Steal Our SEO Report Template (Inspired by SEO Experts)

How do you inform the distinction between a great search engine marketing and a foul one?

Take a look at their search engine marketing studies.

• Unhealthy search engine marketing studies – Don’t talk the work you’ve carried out successfully
• Good search engine marketing studies – Share helpful insights and supply a logical overview of the work

I’ve seen many search engine marketing studies from consultants, in-house groups, and companies. I mentioned them with search engine marketing specialists from our Ahrefs Insider neighborhood.

Utilizing this data, I’ve created an search engine marketing report template you can construct on and increase your self to create your very personal search engine marketing report.

To get began, make a replica of our search engine marketing report template and personalize it to your consumer’s wants. You’ll have an ideal search engine marketing report in no time.

However earlier than you steal our search engine marketing report template, let’s contemplate the next:

An search engine marketing report is an outline of important SEO metrics reflecting enterprise development, efficiency in search engines like google, backlink portfolio power, and web site well being.

It’s the primary useful resource on your shoppers, managers, or bosses that tracks the progress of your work and its affect. In any case, these stakeholders wish to see that their funding in search engine marketing is returned.

Whilst you can’t all the time win at search engine marketing each month, an efficient search engine marketing report ought to convey that your work will return a optimistic ROI within the lengthy time period.

This leads us properly to…

Whereas the content material of an search engine marketing report largely is determined by a consumer’s enterprise kind, most search engine marketing slide deck studies often include the next:

• Title Card – The entrance web page of your search engine marketing report 
  • Government abstract – Bulleted abstract of a very powerful factors from the report
• Efficiency abstract – An summary of your search engine marketing efficiency for the time interval 
  • Natural visitors – Chart of your natural visitors efficiency over the tie interval
  • search engine marketing KPIs – Consider search engine marketing metrics which are carefully tied to income development, like conversions, natural visitors
• Key phrase rankings – See how rankings of a very powerful key phrases have modified 
  • Winner and loser key phrases
• Hyperlinks – Share probably the most related updates with the web site’s hyperlink profile 
  • New and misplaced referring domains – Share new and misplaced referring domains
  • Backlink development – Share new, invaluable referring pages that drive visitors and/or cross hyperlink fairness
  • Hyperlink alternatives – Establish areas for enchancment
• Content material – Present an replace on the web site’s content material efficiency 
  • Content material efficiency – Present an in depth take a look at content material efficiency
  • Content material alternatives – Share related content material alternatives
• Technical search engine marketing
  • search engine marketing well being – Know that the web site is doing nicely from the technical search engine marketing perspective
• Subsequent steps – Outlining a very powerful search engine marketing duties to be accomplished within the subsequent time interval

Your work doesn’t finish with simply dumping a bunch of metrics right into a doc. You’ll must interpret them and supply helpful commentary.

Your search engine marketing studies ought to convey the affect of your work in probably the most succinct and coherent manner potential.

Now, let’s get again to the expectations between you and your consumer. The report ought to primarily include what you’ve beforehand mentioned. In case you despatched an search engine marketing report with out educating the consumer beforehand, you’d get a whole lot of questions and calls for to point out extra information. That is even when the search engine marketing report is ideal. That’s since you’re the search engine marketing knowledgeable, not the consumer.

I’ll clarify all of the used metrics and information as we undergo the slides later. However I additionally extremely suggest you take a look at our articles on SEO KPIs and SEO metrics that actually matter.

Based mostly on what I’ve heard, SEOs can spend anyplace from half-hour to a couple hours monthly on every search engine marketing report. This is determined by a number of elements:

• Your tasks within the mission
• Complexity of the mission
• Your search engine marketing expertise and data
• Your information analytics expertise and data
• Reporting format you and your shoppers favor

Let me increase on the final level. It appears most SEOs favor utilizing the nice previous PDFs and decks for reporting functions:

Our search engine marketing report template can also be in a slide deck format as a result of it’s the best to make use of and skim for everybody. The draw back is you need to undergo new information each month and put it collectively manually.

Some seasoned entrepreneurs favor to make use of data dashboards like Google Looker Studio, Tableau, or Energy BI. These can take you a whole lot of time to arrange. However they’ve the benefit of updating all the info routinely, saving you time within the lengthy run.

However again to the precise template…

Our search engine marketing report template is a superb place to begin to create an search engine marketing report your shoppers will admire.

To create the report from begin to end, you’ll want the next instruments:

Prepared?

