Monthly SEO Reporting: What Metrics to Include and How to Read Them +Free SEO Report Template

Quick Summary: 8 Core Components of a Search Engine Optimization Report

• Organic Traffic: Organic sessions, new vs. returning users, and geographic traffic distribution.
• Keyword Rankings: Priority keywords, ranking improvements, drops, and newly ranking queries.
• Backlink Profile: Number of backlinks, linking domain quality, and harmful or spam links.
• Conversions & Goals: Conversion rates from organic traffic, goal completions, and CRO performance.
• Technical SEO Health: Site speed, mobile usability, crawl errors, broken links, and on-page optimization.
• Competitor Analysis: Competitor keyword rankings, backlink profiles, and content strategies.
• AI Visibility: Content presence in AI-generated answers, AI share of voice, and query coverage.
• Insights & Recommendations: Key takeaways, areas for improvement, and next-month SEO actions.

‍

This applies whether you’re a business owner (with an online presence), a marketer, or an SEO specialist. In each case, receiving or creating a Search Engine Optimization Report is essential to your digital strategy. 

Assuming you’re on the receiving end of the story, do you know what your SEO expert should provide in these reports? Worry not, because in this article, we break it all down in a casual, easy-to-understand way!

What is Monthly SEO Reporting and Why Does It Matter?

SEO reporting is the process of compiling essential data about a website’s organic performance. It includes key metrics like search visibility, organic traffic, keyword rankings, conversions, and average position in search engine results. These reports help you understand how your site is performing and where it needs improvement.

‍

To make things easier, we’ve created a practical SEO monthly reporting template you can use or customize to your needs.

‍

As you can probably understand, an SEO report is a document containing specific information about a website’s performance. It includes crucial information regarding essential aspects (metrics) of a site’s visibility, organic traffic and organic traffic conversion, and the average search engine results page position.
 

Considering that effective SEO can’t be built overnight - not even if you put the best professionals in the world to work on it - for this report to have real meaning, it should be done periodically. Ideally, once a month. 

This cadence allows you to monitor the health of your online presence, what needs fixing, and whether the money you invest in your digital strategy is really worth it. 

Here is why requesting monthly SEO reporting is actually good for your business.
 

Let's reach your business goals!

Contact Promodo experts today for
a free strategy session.

Apply

Requesting SEO client reporting has many practical benefits. To name but a few: 

• It Allows You to Assess Your Site’s Performance

You gain a clear view of many aspects of your website’s effectiveness. 

• It Gives You Deep Data-Driven Insights

As you’ll discover in the following lines, an SEO Report contains - at least it should include - key metrics that offer you deep insights on specific parameters that may or may not need adjustment. 

• It Helps You Monitor Competitors (and see where you stand)

A monthly SEO Report is also a good way to see how the competition acts and where your business stands with competitors. 

• It Allows You to Track Your Progress (or the lack of it).

It’s a good way to monitor if your efforts are advancing or, on the contrary, you’re being left behind. Monthly SEO Reporting speaks louder than random sales increases because it gives you all the backstage info you need if you need to remain on the same course or change route.  

• It Shows If and At What Point Your Efforts Are Paying Off

Simply, it serves as an ROI indicator to see if your money and efforts are coming back to you multiplied. 

• It Improves Your Decision-Making Process (think of it as a helpful roadmap).

Finally, considering all the above pros, monthly SEO Reporting is actually a decision tool, assisting you in creating, adjusting, and transforming your digital marketing strategy and online presence.
‍

Think of it like an SEO site audit. Crucial, precious and practical. 

‍

Which brings us to the next subject.

SEO Monthly Reporting: What to Include

So, now that you know what exactly an SEO report is and why you need one monthly, let’s break it down into pieces of the data your SEO specialist should include in such a report. A solid SEO monthly reporting process relies on a structured format—typically built around a standard SEO report template that covers at least seven key metrics. These KPIs help you assess your website’s health and competitive position.

Let’s explore the foundational metrics your SEO monthly reporting template should feature:

1. Organic Traffic Data: Why it's the Primary

Organic traffic data is a metric that tracks visitors coming from search engines like Google, excluding paid ads.

