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General Reporting Best Practices
✅ Keep it simple, consistent and credible ✅ Align results to business/team objectives ❌ Don’t use excessive SEO jargon ❌ Don’t skip over issues or negative trends
1️⃣ Identify your audience
Will one single report help to keep your whole team informed? Or should you break them down? Where it makes sense, you can use this guide to create a standard workspace you can use across departments. Other reports may require more granular data to support the priorities of each team. The executive team, the SEO team, the content team and the technical team will be interested in different sets of data. Consider what you need to communicate best with each, and at what cadence best supports their workflows. Your teammates will be more likely to spend time in a report that is directly related to their role and their workflow.2️⃣ Save time with templated workspaces
You can use Conductor’s Report Builders to create templated workspaces for audiences like the executive team and content team. In a few clicks, you’ll have a report created for a specific audience. If you feel the report is complete, schedule it for recurring delivery. If you think the recipient of your report would benefit from other data, you can add more widgets to the report.
3️⃣ Name new workspaces effectively
Be specific in your titles to keep yourself and your team organized. When you add your new widget to your new workspace, you’ll be prompted to “create a new workspace by typing it in above.” This is your opportunity to create a specific title that keeps the intent of the report clear for its recipient. Soon enough, you’ll have a lot of reports, so if you’re specific now, you’ll thank yourself later.
- Along with naming the report’s intent or purpose, name what topics it may cover.
- If you have multiple domains, consider adding the relevant web property.
- If you report by product or service, include the keyword groups or page groups that the report references.
4️⃣ Name each widget effectively
The title of each widget should succinctly describe what the data in that widget shows. One best practice is to name the widget based on any filters you’ve used. Then use the description box to provide context or action steps. This will help the recipient of your report to know exactly what data they’re viewing—saving them time, and preventing an email to you asking to explain your report.
5️⃣ Let the workspace tell a story
Start with a visual that hooks the recipient, and then arrange your widgets to tell the story of your data. Use the outline on the left to drag-and-drop the widgets’ place in the workspace if you need to. Consider starting with the most recent data at the top of the report, and end with the action-oriented data to suggest next steps. Use a custom widget to create a title block and headers to create sections. Spruce up your workspace by embedding images—like your logo—or videos, slides, or anything you think will help tell the data story that your audience needs to hear.6️⃣ Automate with a realistic delivery cadence
Consider how often the recipients of each report need to see updated data in their workflow. Appropriate timing will keep them engaged in the reporting process. You can choose daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly delivery. You can also select which day of the week reports are delivered. Mondays are a popular day because data will be fresh. But maybe Tuesdays are better at your organization because there is less noise in people’s inboxes and calendars. Make it easy for them. Schedule the report when you think the recipients will have a moment to give it their attention.
The Executive Report
- Highlight overall SEO performance and impact on business objectives
- Showcase both strengths and opportunities for improvement
- Summarize organic traffic growth and visibility improvements
- Benchmark competitor market share in search results
- Demonstrate the value of SEO investments with real results
The “SEO Campaign” Performance Report
- Measure how effectively your efforts drive traffic, rankings and conversions
- Identify areas for improvement that need attention
- Demonstrate the ROI of your website optimization efforts, helping to justify continued or increased investment
- Get insights necessary to refine future tactics and strategies
The Competitive Landscape Report
- Benchmark your organic performance against top competitors
- Uncover new and emerging competitors
- Track your and your competitors’ market share gains and losses
- Analyze competitive performance across priority business areas
The AIO Impact Tracking Report
- Understand the increasing presence of AIO result types and progression of AIO result ownership
- Benchmark performance against competitors and identify strategies to gain a competitive edge in AIO
- Measure the impact of AIO results on key business metrics like impressions, CTR, traffic and conversions
The Local Performance Report
- Understand which locations are performing well and where there’s potential for growth
- Uncover which competitors are strongest across key locations
- Gauge year-over-year local demand and seasonality
- Allocate resources effectively by focusing on high-impact regions and improving underperforming locations