples of our reporting process contact the team via the form on our contact page.