Metric: Organic Traffic.

Goal: Measuring growth in visibility.

Tools: Google Analytics 4.

The first thing on your monthly SEO report should be a snapshot of your website’s organic traffic. This tells you how many people found your site through search engines without clicking on paid ads. 

Your SEO specialist should track this data over time and compare it to previous months to see if there’s an upward or downward trend.

You’ll want to know:

• Total sessions from organic search.
• New vs. returning visitors.
• The geographic location of visitors (Local SEO Performance) 

If your traffic increases, that’s a clear sign that your SEO strategies are working!

2. Keyword Rankings: Measuring Search Visibility for Target Queries

Keyword rankings are metrics that show a website’s position in search results for targeted queries and how those positions change over time.

Metric: Keyword Rankings

Goal: Measuring growth in search visibility for target queries.

Tools: Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush, SE Ranking.

Let’s face it. Keywords are the backbone of any SEO strategy. You just cannot do without them. Well, to be accurate, without the correct ones. 

You need to know how your site ranks for the keywords that matter most to your business. Your SEO specialist should provide a list of important keywords and show where you stand in search results for each one.

Some key info to include:

• The keywords that have improved rankings.
• The keywords that have dropped in rankings.
• Any new keywords you've started ranking for.

Keyword performance will tell you if your content and optimization strategies are making an impact or if adjustments need to be made.

3. Backlink Profile. Assessing Website Authority

A backlink profile is a set of metrics that evaluate the number and quality of links from other websites to yours.

Metric: Backlinks and Referring Domains

Goal: Measuring authority growth and link quality over time.

Tools: Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush.

Backlinks are a significant factor in SEO. The more high-quality backlinks you use, the more you improve your website’s authority. 

This method helps you rank higher in search results. Your SEO specialist’s job is to keep track of any new backlinks gained and any lost ones.

Important things to look for - and subsequently ask your SEO report conductor to include are:

• The number of backlinks acquired.
• The quality of the linking sites 
• Any spammy or low-quality links that may have the opposite result and hurt your rankings.

To be honest, it takes time to build a healthy backlink profile, but consistent growth in this area is a good sign.

‍

Would you like to deepen your understanding of link building? We prepared a lot of useful materials for you:

‍

Backlink Analysis: A Step-by-Step Guide

Link Building for SEO: Top-10 in 10 Questions

Which Links Can Harm Your Website: A Guide to Using the Disavow Tool

How to Find and Buy Expired Domains: A Step-by-Step Guide

Link Building & Off-page SEO: All Trends

4. Conversions and Goal Tracking. Connecting SEO to Business Results

Conversions and goal tracking show whether people who find your website on Google actually take the action you want them to (buying something, filling out a form, or signing up).

Metric: Organic Conversions and Goal Completions

Goal: Measuring how organic traffic contributes to leads, sales, or sign-ups.

Tools: Google Analytics 4, CRM systems (optional).

SEO brings users to your site, but its value is measured by actions like filling out a contact form, purchasing, or subscribing to a newsletter. These actions show whether SEO delivers real results.

Here are some key points to include:

• Conversion rates from organic traffic.
• Goal completions (e.g., sales, leads, sign-ups).
• Any improvements in conversion rate optimization (CRO).

This data will help you understand how well your website converts traffic into actual results and give insights into potential improvements.

5. Technical SEO Health: Technical Barriers to Ranking

Technical SEO health shows if search engines can efficiently crawl, index, and rank your website’s pages.

Metric: Technical SEO Issues and Performance Signals

Goal: Identifying technical barriers to crawling, indexing, and ranking.

Tools: Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights, etc.

Sometimes, the issues affecting SEO are less visible than traffic or rankings. Your SEO specialist should monitor your site’s technical health, such as page load speed, mobile friendliness, crawl errors, and more.

Look for:

• Site speed performance (for both desktop and mobile channels).
• Mobile usability issues.
• Any crawl errors or broken links that could hurt rankings.
• On-page optimization. This will evaluate whether title tags, meta descriptions, and content quality are effective and can actually enhance search engine visibility.

A technically healthy site ensures that search engines can easily crawl and index your content, which is crucial for SEO success.

