What’s in a monthly seo report and why you need one
Whether you’re just starting out or further along down your digital marketing strategy, data driven insights will help you make informed decisions. A monthly seo (search engine optimization) report will greatly help those efforts.
Although there are a variety of aspects that go into a monthly seo report, this discussion will go through our top 5 data points that should be included, why it matters, and how to make decisions based off of the data.
We’ll specifically touch on:
- Traffic Summary
- Top Keywords
- Backlinks
- Top landing pages
- Keyword and competitor analysis?
Traffic Summary
The traffic summary of your monthly seo report sets the foundation for the remainder of the data that you’ll be diving into. Your traffic summary will go through:
- The number of users that visit your website
- Where those users are coming from
- And the trend for those users over a given period of time
As you make changes to your website, or search engines modify their algorithms, you’ll want to see what’s happening with the traffic on your website. Whether that be a change in traffic sources or a drop off in traffic, you’ll make better sense of the data.
Top Keywords
The next piece of data that you’ll want to look at in your monthly seo report is the top keywords that your website ranks for. This will allow you to see:
- How the ranking positions have changed over time
- The volume that those terms drive to your website
- Cost to rank for those terms (this is helpful if you’re using paid ads)
After reviewing your top keywords you’ll have a better understanding of how your audience finds you, and can then tailor your content creation strategy to meet user demand.
Whether it be enhancing a current landing page to increase your rankings, or deciding that a certain keyword doesn’t drive enough traffic, make informed decisions based on your top keywords.
Backlinks
Arguably the most important part of helping you work your way up the rankings within search engines are backlinks. The more quality backlinks that your website has, the more search engines are aware of the authority and trustworthiness that your website has within your industry.
Think of backlinks as a stamp of approval from other websites. The more stamps of approval you have, the better. Acquiring backlinks is a difficult task and takes time to grow, but having this data can speed up your backlink acquisition efforts, and in turn your ranking efforts.
The backlink portion of your monthly seo report will tell you:
- How many backlinks you have
- Gained or lost backlinks
- The quality of those backlinks
- Potential websites that you should attempt to gain backlinks from
Top Landing Pages
You understand how much traffic that you have, where it’s coming from, which keywords are driving that traffic, and how many backlinks you’ve acquired, but where do your users spend the most time?
Your top landing pages will tell you:
- Which pages have the most sessions
- Where those sessions tend to drop off the most
Your goal is always to enhance your landing pages to provide the best user experience possible, but your top landing pages will give you a much better indication of which pages you’re successful with in those efforts.
Enhance those pages that aren’t showing up and see where they land on your next monthly seo report, in addition to ensuring that your current top pages align with the goal of your website.
Keyword Research and Competitor Analysis
Now there’s a caveat to this one; keyword research and competitor analysis is so important that it should have its own report.
The legendary CEO of GE, Jack Welch once said ‘buy or bury the competition’. Now chances are we don’t have the cash to buy them, but burying them in a keyword competition is much more attainable so let’s start there. A keyword research and competitor analysis report will allow you to:
- Identify your top competitors
- Understand where their traffic is coming from
- Gain insight into what terms they’re ranking for
- Optimize your content/landing pages to outrank your competitors
Sounds simple, right? The process is simple, the execution takes serious time and effort but is well worth it as you start to take away some of their critical traffic and drive users to your website instead.
Analyze all of this data monthly, see where your competitors are beating you, and make the necessary efforts to start slowing beating them out.
How to Obtain a Monthly SEO Report
If you’ve gotten this far then you realize the importance of analyzing all of the data that goes into this report, but how do you start receiving one and executing on that data? You have 3 options:
- Purchase an SEO Software Subscription
The data tells a story and can significantly reshape the way you run your business, but you’re going to have to pay for it. Subscriptions typically start at $100+ per month and can range up to $500 depending on the features that you’re looking for. Consider:
This option is for the organization that wants to take their seo practices in-house and has the expertise to generate and execute on the monthly data.
- Leverage an SEO Consultant
Leveraging an seo consultant is a great option as they’re already paying for the software and will provide insights/recommendations in addition to the data from the monthly seo report. You’ll have the report delivered to your inbox monthly, with a consultative call that gives you additional insight and executables based on what the data says.
With this 2-in-1 value add, this fits the organization that wants the data and insight, with the ability to pay a simple monthly retainer.
- Build Your Own
If you’re not looking to pay a retainer for the data, then you have what we’ll call the ‘bootstrap’ method of building your own custom report.
The downside is that you may lose some functionality and insight, but you’ll still be able to create a report that allows you to make data driven decisions. This can be done with:
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Google Optimize
- Google Data Studio (used to tie data together)
This option is for the organization with a limited budget and just wants to pay for a one-time project to build the report for them.
Regardless of the option that you choose, by having a clear set of goals, valuable data, executable items that are worked on each month, a monthly seo report will help you generate a significant return on your investment over the long term.
Gary McConnell Co-founded Rubicom Digital in 2019 with a goal of providing digital marketing consulting services in the B2B space.
Gary continues to serve as the Marketing Director of a Data Center-focused IT Provider, VirtuIT Systems.