Click here to make a copy of our updated SEO report template.

You may change the colour scheme to the model colours of your consumer, give it a little bit of your individual branding, and make it look fancier—no matter you like.

Earlier than explaining the rationale behind every slide, let me emphasize a couple of issues.

Initially, be at liberty to tailor the slides to fit your consumer’s wants, in addition to your service choices. We’ve made this report back to cowl all search engine marketing areas for month-to-month reporting.

Second, the kind of enterprise you’re doing search engine marketing for must also be mirrored within the report changes.

In case you’re doing local SEO, you’ll most likely embrace an outline of native rankings and native SERP options. Ecommerce consumer? It’s possible you’ll wish to embrace the Common Order Worth from the natural visitors and dive deeper into the technical facet.

And lastly, bear in mind the template comprises made-up information, insights, and eventualities. Don’t attempt to analyze the content material of it. Somewhat, use its construction as a information.

Let’s get began.

1. Title card

The primary slide is probably the most simple to create.

Replace the report’s date, add your emblem, and add your consumer’s web site URL. As soon as these are accomplished, you’re good to go.

2. Government abstract

An govt abstract web page highlights a very powerful data within the report. That is helpful for senior stakeholders who could not have time to learn the whole search engine marketing report.

That is typically the primary and final slide {that a} CEO seems at. Thirty seconds later, they’ll say, “Nice job!” and received’t hassle to learn the relaxation.

What kind of issues must you embrace within the govt abstract?

• A short abstract of your search engine marketing KPIs
• “search engine marketing wins” value sharing
• An important duties accomplished throughout that reporting interval
• Duties that require additional consideration

3. Efficiency abstract

search engine marketing efficiency is judged in your consumer’s key performance indicators (KPIs). As natural visitors is the start line for many search engine marketing evaluation, visualizing your natural visitors efficiency in a slide offers shoppers a fast concept of whether or not their search engine marketing marketing campaign is on observe.

Subsequent, you’ll be able to add different SEO KPIs. A preferred alternative to incorporate for a lot of companies is conversions:

The screenshot within the report is taken from a customized Google Analytics (GA) report that solely exhibits the supply/medium dimension and chosen conversions to keep away from all of the litter within the default studies. The conversions are then in contrast month over month (MoM).

Relying on the consumer and their enterprise kind, you could wish to embrace completely different or extra KPIs. The rule of thumb is to decide on metrics as carefully tied to the enterprise’s income as potential.

You may see two of probably the most common search engine marketing KPIs: natural visitors and conversions. However you could possibly additionally embrace search visibility.

Search visibility is the search engine marketing model of some of the necessary marketing KPIs: share of voice (SOV). It’s key phrase rankings on steroids.

To get the search visibility metric, create a mission in Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker. In there, paste the primary key phrases that embody what your viewers is trying to find (you might want to end keyword research first), tag it to allow filtering later, and also you’re good to go:

You’ll then discover the search visibility metric within the Opponents overview tab:

4. Key phrase Rankings

The general search visibility KPI isn’t the one visibility metric that shoppers are fascinated about. They’ve sure product classes or matters on the weblog that often differ in relevancy and worth to the enterprise. That’s the place measuring search visibility for key phrase segments comes into play.

You will get this information by creating extra tags in your Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker mission. Scroll all the way down to your key phrases within the overview, examine people who you wish to tag, and assign the tag to them or create a brand new one:

5. Key phrase winners and losers

Whereas search visibility metrics are one of the best proxies on your natural development, most shoppers additionally wish to see place modifications for his or her most necessary key phrases.

Presenting place modifications of tons of of key phrases in a deck will get fairly messy. We should always, subsequently, fulfill the consumer by solely reporting on a very powerful key phrases for the enterprise. You may then embrace the remainder by linking to the exported spreadsheet if the consumer desires to see it.

6. Model vs non-brand break up

For well-established manufacturers, you’ll be able to section non-branded natural visitors to point out the affect of eradicating model visitors.

The rationale for displaying non-brand visitors right here is to keep away from attributing natural visitors modifications to advertising and marketing actions unrelated to search engine marketing. For instance, if the advertising and marketing crew launched a wonderful PR marketing campaign or began airing mass advertising and marketing campaigns, your natural visitors would naturally go up simply from individuals trying up your model extra.