6. Competitor Analysis. Adding Market Context to SEO Results

Competitor analysis explains SEO performance by comparing rankings, links, and visibility with competing websites.

Metric: Competitive Search Visibility

Goal: Benchmarking SEO performance against competitors and identifying gaps.

Tools: Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush, Similarweb.

Knowing where your site stands compared to your competitors is also valuable. In the monthly SEO report, your SEO specialist should provide an overview of how your competitors are performing in search rankings and what they’re doing that might be working for them.

Some things to compare:

• Competitors’ keyword rankings.
• Their backlink profiles.
• Content strategy and overall SEO efforts.

This competitive intelligence can help you refine your own strategy, spotting opportunities where you might be falling behind or where you could outperform others.

7. AI Visibility. Check if You are Visible in AI Search.

AI visibility shows whether your content is used, summarized, or referenced by large language models (LLMs) and AI-powered search features.

Metric: AI visibility

Goal: Understanding how often and where content appears in AI-generated answers.

Tools: Manual LLM testing (ChatGPT, Gemini), Google Search Console, SEO tools with AI modules.

This metric helps you understand how visible your content is in AI-driven discovery and what you can do to improve visibility in LLMs.

Your report should include:

• Mention Frequency
• AI Share of Voice (AI SOV)
• Query Coverage
• Sentiment Score

8. Insights and Actionable Recommendations

Apart from showing metrics, a good SEO report should explain what’s working, what isn’t, and what to fix or improve next.

Metric: SEO Performance Summary

Goal: Translating SEO data into prioritized optimization actions.

Tools: Google Search Console, Looker Studio, Google Analytics 4, Ahrefs or Semrush, Screaming Frog.

Your SEO specialist should summarize the data, explain how it affects your business, and make actionable recommendations for improvement. This is how an SEO report serves as a decision-making tool. 

You want your report to include:

• Key takeaways from the data.
• Specific areas of improvement.
• Next steps and plans for the upcoming month.

This section helps you focus on what really matters and gives you a clear path forward. 
‍

How to Analyze an SEO Report (Step-by-Step Guide)

You should know how to read that data correctly and determine whether SEO is actually working. Follow the steps below to analyze your SEO report as a decision-making tool.

1. Read Traffic Trends Before Looking at Individual Metrics

Start with the overall direction of organic traffic. This sets the context for the rest of the report and helps you avoid drawing conclusions from isolated data.

What to focus on:

• Is organic traffic trending up, flat, or down over several months?
• Are changes gradual or sudden?
• Do movements align with known events (site changes, seasonality, campaigns, algorithm updates)?

How to interpret it:

• Steady growth usually signals healthy SEO.
• Flat traffic may indicate ranking stability but limited expansion.
• If there is a sudden drop, cross-check for technical issues, lost rankings, or indexing problems.

2. Check Keyword Rankings

Keyword rankings show which search queries drive traffic changes.

What to look for:

• Which priority keywords gained or lost positions?
• Are losses concentrated on a few high-impact queries or spread across many?
• Are new keywords entering the top 20 but not yet driving traffic?

How to interpret it:

• Losses in the top 3 positions usually affect traffic immediately.
• Movement from positions 15 → 8 often explains gradual growth.
• Stable rankings with declining traffic can mean SERP feature changes or reduced CTR.

If you see a drop in rankings, check if it’s not a software mistake, a seasonal drop, or anything else that could cause an issue.

3. Check Conversions

After looking at traffic and visibility, check whether people from search are actually taking action.

Key questions:

• Are conversions from organic search increasing at the same pace as traffic?
• Which pages contribute most to organic conversions?
• Are high-traffic pages underperforming in conversion?

How to interpret it:

• If traffic is up but conversions are flat, CRO or intent is likely to mismatch.
• Conversions up, traffic flat means SEO is attracting higher-quality users.
• If both are down, check for visibility or technical issues.

4. Treat Backlinks as a Trend Signal, Not a Vanity Metric

Backlink data should show whether your authority is strengthening over time.

What to analyze:

• Is the number of referring domains growing month over month?
• Are new links coming from relevant and authoritative sources?
• Are there noticeable losses from strong domains?

