Archive for category: Yoast SEO

When you work on your site’s SEO, reflecting on those efforts should be part of your ongoing strategy. Whether it’s for a client, your manager, or your team, creating an SEO report is the best way to do so. This helps you justify your efforts, keep track of performance and figure out what needs to be tackled next. And it’s not as hard as you would think. In this blog post, we’ll explain what SEO reporting is and take you through the process step by step.

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps drive more traffic to your site and improve your brand image. It should be part of anyone’s marketing strategy whose goal is to grow their (online) audience. Originally focused on performance in organic search, SEO now entails much more than that. It helps you build a strong brand name, become an authority in your field, and be visible on the platforms where your audience can be found. All this is to increase customer loyalty and grow your business.

What is SEO reporting exactly?

SEO reporting is best described as evaluating your online marketing efforts and presenting the outcomes in a report. This can be a report you create for yourself, your team, management, or a client. Often, a company has a specific template they use to do SEO reporting regularly (for example, every month). This can be in the form of a slide deck, online document, Excel sheet, or online dashboard. But it can also be any other reporting tool you feel comfortable with or your company uses for presentations.

In an SEO report, you will find metrics related to a website’s performance and other marketing activities related to SEO. This helps you track how your SEO strategy is performing and where tweaks are needed. That’s why an important part of any SEO report is the interpretation of metrics and conclusions that come out of that.

What to include in your SEO report

Whether you’re creating an SEO report for internal use, or for your client(s), it’s good to have a template. This allows you to compare recent findings with earlier ones, regardless of the frequency with which you’ll be reporting. Of course, you can make changes to this template along the way. But having a template saves you time and helps you recognize bigger issues and opportunities over time.

Naturally, it depends on your business goals what should be in your SEO report. The most important thing is that your SEO report reflects your (or your client’s) goals. This is to understand how your marketing efforts are contributing to reaching these goals and what actions need to be taken. But there are a few basics that most of us will want to include.

A general data overview

Start with an overview of the most important data for your business or website. This gives you an idea of how you’re doing right away. Especially when you’re reporting regularly, this overview will tell you or your client how the website (and online business) is performing. You can also choose to include data from the previous period (or the previous year) for comparison.

Website data to include:

• The number of site visitors
• Number of purchases (or other actions you want people to take)
• A visualization of your traffic over the selected period 
• Keyword rankings for a few important pages
• A traffic overview by source or medium 
• The type of visitors (new or returning)

Data on (content) performance

The general overview gives a quick insight into the current state of play, but to figure out how you got there, you must go into more detail. That’s why your report should include a closer look at content performance. Make sure to include data on your most important pages, such as product pages, popular blog posts, or other landing pages that attract a lot of people. 

Collect data such as page views, visitors, engagement, event count, revenue, and traffic sources. You don’t have to include everything, as this will be overwhelming and will probably cause people to lose interest. Look at the data of your most important pages, pick out the numbers that stand out (growth or decline) and add those to your report. It can be tempting to focus solely on the positive numbers but also include the negative ones to paint a realistic picture. This speaks to your credibility, makes it easier to spot issues before they get out of hand and helps the company in the long run.

Other elements to include here are an overview of new backlinks to the website, stats related to site health and the Core Web Vitals, and an overview of keyword rankings. But do remember that keyword rankings can change on a daily basis, and obsessing over individual drops in rankings isn’t going to help your overall SEO. Use these averages to get an idea of whether your overall rankings are dropping and what you can do to get your organic traffic back up again.

Activities previous period

When you have had a look at the data, it’s time to summarize what has gone out that month (or period of your choice). Use this section to highlight how many posts have gone out on social media, how the audience has interacted with those, what blog posts have been written or updated, and how your running ads are performing. But you can also include other online or offline marketing activities to show what has been done. 

Where possible, you can tie this in with any peaks in traffic or engagement. Or it can help you explain why some areas have gotten less attention than others. Either way, use this to make sense of the data and to highlight the hard work that has been put in by the team.

A summary with recommendations

Always end your SEO report with specific action points that come out of that month’s evaluation. It helps to start with a summary of the ‘highs and lows’ that were brought up in the report so far. For example, if you have noticed a noticeable drop in rankings, and therefore organic traffic, to one of your most important pages, it will make sense to focus on getting to the bottom of that in the coming weeks. And making improvements based on your findings. Or if a new type of social media post did very well, another action point could be to create a series of those and see if you can keep this success going. 

But this last part is also a moment of reflection on a bigger level. Are you still on track with the business goals, or any specific SEO goals you’ve set for yourself? And don’t forget to go through the action points you thought up in the previous SEO report. Were you able to get those done? Are a few of them still in progress? Or are there any blockers that you need help with? Make sure to end with an action plan for the upcoming month and a team (or client) that’s on board with everything discussed.

