Everyone in the business knows the basic gist of what search engine optimization (aka. SEO) is. However, most people don’t use it to its full potential.
Are you one of them?
If so, let’s change that, shall we?
In this new article series, The Ultimate Guide to SEO Reporting, we’ll be delving into more details on the subject: from the fundamentals of the perfect SEO reporting dashboard, to the ideal time-period to look at in your SEO reports, to choosing whether to manually or automatically create your reporting dashboards, with what tool (DashThis perhaps?!), your SEO reporting process will never be the same.
From backlinks to keyword rankings, landing page analytics to search traffic, let's discuss SEO reporting.
Basically, SEO is a set of guidelines that improve your web presence twofold: on the one hand, these guidelines help your website be found easily and quickly by your ideal target audience, and on the other hand, the guidelines also help improve usability and user experience.
So why is this important?
Well, for starters, it’s proven that web users have a strong tendency to choose among the top few suggestions in the results page. If they don’t find what they’re looking for there, they will most likely change search keywords instead of looking any further in the results. All the more reason to use every SEO tool you have to make sure that you’re among those top for your chosen keywords and your selected target audience. It's also very important to track your keyword ranking and top keywords regularly as part of your SEO metrics.
Remember, it’s impossible for you to be first in the search engine rankings for any and all combinations of your chosen keywords – there are too many factors involved in the algorithms that dictate search engine rankings. Something as simple as a user’s search history can greatly alter the selection of the top five sites he/she will find when searching for specific keywords.
However, the hundreds of factors taken into account in search engine algorithms are there to ensure that while you won’t appear first in all searches, you can work to get to the top when a user fits into your target audience persona. And, since the vast majority of online shopping begins with a simple search, proper SEO can position you smack-dab in the middle of a consumer’s’ pre-purchase research process, which is precisely where you want to be as much as possible. In addition, sites that are more easily found on search engines will also be more readily promoted on social media networks; which makes the benefits of search engine optimization twofold.
Optimization doesn’t just affect your presence on search engines, it affects your ENTIRE online presence. And frankly, nowadays, how your business is found, reviewed, and interacted with online is the single most important factor in your success.
From Google Analytics to Google Search Console, SEMrush to Ahrefs, there are many different SEO tools out there depending on your SEO campaigns and needs. If you'd like to track the performance of your different landing pages, your organic traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, site speed, search terms, your content marketing and other similar web analytics KPIs, you can use tools like Google Analytics or Google search console to look at more keyword ranking, SERPS, backlink profile, or rank tracking, search volume, or an SEO site audit and organic search data points, paid tools like Moz, or SEMrush can be considered. Let's not forget local SEO tools such as Google my Business, that you can also combine with e-commerce tools or PPC tools like Google Ads.
As for your SEO reporting tools, you could of course use a free tool like google data studio for a basic SEO report, but for complete marketing reports with white label options and preset widgets, all your marketing campaigns data in the same SEO report, and scheduled monthly SEO reports, there's nothing better than DashThis!
All you need to do is look at the numbers.
While pay-per-click (PPC) marketing makes up almost 80% of the average SEM marketing budget, it only provides approximately 25% of the inbound traffic. On the flip-side, SEO drives the other 75% of the traffic, yet only receives 15 to 20% of the budget.
In general, PPC marketing should be used in the short-term to fill the gaps you may have in your SEO, not as a long-term, ongoing plan.
Clearly, there is enormous potential when it comes to SEO, so if you have some budget allocation to do, concentrating on optimizing your search engine visibility is the way to go to increase your traffic and notoriety.
There are entire books written on SEO guidelines and how to best apply them to your web sites, so I won’t get into too much detail here. However, in essence, these are the main points to cover during the optimization process:
Honestly? Because how else are you going to determine if your SEO is working?
Tracking your data in a quality SEO report is how you’ll see the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, and your entire global web marketing strategy.
While SEO alone can’t help you become the next Amazon, conjointly with proper digital marketing efforts, branding, social media marketing, PPC, paid media marketing, and even traditional advertising, it ensures the growth of your business.
And, like many marketing endeavours, you can’t think of SEO as a mere cost; it’s an investment. An investment with great return. Because the great thing about SEO, when compared to other marketing methods, is that it has a tendency to increase revenue at a much higher rate than the costs it requires. In other words, you've got a great return on investment (ROI).
Low-cost and high-returns? Clearly, SEO should be a priority.
You want to know more about SEO Reporting? We put together the Ultimate Guide to SEO Reporting - feel free to share the love on social media!
Part 2 - The Fundamentals of the Ideal SEO Reporting Dashboard
Part 3 - What does the Perfect SEO Report Look Like?
Part 4 – SEO: Manual Reporting vs. Automated Reporting
Part 5 – Your Foolproof SEO Report Template [Infographic]
Part 6 – Top 10 SEO Reporting Must-Reads
Happy reporting!
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