How to interpret it:

• Links growing steadily: Search engines see your site as more trustworthy, which helps rankings grow.
• Your links are flat while competitors are growing: Their pages may outrank yours because they look more authoritative.
• Strong links lost, and rankings drop: Lost links remove signals that helped your pages rank.
• Sudden link spikes without ranking change: Those links likely don’t add real value.

5. Check Whether Technical Issues Are Limiting Growth

Technical SEO sections explain what blockers you have that might prevent your website from growing.

What to focus on:

• Newly discovered crawl or indexation issues
• Page speed or mobile usability regressions
• Errors affecting high-traffic or high-value pages

How to interpret it:

• If crawl or indexation issues occur, search engines may not see or update important pages, which can stop progress.
• If page speed or mobile usability worsens, rankings and conversions can drop even if the content stays the same.
• If errors affect high-traffic or key pages, their performance usually declines first.
• If the same issues remain unresolved over time, SEO progress often stalls because the blockers are never removed.

6. Use Competitor Data to Adjust Expectations and Strategy

Competitor analysis helps you understand whether results are good in context.

Ask:

• Are competitors gaining visibility where you’re losing it?
• Are they investing more heavily in content or links?
• Are they appearing in SERP or AI features where you are not?

How to interpret it:

• If competitors are gaining visibility across many keywords, their overall SEO efforts may be more consistent or broader in scope.
• If competitors appear in SERP or AI features where you don’t, your content may be less clear, less complete, or structured differently.
• If you consistently outperform competitors on priority topics, improving and extending them usually works better than starting new pages.

7. Review AI Visibility as a New Performance Layer

Check whether your pages appear in AI-generated answers and summaries apart from standard search results.

What to analyze:

• Which topics or pages appear in AI-generated answers
• Where competitors are referenced instead
• Whether content structure limits AI selection

How to interpret it:

• If pages rank well but do not appear in AI-generated answers, the content may be difficult for AI systems to summarize or reuse.
• If competitors are referenced instead of your site, their content is likely to answer the query more directly or completely.
• If only certain pages of your site appear, there are likely differences in structure or alignment of intent that influence AI selection.
• If AI visibility changes without ranking changes, AI selection behavior may have shifted rather than your SEO performance.

Wrapping Up

SEO reports provide the insight you need to understand how your SEO efforts are working (or not working) and help guide your next steps. By paying attention to the key metrics mentioned above, you can ensure that your website constantly improves and that your SEO strategy stays on track.

To simplify the process, you can start with our SEO report template, which covers all key metrics and gives you a clear structure for monthly analysis.

If you need deeper insights or ongoing support, Promodo’s SEO specialists can take this further. Our professional team of SEO experts will offer you, on a monthly basis, all the significant KPIs to monitor your site’s health regularly and act early on crucial adjustments for further advancing your online presence and business growth. 

Got a project? Let’s discuss it!
‍

Let's reach your business goals!

Contact Promodo experts today for
a free strategy session.

Apply

FAQs

[[FAQ-START]]

What Should I Ask For On an SEO Report?

Essential KPIs that monitor your site’s health and performance, data-driven insights and digital strategy recommendations. 

This includes organic traffic, conversion rates, and technical aspects of your business’s website, like load speed and local SEO performance. 

What do these numbers mean, whether they are improving or deteriorating, and what actions should be taken to boost your site’s visibility soon? To be more precise, until the following monthly SEO report. 

How Long Should I Have to Wait For an SEO Report?

Well, this highly depends on how elaborate you want it to be. It may take a few days or even longer. The critical thing to remember is that to receive a worthwhile SEO report in your hands, your SEO specialist should monitor various aspects of your site’s health and performance, which is an ongoing job. 

How Much Does a Monthly SEO Reporting Cost?

There isn’t a straightforward answer to this question. Because the actual cost will be influenced by other services your SEO specialist provides you. It’s good to know that professional digital agencies include monthly SEO reporting in their SEO packages. It’s a way to ensure transparency and allow you to monitor their effectiveness and the ROI of your efforts and money. 

[[FAQ-END]]