Creating an SEO report: step by step

Now that you know what to include, let’s talk about how to get started with your SEO reporting. Before you start pulling together the data, it’s important to set clear KPIs and create a setup that works for your company.

1. Set up your KPIs

The first step is to define KPIs, which stands for key performance indicators. These should be measurable goals, based on the marketing goals and/or business objectives within the company. To give a simple example, if one of the marketing goals is to grow traffic to your website, a corresponding KPI can be to increase your organic traffic by 10% that year. Other popular KPIs are conversion rate, overall rankings, click-through rates, bounce rate, page load time, and branded/non-branded traffic.

Make these KPIs realistic, especially when you’re setting expectations with a client, and reflect on the progress in your SEO reports to stay on track. I would suggest not focusing too much on maintaining certain rankings or data on specific pages. Rankings are heavily subjected to external factors and can change daily, and zooming in on one page too much can make you lose perspective. Of course, a drop in traffic for an important page is something to keep an eye on and can be a reason to make some adjustments. But keep the overall KPIs in mind and be aware of the bigger picture, while tweaking what’s needed without obsessing.

2. Set up the structure for your report

Choose a tool for your SEO reporting. This can be a presentation tool that your team often uses, an information-gathering tool such as Excel or an Analytics dashboard, or one that your client is familiar with. Just make sure that you can set it up yourself and make tweaks when needed. 

Add the sections that we’ve discussed above: a general overview, data on performance, marketing activities, and a summary with recommendations. I would suggest looking at your KPIs to figure out exactly what you want to show in the general overview and data on performance section. So, if your main KPI is growing your conversion rate, make sure that you add the data on this KPI to the general overview.

Test drive your new report by filling in this month’s data (or whatever period of time you choose). See the next step on how to tackle this. But this will help you figure out if the setup works for you in its current form. Always tweak when needed, whether that’s right now or a few months along the line. This report should work for you, you shouldn’t be jumping through hoops to get it to make sense. 

3. Gather and fill in the data

It’s time to start retrieving the data you need. There are a few tools you can use. For the general overview and data on performance, you can mainly rely on Google Analytics and Google Search Console. To get an easy overview of your marketing activities for that month, your own marketing calendar and the platforms that you posted on will give you the insights that are needed.

Data on website performance

For the general overview and data on performance, we are going to use Google Analytics and Search Console. Here you’ll find data such as visitor numbers, engagement, number of purchases (you will have to set this as an event), visualizations of your traffic, keyword rankings, traffic overview by source/medium, and type of visitors. Stats related to site health and your Core Web Vitals can also be found in Google Search Console. Lastly, if you want to get an overview of your backlinks, Semrush can provide you with that. 

While you’re putting those numbers into your report, remember to be mindful of how you present them. Don’t just throw everything in there and overwhelm (yourself and) others with raw data. Highlight important data and make visualizations of certain data to break up the wall of text. You can also just copy and paste a few graphs and add those in. Using a graph to show overall traffic or pie chart to show traffic by source/medium can already make a big difference.

Write down what speaks to you while filling in the data. What has been a success this month and what are areas that need more attention? And if you see something that you can’t explain right away (f.e. a drop in traffic, or a post that has an enormous amount of views), try to figure out what happened there so you can answer questions that people will inevitably ask about them.  

Data on marketing activities

If you keep a marketing calendar, this is a great way to reflect on what you’ve published in the last month. Use this to summarize how many blog posts, social media posts, videos, newsletters and other marketing-related activities you’ve worked on. This includes other activities such as attending events, workshops, appearances you’ve made, or perhaps even print media.

When it comes to blog posts you’ve published, you could highlight one that stands out and use data from Analytics and Search Console to explain how it’s performing so far. Or you could just add the numbers up and give an idea of the overall effect of this content. Keep in mind that content needs some time to get noticed by people, so don’t fret if it hasn’t done that much yet. 

Also, use this section to evaluate your social media posts and videos that you’ve uploaded to channels such as YouTube. I would recommend going to the platforms where you’ve posted content and using their analytics tools to see how well they’ve performed. This shows you what content works best and helps you draw conclusions from data from the source itself. 

For other marketing activities that have happened that month, it really depends on the activity how to mention it in your report. If it’s an offline event or workshop, try to get some feedback from (potential) customers on their experience. When it comes to print media, you could try and get some idea of the effect by how many people have contacted you after seeing it. Just make sure to think about these things beforehand, to get an idea of the effect of these activities.

4. Evaluate and take action

When you’ve added the relevant data and summarized your marketing efforts, it’s time to properly evaluate. Go through your report and write down any patterns, issues, successes and opportunities. Add these to your overall summary and compare these findings to the ones you found last month (or the months before that) to recognize bigger issues and successes. This will allow you to properly evaluate your findings and turn them into actionable recommendations and action points.

When you’ve completed your SEO report and know what actions come out of it, it’s a good idea to present it internally. Or to your client. This helps them understand what you (and the team) have been working on and will probably spark a discussion that helps you figure out what to pick up first. Finally, after sharing this report with the relevant people and agreeing on next steps, make sure to plan these so they don’t get lost. Make a realistic plan for yourself or the team and pick up the action points to set everything in motion. And plan in the next SEO report to keep this cycle going!

Conclusion

Any good SEO report, whether this is for yourself or a client, starts with clear KPIs. Make sure to get those done before you start evaluating your SEO efforts. This will allow you to set up a proper template for the report and figure out what data you need to look at. Use the right tools to get the data you need, but don’t get lost in trying to report on everything. Show the relevant data and present this to the relevant parties to get everyone on board. Use all of this to figure out what your next steps are and follow up on the action points to make sure you keep focusing on the right things. Happy SEO reporting!

Read more: How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site? »

The post The beginner’s guide to SEO reporting appeared first on Yoast.

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Just like most other website owners, you want your website to attract customers. But how can you see who visits your website? And how can you use this knowledge to increase website traffic over time? Luckily, there are loads of tools that can help you. Let’s get you started with the right one for your website without the need to become a data expert!

What is website traffic?

The term website traffic refers to the number of internet users visiting your website. Traffic can arrive from wide-ranging sources, such as directly typing in your website address, through other websites that link to your site, organic traffic (meaning they come to your site from the search results), paid traffic (people who click on your online ads), through your social media, and other channels. The total number of these users visiting your website combined is what we call website traffic.

How to check how many people enter a website

There are online tools that can help you make sense of your website traffic. These tools provide you with lots of different metrics, but we’ll go into the most important ones when it comes to website traffic.

Tools to track website visits

Numerous tools can help you track your website traffic. We’ll look at a few well-known tools that provide you with the insights you need.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the go-to tool for a lot of website owners when it comes to getting insights into their audience and website performance. What’s great about Analytics is that you can use it for free and it gives you loads of detailed insights. All the metrics mentioned above can be found in Analytics and give you the possibility to dive into visitor behavior and page performance. It allows you to mark key events, to track if people are performing the actions you want them to. 

The homepage gives an overview of data that Analytics deems relevant to you, based on your behavior in the tool. Some reports provide the metrics mentioned and much more, all focused on understanding your audience. Explorations allows you to create your own ‘reports’ to dive into one specific question you have or element you want a deeper understanding of. When you have Google Ads running, Analytics also provides insights into your ads and what actions to take there.

You will have to connect Analytics to your website, but luckily, there are tools out there that help you with that. Also, Google explains how to do this properly in their guide for beginners, which also gives you more information on this tool. One downside of Analytics, if you can call it that, is that all the information provided there can be overwhelming for some. They do expect you to find your way and figure out what data is relevant for your website. This makes it difficult to stay focused on the right things and not get lost in the woods.

Google Search Console

Another tool provided by Google, free of charge, is Google Search Console. Although there is some overlap with Analytics, this tool is focused more on showing your visibility in different parts of the Google ecosystem. Similar to Semrush, it’s very helpful when working on the performance of your pages and increasing website traffic. So if increasing organic traffic to your website is a big part of your marketing strategy, make sure to add this tool to your favorites. 

We have a beginner’s guide to Search Console, that goes into the details and explains how to set up an account. 

I wanted to mention this tool as it can help you boost your website traffic when used correctly. But if you’re mainly looking for a tool that provides you insights into your current website traffic, I would recommend investing your time in another tool first (f.e. Analytics). Search Console is great for figuring out what parts of your website you should work on, but if you want to take a step back and get familiar with your website stats first, then this might be for a later time.

Semrush

Semrush is another online tool that shows you how many people visit your site.e. This platform is used by a lot of people working on their website visibility. To give an idea, you can use Semrush to get data on your site’s performance, but it also allows you to do keyword research and compare yourself to competitors. 

Like Analytics, it provides a lot of information. But it does depend on your subscription on how extensively you can use this tool. There is a free version that may get you the data you need when starting out. It offers a site audit (of 100 pages), position tracking (for 10 keywords), personal recommendations, and traffic data such as visits, conversion, and bounce rate.

If you want to give Semrush a try, simply create a free account and fill in your website where the tool asks for your main domain. This will give you insights right away. You will notice that not all the data is available, and getting access to some more detailed stats will require an upgrade. But especially when you want to work on your SEO, Semrush gives you a lot of relevant information.

