6 SEO Reporting Items to Look at Every Month

Written by Nick Stamoulis

analytics metricsAn SEO campaign is only worthwhile if you’re going to take the time to analyze its success on a regular basis. Reviewing monthly SEO reports allows you to see where you are making progress and what areas might need additional work. Our SEO reporting go-tos are Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Google Analytics provides us with traffic source information while Google Search Console provides us with keyword data and technical SEO information. Every website is different and the larger, more complex sites might require additional reporting using multiple tools, but at a high level these are the SEO reporting items that every website owner of every size should be looking at monthly:

Organic traffic

While overall traffic is worth looking at each month, it’s organic traffic that SEOs should be focusing on. After all, the goal of an SEO campaign is to increase organic traffic over time. In addition to looking at month over month data, look at year over year organic traffic data, which will take seasonality into account. For example, B2Cs often see a dip in organic traffic from December to January, while the traffic pattern for B2Bs is often the opposite. The key is to look at the larger trend over the course of the campaign. Not every month is going to see an increase and that’s OK.

Conversions from organic traffic

If the goal of your website is to generate conversions, one of the first things you should do as you implement an SEO campaign is determine what your conversion metric is and set up conversion tracking. Conversions should correlate with organic traffic. If you see organic traffic growth but no increase in conversions you’ll need to dive deeper into why that is. If you’re sure your keyword targeting is on track, it could be a website issue.

Links

It’s a good idea to keep track of the number of inbound links that appear in your Search Console each month. This number is going to fluctuate but it shouldn’t be drastic. Where are links coming from? Pull this data every month and keep it on file in case ranking slips in the future and you need to figure out why.

Errors

Page not found
A handful of errors is normal for any website and it’s unlikely to hurt your SEO. However, if you notice lots of errors or a big increase in errors you’ll want to pass this information on to your developers to investigate the issue and 301 redirect any 404 pages that are occurring.

Content performance

Since content is so important to SEO, you’ll want to look at which pieces of content are getting the highest (and lowest) amount of traffic. See where the traffic is coming from. If it’s coming from social media, which sites are delivering the most traffic? As you further develop your SEO content strategy you can use this data to determine what topics will get the most attention.

Keywords

SEO isn’t strictly about keyword performance, the focus should be on overall organic growth over time, but it’s still something to look at each month and keep records of. Keyword rankings are going to fluctuate but the fluctuation shouldn’t be severe. If you notice a huge dip it could signal a problem with the website and/or SEO strategy.

These are the SEO items you’ll want to keep an eye on every month. Of course, if you’ve been having SEO issues you’ll want to check more often than that but otherwise there’s no need to look at these items constantly. Things are going to fluctuate and looking every day will only make you crazy!

Categorized in:

LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE:



Watch How Brick Marketing Can Help Your Company:

Brick Marketing, a Boston-based digital marketing agency, specializes in SEO management, content marketing, social media management, digital ad management (PPC), email newsletter marketing, website development and more.

Contact Us for More Info


Digital Marketing Solutions Include:


Brands & Clients Brick Marketing Has Helped: