What Is An SEO Report?

Just as you were given reports in school, websites also have reports.

At school, your reports showed your grades, your participation, your attitude – what you were doing well, and what you needed to improve upon. These reports were an opportunity for yourself, your teachers and your parents to see how you could improve your overall performance and get better grades.

An SEO report is much the same. Showing SEO key performance indicators (KPIs), a search engine optimization (SEO) report lets SEO strategists and web admins get a birds-eye view of their website. They can then use this SEO report to strategize their future SEO marketing campaigns for maximum efficiency.

In this article, we take an in-depth look at SEO reports. We’ll discuss:

• What is an SEO report?
• Why are SEO reports important?
• What do SEO reports show?
• How can I use an SEO report to make my website perform better?

What Is An SEO Report?

An SEO report is a document that presents the results of an SEO audit.

The SEO report contains information on the back-end and off-page metrics of a website, which indicates how well that website is performing in search engines for specific keywords.

One popular and powerful SEO reporting tool used by industry experts is Ahrefs.

The site explorer tool in Ahrefs reveals some of the essential metrics of an SEO report, including:

• Domain Rating(DR)
• Backlink profile
• Number of backlinks
• Number of referring domains
• Ranked organic keywords
• How much monthly traffic that website receives
• How much that monthly traffic is worth

Having an understanding of these metrics, how they impact your websites search engine result rankings, and how you can improve these metrics is the foundation of any SEO strategy.

Why are SEO Reports Important?

SEO reports are important because they help SEO experts identify the strengths and weaknesses of a page.

Without SEO reports, there is no way of knowing where your website stands and how it measures up against your competitors.

Having a quantitative understanding of important SEO metrics and ranking factors is what enables SEO digital marketers to create effective SEO strategies. Creating monthly SEO reports also gives insight into how effective (or not!) an SEO strategy is for a website, allowing SEO professionals to track SEO performance.

Furthermore, SEO reports should also include an analysis of competitors, which can help you know what is working for them and what you can do better.

SEO Report FAQ

How do you report on-page SEO?

Reporting on-page SEO involves analyzing the performance of content on the website, and assessing how effective the target keywords are in the SEO strategy as a whole.

The best metrics to look at when reporting on-page SEO are:

• Keyword search volume
• Bounce rate
• Dwell time
• Session duration
• Page speed
• Click-through rate
• The conversion rate of your landing pages

To report on-page SEO, you should present a report with baseline data from your initial site audit and then monthly assessments of the same metrics.

This will show the growth rate of your backlink profile (achieved by link building), your target keyword rankings, your organic traffic volume, and your position in organic search results for your target keywords.

As we’ve mentioned, one of the most powerful tools for SEO site audits is Ahrefs. Other tools that are very effective at SEO reports include Google Analytics, MOZ, SEMrush, and Google search console, all of which are cheaper alternatives.

How do you read SEO reports?

To read an SEO report, you need something to compare the report against.

Ideally, you should compare your websites’ SEO report against your competitors, and then compare your monthly reports against one another.

If you’re publishing high-quality content, doing effective content marketing, diversifying in other digital marketing tactics such as social media marketing and PPC advertising, and link building, then your SEO reports should show a slow yet steady increase in domain authority, search engine rankings, and organic traffic.

An increase in the values of any ranking factor we’ve discussed will demonstrate an effective SEO strategy.

How do I create a SEO report?

Creating an SEO report starts with an SEO site audit of your website and that of 3-5 of your competitors.

Find out the value of as many website SEO and performance metrics that you can to create a benchmark from where to start, the most important of which are:

Compile these figures into an easy-to-read table, and compare them to your competitors. You can then begin to formulate an approximate timeline and SEO strategy with a planned SEO road map that will guide you during your SEO campaign.

How do I audit my Website for SEO?

Auditing your website for SEO is best done with an SEO tool, such as Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush or Google Analytics.

It is a comparative analysis against your competitors and also an opportunity to identify any broken links on your website or any technical SEO errors and issues that need addressing.

• Manually search for your website in Google and see where you sit in the rankings.
• Look at your backlink profile.
• Check your page speed with this free checker tool

What is a good SEO score?

There is no definitive ‘good SEO score’ for your website. The best score a website can achieve for domain rating on SEO tools such as Ahrefs is 100 – but only the biggest enterprise-level websites, like Facebook, get that high of a rating.

What defines a good SEO score for your website is the score of other websites in your niche.

Say you’re an eCommerce website selling board shorts.

If you want to rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs), then you just need to have a better SEO score than the other boardshorts eCommerce sites on the internet.

That means you need a higher DR, and you need to have content that targets keywords not targeted by your competitors. Having better on-page metrics, such as page speed, will also put you ahead of your competitors.

What are SEO audit tools?

SEO audit tools are software that has access to the technical aspects of a website. These tools include:

• Ahrefs
• Moz
• SEMrush
• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console

These tools can assess a website relative to other sites in the industry.

How much does an SEO audit cost?

The cost of an SEO audit depends on the SEO agency performing the audit. Some less-reputable SEO agencies will offer an SEO audit for free!

But you’ll end up getting a skeleton report with data you could have found yourself, and you’ll have given away your URL and website – meaning they can then target you with their email marketing.

Other more reliable SEO firms charge around the $500.00 mark for a comprehensive SEO audit – but these reports are jam-packed with actionable data from all of the leading SEO tools.

Summary

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of SEO reports. SEO reports play a vital role in informing the SEO strategies of a website – without an SEO report, you have no starting point and no direction.

This is why we suggest working with a well-known, reputable SEO agency from the start of your SEO campaign. Reach out to us at Loganix to get your SEO audit and start ranking higher in search engines.