To indicate a extra correct overview of natural visitors progress, merely apply a question filter in Google Search Console (GSC):

Once more, you wish to examine the present month’s efficiency with the earlier month’s and, ideally, even with the year-over-year (YoY) efficiency. Most companies are inclined to have seasonal swings, so some MoM comparisons could look unhealthy simply because the excessive season has already ended.

Watch out right here. GSC solely offers 28-day views and comparisons by default. So, you might want to choose customized dates to match complete months. Keep in mind to match the identical variety of days. Let’s take a look at a state of affairs the place a month has 31 days (e.g., in such a case, begin the comparability on the final day of August to account for less than 30 days in September).

7. New referring domains highlights

Subsequent up is the backlink profile, which exhibits the consumer what new, attention-grabbing hyperlinks they’ve discovered within the final 30 days.

Nonetheless, it is best to solely report on backlink profile modifications in case your actions within the mission affect the buying of latest hyperlinks. That may vary from creating link bait content to planning and executing outreach campaigns. I point out this as a result of hyperlink constructing is usually a separate exercise from many search engine marketing tasks.

If you’re accountable for backlink profile development, go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, examine the Referring domains report, and filter for brand new referring domains up to now 30 days (as you’ll be able to see within the slide.)

We present the highlights of the newly acquired referring domains sorted by Area Ranking (DR) rating as a result of it’s a stable and easy-to-understand proxy for enhancing backlink profile development.

In case you interact in outreach actions and see a brand new referring area gained from that, you’ll be able to spotlight it within the screenshot so the consumer can differentiate between earned and purchased hyperlinks.

8. Hyperlink constructing progress

This slide particulars the hyperlink constructing work carried out in the course of the month.

It could actually embrace:

• The pages you constructed hyperlinks to.
• Any standout, new referring pages.
• The variety of hyperlinks these pages bought.
• Your hyperlink constructing statistics, e.g., prospects contacted and success price.
• Any insights you deem related, e.g., exceptionally good or unhealthy hyperlink bait content material.

Ahrefs’ Greatest by hyperlinks development report in Site Explorer is nice to incorporate right here as a result of it exhibits you pages that obtained probably the most backlinks up to now 30 days.

There’s way more to evaluating hyperlink constructing than the variety of hyperlinks and DRs of referring domains. However that’s related for hyperlink prospecting earlier than launching outreach campaigns, not for search engine marketing reporting. Your shoppers don’t must dive into all of the nuances.

9. Technical search engine marketing well being overview

That is the place you’ll give a snapshot of the web site’s well being that considers all technical search engine marketing errors and points.

To get this information:

Go to Ahrefs’ Site Audit, arrange a mission for the consumer’s web site should you haven’t carried out so already, and let the device crawl the web site. Relying in your crawl settings, Site Audit can recrawl the web site periodically, offering you with all the present and historic technical search engine marketing information.

You get the Well being Rating on the overview web page after every crawl is accomplished.

If that is your first time crawling the web site, use this Well being Rating as a place to begin. You can begin referencing month-to-month comparisons in your second report.

Now, you could be considering that one metric isn’t sufficient to mirror the entire state of technical SEO. And also you’re proper. However you’re often not sending search engine marketing studies to builders or different SEOs who can simply perceive extra in-depth data. For that reason, the Well being Rating is one of the best proxy for a client-friendly, technical search engine marketing metric.

Once more, this doesn’t imply you shouldn’t report on extra technical search engine marketing metrics. Some tasks contain enormous web sites and sophisticated, technical search engine marketing duties. In such conditions, the consumer will possible welcome crawling and indexing statistics and particulars about a very powerful points impacting your web site’s technical search engine marketing.

10. Subsequent steps

After sharing all the info and studies, it is best to give them a plan of a very powerful search engine marketing duties you’ll be engaged on subsequent month.

A fast to-do checklist summarizing your primary focus for the next month can be sufficient. It’ll additionally function an anchor on your subsequent search engine marketing report.

Last ideas

So there you have got it. A totally customizable search engine marketing reporting template to offer to your shoppers. In case you skimmed by way of the article first, right here’s the hyperlink once more:

Click here to make a copy of our updated SEO report template.

SEO Reporting isn’t many individuals’s concept of enjoyable. However it’s essential to grasp the fundamentals so that you don’t miscommunicate to your shoppers.

To wrap up, I wish to thank everybody who shared their reporting insights. I’m additionally grateful for Ahrefs Insider members, who proactively reached out with their data and studies earlier than I even began creating the template.

Are there extra metrics or slides this search engine marketing report template ought to have? Acquired any questions? Ping me on Twitter.