SEO Tracking and Reporting – – The major sticking points for anyone in the industry. The most vital data may be less beneficial and valuable to C-suite executives. Or you may need more data to show changes, growth, and significant events clearly and concisely.
Without the correct data, you will end up with a confusing plot that won’t be well received. You need to gather it, which will require you to use the right tools before you can begin reporting and tracking data.
SEO Reporting and Tracking Tools:
Most SEOs use different tools to collect, track and report data properly. The main ones are the following:
- Adobe Analytics
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Bing Webmaster Tools
- Internal Site Search
To monitor keyword growth, positions, and more, you can also use third-party applications, such as:
- Ahrefs
- Semrush
- Moz
Numerous third-party, paid products are readily available to assist you with reporting and tracking. But you must be conscious of the limitations of each tool.
For instance, Google Search Console only keeps data for 16 months; if you plan to provide lengthy reports with information beyond this point, you must consider this.
Tracking Events:
Once your tools and analytics are in place, you should keep track of significant occurrences. SEO aims to increase a website’s organic traffic and revenue, but you also need a mechanism to monitor your success.
You must monitor the following items, among others:
- Major search engine algorithm updates.
- Keyword rankings.
- Page-level traffic.
- Changes and updates to the site.
- Conversions.
- Etc.
Monitoring site modifications and updates can show how valuable your work is and can be quite enlightening as the site expands. Now that you are tracking events, you can focus on keyword separation in more detail.
Separating brand vs. non-brand keywords:
Giving clients a lengthy list with thousands of keywords will only add value. Many of these keywords are not very valuable.
You should try to divide up your keywords into:
- brand keywords.
- Non-branded keywords.
The company and product names will be included in brand keywords, which many businesses wish to monitor when concentrating on their branding.
Nike is a fantastic example of a well-known brand whose products can be found by searching “Nike running shoes” and “running shoes.” However, if you’re working with large keyword datasets, you might wish to start further classifying terms by:
- Informative keywords.
- Transactional keywords.
- Generic keywords.
If you want to delineate the data further and display it in your report, you can segment these keywords by page, URL, or a section. Though it takes time, going through keyword lists is most of the work you’ll do for your reports.
Clients want to know the keywords they are ranked for and where the site’s traffic is going. But when tracking, one piece of information stands out above all others: revenue.
Track revenue drivers:
Every stakeholder’s eyes are opened by revenue, which also serves as a report’s primary attention-getter.
You should do a few specific actions to demonstrate revenue in a way that everyone can understand and enjoy.
Period-Over-Period Comparisons:
Comparisons are a fantastic tool for demonstrating growth over time. For instance, Black Friday and Cyber Monday contribute significantly to businesses’ Q4 income.
Everyone is looking for a bargain, and now is the perfect time to gather information for your reports. You must look at statistics for two years so that you can demonstrate the following:
- Weekly expansion (WoW or same week from previous years).
- Monthly expansion (MoM or the same month as earlier years).
- Quarterly expansion (QoQ or same quarter of earlier years).
- annual growth.
- seasonal expansion.
When writing reports, it is crucial to demonstrate how improved search engine results increased sales by 25% on Black Friday compared to the prior Black Friday.
Sales drivers:
It can be challenging to determine which keywords increased revenue. The IT team can assist you in this situation because some tools may need to allow this precision level while searching through traffic.
IT groups can assist:
- Go through logs.
- Identify sales.
How investing in SEO increases income can be shown by demonstrating that X term, which rose from ranking 19 to 2, resulted in 17% increased sales for a product.
Additionally, you may group data by events, including traffic that resulted in phone calls, email signups, consultations, and other occurrences.
Provide accurate data to the right stakeholders:
You’ve carefully gathered and segmented your data. However, although some data pieces will be helpful to you and your marketing team, the C-suite may need to pay attention to others.
Say, for illustration, that you produced a report displaying:
- SEO technical adjustments.
- Increased organic traffic by 10%.
- Increased site speed.
- Longer page visits.
- Etc.
Marketing teams will value this information, but a C-suite executive will be interested to know how the 10% increase in traffic increased revenue. The C-suite will only be interested in your reports if you tie this information into the company’s revenue.
You should create reports that touch on the critical information that particular stakeholder groups desire to view.
Save your SEO data for future use:
In a year or two, people will resort to your reports from today to help them tell the tale of the company’s SEO development. Because the knowledge you gather is valuable and helpful in the future, save it.
We have built our own unique tools to retain access to Google Search Console data for longer than the permitted 16 months. Even if you switch firms, we advise you to continue with the majority of your reporting tasks.