1. Brand & Non-Brand Distinction
Mixing branded and non-branded search terms in reports will result in inaccurate reporting. Separate brands in your Google Analytics or Google Search Console reports whenever possible:
The distinction between brand and non-brand can help you better understand how well your brand actually performs in the market for SEO and what actions are needed to improve performance. For example, if there is a negative trend for “Zeo”, you can report this to the marketing teams, or if there is a significant decrease in words other than brand queries, such as “tent”, you can check this situation as it may be an indicator of a technical SEO problem.
2. Lack of Competitors
Comparing SEO performance with competitors will give you an idea of how the brand is really doing. For example, if the decrease in organic keyword count is happening at the same time as your competitors, you can talk about sectoral decreases or a change in trend. Therefore, competitors will also give you valuable information about where the sector is going.
It can also be useful to not only show your competitors’ organic traffic metrics, but also to examine them closely and prioritize your suggestions, such as “ They did a great job on X, and that’s why their organic traffic increased by y%. That’s why we recommend allocating more resources to the sample job we sent you.”
3. Search Console Average Position
The average position information for keywords or pages is available in Search Console. Of course, when filters such as date, device or country are added, the average position will change. If a keyword appears negative compared to the previous period, it will not show that its position has decreased in Google, but on the contrary, it has increased. In other words, the closer you are to 0 for a word, the better your position is:
4. Data Source
If you are creating reports from platforms like Looker Studio, be overseas chinese in uk data sure to clearly state the data source. Even if you say this during the meeting, when the reports are shared within the brand after the meeting, the relevant people may question the sources of the data here. This may create additional phone and email traffic for you. To prevent this, clearly state the data sources in an appropriate area:
5. External Factors
We have started to see external factors frequently in recent years. These factors can vary depending on each sector. You can think of the simplest example as the COVID-19 pandemic period. The Ukraine-Russia war, political and policy developments are all situations that actually affect users' preferences. You can see an example of this below:
Of course, seasonality should not be forgotten among external factors. An increase in search volume for food or similar topics during Ramadan can be seen as a significant decrease when you compare this month with the following months. You need to clearly state such situations in your reports. Do not think of this situation as only negative, for example, since volumes related to health or masks increased during the pandemic period, this situation was positively reflected in organic traffic.
In summary, reports that do not take external factors into consideration or provide details will always be incomplete.
6. Future Action Plans and Recommendations
Due to the nature of SEO reports, positive increases may not always be visible. You can also clearly state future plans regarding decreases in meetings with the brand. For example, if there has been a loss of clicks on the phrase “hospital near me” and the average position has dropped to lower ranks, briefly explain the actions that can be taken here.
Don’t be afraid to explain your shortcomings and how you can overcome them. If you plan your next steps in advance, you can be ready for any scenario. Including plans for the next month in each report can also be useful for software and content teams to create their own business plans.
7. Lack of Insights and Commentary
The people who will review your SEO performance reports will not always be SEO experts. Instead of just presenting the report to others, supporting this report with detailed, clear and understandable insights will make it easier for everyone to read the report. Instead of just a screenshot showing the Google Analytics session metric, be sure to support these results with summary and understandable comments.
For example, in the graph above, you can attribute the decline in recent weeks to trends or competitors renewing their content with up-to-date and accurate information. Let's go with another example, organic traffic may have been affected because BIST was closed during the relevant period. Adding just a few sentences of clear comments will make your reports understandable. These comments will not only strengthen your reports, but will also help the brand interpret its target audience better with numbers.
8. Missing Key Metrics
Each brand may have important KPIs. Not using the most important metrics for the brand in your reports will not attract their attention. For example, if you use the “user” metric even though the “session” metric is one of the most important metrics sent to you, your reports may not be valued much. You can add the most important metrics by confirming that they are included in your measurements and avoid unnecessary data clutter.
Not adding the metrics and results you use when creating a forecast in SEO to your reports can be shown as one of the most important shortcomings:
9. Completed & Pending Work
At the end of each month, you can present the work done for SEO performance, the completed work, and the work that had to be blocked on a single page. In this context, you can print out JIRA or Click-up records and add them to reports:
You don't need to explain all the details of the jobs in the report. If you simply state and add the job titles, those who review the report can see the entire process of SEO work more clearly.
10. Target Audience
Understand the details of the audience that will review the SEO reports beforehand; because if the report you will prepare will go to C-level people (such as CEO, CMO), it should include different details, and if it will go to marketing or internal SEO teams, different information should be used in the reports.
Since not everyone has the same level of SEO knowledge and understanding, understanding the reports will vary from person to person in the business. While you can talk to SEO teams within the brand about crawl budget and pages in the index through the report, it may be more logical to report to senior managers about conversion rate or other metrics in the organic channel.
11. Big Mistakes
Of course, we are all human and we can make mistakes from time to time. We should take care to keep these mistakes to a minimum. In Rank Tracker, incorrect analysis of YoY change in a word or ranking changes according to desktop and mobile will cause the entire report to be interpreted incorrectly. For example, if YoY data has not decreased for the relevant word but has increased, you can pay attention to this situation:
In another example, using incorrect characters in filters added with RegEx in Looker Studio reports can also cause major errors throughout the report:
12. Too Many Pages & Data
Including too many pages in an SEO measurement report does not always ensure that the report is good. I also recommend that you do not prepare reports with too many pages, as the people you will be sending them to will have limited time.