Metrics on website traffic

Every tool comes with different data, but there are a few relevant metrics that you will find in most of them. I’ll explain a few of them that will help you figure out who’s visiting your website and what they’re doing while on your pages.

Number of users

First of all, there’s the number of users. The number of total users tells you how many people have visited your website or a specific page in the selected period. In addition to the total number, you might also see the following metrics: active users, new users and/or returning users. 

Active users are the number of people who engaged with your page in that date range. Then there’s the difference between new users (the number of people who are first-time visitors of your site) and returning users (the number of people who have visited your site before).

Number of sessions

When a user opens your website, they start a new session. All the interactions that take place during the time they spend on your website are part of that one session. There’s no limit to how long a session can last, but it typically ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. If the user interacts with the website after that time or comes back at a later time, this will count as a different session.

Pageviews

When you encounter the metric pageviews, it tells you how many times a page is loaded or reloaded in a browser. Each time a user visits a page, it counts as one pageview—even if they refresh the page or navigate back to it multiple times. This metric helps measure how often your content is being viewed, regardless of how many unique users are visiting.

Source/medium

Source/medium tells you how users arrive at your website. The source is the specific origin of your traffic (e.g., Google, Facebook.com), while medium describes the general category of that source (e.g., organic, cpc, referral). Together, they give you insight into what channels are driving the most traffic and which ones could do better.

Engagement and events

Engagement rate is the percentage of sessions that were actively engaged, meaning users spent at least 10 seconds on the site, had a conversion event, or viewed two or more pages. It helps measure how meaningful or valuable a user’s interaction is. 

Events, on the other hand, track specific user actions—like clicks, downloads, video plays, or form submissions—providing detailed insight into how users interact with your content. Metrics related to engagement and events give you an idea of whether people are engaging with your pages and taking the actions you want them to take.

Other interesting metrics

Those metrics give you a lot of information about your website traffic, but of course, most tools offer you other interesting metrics as well. You could also look at the bounce rate, which tells you the percentage of users that leave after viewing just one page. The average session duration shows you how much time users spend on your site. Traffic by device gives an overview of how many of your users visit your website through desktop, mobile and/or tablet. Finally, top (performing) pages tells you which pages get the most visits.

Why you should know who visits your website

As I touched on in the previous paragraphs, data on your website traffic gives you insight into the behavior of your website visitors. Understanding who visits your website, and how they interact with it, helps you make more informed decisions about your website. It’s not just about counting clicks or visitors. It’s about uncovering trends, identifying growth opportunities, and optimizing the user experience to increase conversions, engagement, or other goals.

Are you visible on the right channels?

Knowing where your visitors come from, whether that’s organic search, social media, direct traffic, referrals, or paid ads, helps you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. For example, if you’re investing heavily in social media campaigns but see little traffic from those platforms, that might mean it’s time to reevaluate your social strategy. On the other hand, high traffic from a specific channel might indicate a strong presence you can build on. This insight allows you to allocate your time and resources more strategically.

Pages that perform (or don’t)

Website data shows you how people are interacting with your pages, which tells you what your top-performing pages are and what pages need improving. Your top-performing pages might show high engagement, conversions, or time on site, indicating content that resonates with visitors. Pages that underperform can show you where users are dropping off or losing interest. This insight is invaluable for identifying what content needs updating, restructuring, or even retiring to improve your overall site performance.

Website performance over time

Tracking your traffic trends over days, weeks, or months allows you to assess the health of your online presence. Are you seeing growth? Seasonal spikes? Or sudden drops in traffic to your website? These patterns help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and how external factors might be affecting you. It also gives you a baseline to measure the success of any changes you’ve made to your website or other marketing activities.

Understanding your audience

Essentially, looking at the data that tells you who is visiting your website helps you get a deeper understanding of your audience and how your website is doing. This doesn’t mean you should be obsessing over these numbers daily, but having a monthly evaluation to go over everything helps you make informed decisions. Decisions that will improve your (online) presence and attract more people to your website.

Which tool is the best choice for you?

These tools are just the tip of the iceberg, but they are a great starting point when you want to keep track of your website visits over time. So, which one should you start using? If you’re looking for one tool that provides you with detailed insights into your website traffic (and therefore audience), I would recommend setting up Google Analytics first. It is the tool that’s focused on tracking website traffic and has the biggest variety of data.

To conclude

In this blog post, we discussed the importance of gaining insight into your website traffic. This can help you understand your audience and their behaviour and it helps you make improvements to your website. There are loads of tools out there, but the ones mentioned above are a great starting point. So make sure to choose one and get a grip on your website traffic!

Read more: How to measure the success of your content SEO strategy? »

The post How to track website traffic: how many people are visiting your site? appeared first on Yoast.

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