How to create an enterprise SEO monthly report

Of all the ridiculous and sublime ways to spend $10,000 a month of your enterprise SEO budget, your least greatest ROI has come from link exchange emails like this below, where a C-note can get you a backlink on a website with a domain authority of 80+ – potentially evening out that PBN you created for another $10k. 

The author took the screenshot.

If you missed that hint of sarcasm above, let’s be clear, you should not be spending your enterprise SEO budget on link exchanges or PBNs. 

Instead, you should be looking to spend your enterprise SEO budget on SEO tactics that bring value to the company and align with the overall business objectives of your leadership team. 

And when it comes to reporting to your C-suite, they want to connect the dots between your SEO budget and the bottom line. 

We’ve all been there. You agonize over creating the Looker Studio dashboard and including the right metrics. You email your boss an impressive, in-depth SEO report and hope for the best. 

But you are struggling to articulate clearly how your enterprise SEO strategy impacts ROI. 

Well, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is. Don’t let feelings guide your decisions. Instead, you need hard, cold data to build your enterprise SEO report that will win over your leadership team. 

My enterprise SEO monthly report template to answer all your boss’s questions

Based on inspiration from Tom Critchlow’s The SEO MBA and Adam Gent’s SEO Roadmap, I created this enterprise SEO monthly report template. 

This report includes screenshots of all my Looker Studio and Tableau dashboards. 

Caveat: I hate presentation decks. It’s a giant waste of time. But the reality is your boss and your bosses boss will likely want a deck. So give them what they want and what they are comfortable reading. 

Here’s how to deliver your monthly enterprise SEO report to your boss and across departments

Every month I send two emails to my bosses, direct reports, and cross-departments. The main goal of these biweekly emails is to begin to build an SEO culture within the company. 

The second email of the month, typically on the 15th, is the previous month’s report. I call out 3-5 highlights, lowlights, and next steps to give the C-suite a high-level overview. 

Screenshot taken by author.

Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on.

<input type=”hidden” name=”utmMedium” value=”” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”utmCampaign” value=”” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”utmSource” value=”” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”utmContent” value=”” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”pageLink” value=”” />
<input type=”hidden” name=”ipAddress” value=”” />

Processing…Please wait.
SUBSCRIBE

See terms.

function getCookie(cname) {
let name = cname + “=”;
let decodedCookie = decodeURIComponent(document.cookie);
let ca = decodedCookie.split(‘;’);
for(let i = 0; i <ca.length; i++) {
let c = ca[i];
while (c.charAt(0) == ‘ ‘) {
c = c.substring(1);
}
if (c.indexOf(name) == 0) {
return c.substring(name.length, c.length);
}
}
return “”;
}
document.getElementById(‘munchkinCookieInline’).value = getCookie(‘_mkto_trk’);

72 enterprise SEO metrics to include in your monthly enterprise SEO dashboards

Below is a list of enterprise SEO metrics I include in all my dashboards. 

It’s important to note that not all of these metrics are shared with my leadership team. Use these metrics to help understand the story you want to tell the leadership team.  

Also, remember you are an enterprise SEO lead, not a data scientist or Google Analytics expert. 

If you’re working at an enterprise-level company, you will likely have a data analytics team to collaborate with to build these dashboards with you. 

In your first 90 days as an enterprise SEO lead, I recommend copying/pasting this as a starting conversation with your data team. 

All reports listed below should be available to segment by:  

Market (Locations)  

Device (Mobile, Desktop)  

Branded, Non-Branded, Combined 

Directory breakdown (blog, product pages, category pages, support pages, etc.) 

Month-over-month, year-over-year  

Website organic dashboard  

All should be available to segment by organic, direct, or referral traffic. 

