What is an SEO report, and what should it include?
An SEO report is a regular, written account of what was done to a site and what that did in search. Mine answers three questions, in this order: what did I change, what moved in Google, and what am I doing next? Anything that doesn't help answer one of those is decoration. The report's job is to let you check my work without learning SEO first, the same way an audit that puts each fault in order of the clicks it's losing should make sense to the person paying for it.
I work alone, so the person who writes the report is the person who did the work. There's no account manager smoothing the numbers on the way to you. If something I changed made a page worse, it's in the report, next to the date I changed it.
Every search number in it comes from your own Google Search Console property, the only source that shows what Google showed searchers and what they clicked. Google defines the four core numbers plainly. Impressions are how often someone saw a link to your site, clicks are how often someone clicked one, click rate is clicks divided by impressions, and average position is the topmost position your link held, averaged across all queries.
How I decide what to include in an SEO report, section by section
It's the same eight sections every month, in the same order, so you can hold one report next to the last one without hunting for anything. If you're working out how to create an SEO report of your own, this list is the part worth copying. The order does more work than any layout or colour scheme.
- i.
What I changed, with dates
A dated log of every change: a redirect added, a title rewritten, a noindex removed, two pages merged. Without dates, nobody can tell whether a movement followed the work or just arrived at the same time.
- ii.
The four numbers, against two baselines
Clicks, impressions, click rate and average position for the month, set against the month before and the same month last year. Search Console's Compare tab offers both. The previous month shows momentum, and last year shows whether a dip is simply the season.
- iii.
Pages that gained and pages that lost
The pages with the biggest change in clicks, in both directions, side by side. A page that dropped isn't a footnote. It's usually where next month's work starts.
- iv.
The queries behind each move, brand and non-brand
For every page that moved, the searches that moved with it. Gaining clicks on your own name means something very different from gaining them on a service search. Search Console's branded queries filter splits the two, though Google only offers it on top level properties with enough queries.
- v.
Leads and enquiries, where they're tracked
If your enquiry form or booking button is tracked in Analytics, the report shows how many enquiries came from organic search and which pages they started on. If nothing's tracked, the report says so rather than guessing, and setting it up goes on the list.
- vi.
Indexing, technical health and links
What changed in the Page indexing report: new errors, pages that dropped out and pages that came back. When links are part of the work, I add the sites that newly appear in the Links report, which Google says is a sample rather than every link. If the trouble is indexing, the follow-on work is getting the right pages crawled and indexed.
- vii.
What didn't work
Anything I tried that hasn't moved yet, or moved the wrong way, with what I think the reason is. It's often the shortest section, but it's never missing.
- viii.
Next month, ranked by clicks at stake
The plan for the coming month in the order that's worth most, with one line on why each item made the list. The next report opens by saying whether it happened.
Before the first report goes out, I take a baseline: 16 months of the Performance report by page and by query, dated. It's the first step of how I diagnose a site before touching anything, and every monthly number gets read against it, not against anyone's memory.
What's the recommended format for a monthly SEO report?
One page of plain sentences first, then the detail. I open with three lines: what I did, what moved and what's next. The eight sections follow in the same order every month, each figure beside last month and last year, and every search number taken from your own Search Console, so a client SEO report reads the same way whoever opens it.
Charts come after the sentences, never instead of them. A chart shows that clicks went up. Only a sentence can say which page did it, after which change, and whether it's likely to last.
Rather have me do this? One person, whole job.
Book a call on UpworkHow do I explain a month where clicks rose but the click rate fell?
By putting every number on the table at once and saying which one matters. The clearest example I can publish is a quarter rather than a month, but the reading's identical. It comes from the Harmonized Getaways case study, where reach rose 31% and clicks rose 16% while the click rate went the other way.
| Metric | Previous quarter | This quarter | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 542 | 628 | Up 16% |
| Impressions | 42,994 | 56,320 | Up 31% |
| Click rate | 1.26% | 1.12% | Down |
| Average position | 22.3 | 24.7 | Lower, since a bigger number is worse |
Read on its own, the click rate looks like a failure, and a report that wanted to look good would leave it out. It isn't a failure. The site started appearing for far more searches, and a lot of those are ones it ranks poorly for. Each adds impressions and hardly any clicks, so the rate falls even while total clicks climb. Average position slips for the same reason.
Then the evidence goes under the headline. Desktop brought 77% of the impressions and clicked at 0.50%, while mobile clicked at 3.11%, so most of the new reach was broad research rather than booking. One broad search, beach house rentals, showed the site 337 times at position 3.0 and produced a single click, because people searching that way want a marketplace full of choice.
The sentence at the top of the report is short. More people saw the site, more of them clicked, and the rate dipped because the new reach is mostly on searches it doesn't rank well for yet. Then comes the plan, which starts with the pages closest to page one.
Which numbers do I leave out?
Anything you can't check, and anything that moves without meaning much. Every number in the report has to trace back to something you own and can open: a page or a query in your Search Console, an enquiry in your Analytics, or a change I made on a date I can name.
So there's no third-party authority score, no count of keywords ranked, and no plugin health grade. They're easy to push up, and none of them is a click. I also don't treat the newest days as settled, because Google marks its most recent data as preliminary and says it can still change.
Average position never appears alone, since a site that starts showing for many new searches on page three can watch its average fall while its clicks rise. That's exactly the Harmonized Getaways quarter above.
There's no AI citation count either. Search Console doesn't give citations in AI answers a report of their own, so a neat monthly number for them has come from somewhere you can't check. When I've done work aimed at AI answers, the report says the work is done. It doesn't say it's proven.
How can you tell if a report is hiding something?
Look for what's missing rather than what's there. These are the gaps I'd check in any SEO report, mine included.
- i.
Every line goes up
Real sites don't have months where every page gains. If nothing ever drops, the losers have been filtered out before the report reached you.
- ii.
No comparison, or a convenient one
A figure with nothing beside it can't be judged. Watch for a report that compares with last month in one chart and last year in the next, picking whichever looks better.
- iii.
Percentages without the raw numbers
A big percentage rise on a tiny base is still tiny. The real counts should sit next to every percentage, so you can see what the change was worth.
- iv.
Impressions leading the story
Impressions are the easiest number to grow, and they're often the one a report puts first. Clicks, and what happened after them, are the ones that pay for the work.
- v.
No dated list of changes
If the report can't say what was done and when, you can't separate the work from the season, a Google update or plain luck.
- vi.
Totals that don't match the table, with no note
This one's normal, as long as it's explained. Google leaves anonymized queries out of the tables to protect searchers' privacy but keeps their clicks in the chart totals, so the rows won't add up to the total. An honest report says so.
If you'd rather have one person do the monthly work and write a report you can check line by line against your own Search Console, that's how I run it. You'll see the dated changes, the pages that lost clicks and next month's plan, every time.
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