Organic overview 

Website Organic traffic sessions 

Website Organic traffic sessions compared to direct and referral 

Website Organic traffic sessions branded  

Website Organic traffic visits / sessions non branded  

Website Organic traffic users  

Website Organic traffic new users  

Website Organic traffic new users vs. returning 

Website Organic traffic pages/sessions  

Website Organic traffic avg session duration 

Website Organic traffic bounce rate  

Website Organic pageviews broken  

Leads overview 

Organic

Website Organic traffic sessions  

Website Organic traffic users 

Website Organic traffic leads 

Website Organic traffic MQLs 

Website Organic traffic SQLs 

Website Organic traffic sign ups  

Website Organic traffic sign ups %  

Website Organic traffic revenue  

Direct

Website Direct traffic sessions  

Website Direct traffic leads  

Website Direct traffic MQLs 

Website Direct traffic SQLs 

Website Direct traffic sign ups  

Website Direct traffic sign ups %  

Website Direct traffic revenue 

Referral

Website Referral traffic sessions   

Website Referral traffic leads  

Website Referral traffic MQLs 

Website Referral traffic SQLs 

Website Referral traffic sign ups  

Website Referral traffic sign ups %  

Website Referral traffic revenue 

Organic content overview 

Website Organic # of pages driving organic traffic

Website Organic All URLs driving most organic traffic – display top 10, should list all URLs if deep dive needed 

Website Organic All URLs driving most leads – display top 10, should list all URLs if deep dive needed 

Website Organic All URLs driving most MQLs – display top 10, should list all URLs if deep dive needed 

Website Organic All URLs driving most SQLs – display top 10, should list all URLs if deep dive needed 

Website Organic All URLs driving most sign ups– display top 10, should list all URLs if deep dive needed 

Website Organic All URLs driving most revenue– display top 10, should list all URLs if deep dive needed 

Website Impressions – pull from Google Search Console

Website Impressions biggest winners based on based on search queries filtered by impression difference 

Website Impressions biggest losers based on based on search queries filtered by impression difference 

Website Clicks 

Website Clicks biggest winners based on based on search queries filtered by clicks difference 

Website Clicks biggest losers based on based on search queries filtered by clicks difference 

Website Avg. Position 

Website Impressions vs. URL CTR By Device 

Website Top 10 Landing Pages broken down by Impressions, Clicks, CTR 

Website Top 10 Queries broken down by Impressions, Clicks, CTR, Avg Position

Website Domain rating – Pulled from Semrush/Ahrefs

Website Keyword rankings from Top 10 Overall – segmented by page type (blog, product, support, etc.) 

Website Keyword rankings from #1-3 spots, #4-11, #11-20 – segmented by page type (blog, product, support, etc.) 

Search visibility compared to key competitors 

% of visibility 

Organic Backlinks Overview – Pulled from Semrush/Ahrefs

Link growth  

Referring domains 

Top 10 links with the highest domain authority  

Organic technical overview 

Website pages with crawlability issues (crawl errors) broken down by 3xx redirects, broken 4xx errors, server errors 5xx  

Number of pages crawled  

Number of new issues   

Number of total issues bucketed into high, medium, and low priority  

What percentage of page loads are slow, average or fast? – Please pull % YoY comparison and quarterly 

How has the page load time changed over the last year?  

Homepage speed score desktop  

Homepage speed score mobile 

Competitor Homepage 1 speed score desktop  

Competitor Homepage 1 speed score mobile 

Competitor Homepage 2 speed score desktop  

Competitor Homepage 2 speed score mobile 

Competitor Homepage 3 speed score desktop  

Competitor Homepage 3 speed score mobile 

How does the site perform for each of the CruX metrics?  

Top 10 URLs segmented by performance score, LCP, TBT, CLS, Status 

14 enterprise SEO tools to make your SEO report look so fresh and so clean

Below is a list of enterprise SEO tools I use to create my monthly reports: 

Free enterprise SEO tools

Looker Studio (previously Google Data Studio) 

Google Search Console

Google Analytics

Google Lighthouse

Bing Webmaster Tools

Paid enterprise SEO tools 

Semrush or Ahrefs (depending on your preference)

Screaming Frog 

Lumar (previously DeepCrawl, but comes at a minimum $10k per month price point now)

Conductor

Supermetrics (this is the only tool to connect all your platforms into Looker Studio)

Enterprise SEO tools I wish I had the budget for: 

Clearscope or MarketMuse

Sistrix

Avoid overwhelming your C-level executives with SEO metrics they don’t care about

The chances of your boss or any C-level executives reading your 50-page SEO report are about as high as Tom Hanks finding Wilson.

It’s our job as SEO professionals to get under the hood to see how the car works. It’s our job to diagnose the issues. But it’s not our job to explain how the motor works or why. 

You must choose wisely the metrics you share.  

Before you hit send, ask yourself: Is SEO worth it from this report? 

After all, you must make a compelling case for SEO in your reporting, or SEO will be left behind. 
The post How to create an enterprise SEO monthly report appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Source: Search Engine Land
Link: How to create an enterprise SEO monthly report