Lesson 5 of 8
How to read an SEO report
I get a monthly report. What am I actually looking at?
A useful report answers three questions in order: what changed, what we did, and what it was worth. Most reports answer a fourth question instead, which is how much activity took place. Activity is not an outcome. The single most useful habit is to read every number by asking "compared to what", because a number with no comparison cannot be good or bad.
Start with what a report is for. You are paying for work you cannot see, on a system you do not control, with results that arrive slowly. The report is the instrument you use to decide whether to keep going. That is a real job, and a good report does it.
The three questions a report should answer, in this order. What changed in the results: rankings, visibility, enquiries. What we did about it: the work performed this period. What it was worth: the enquiries, bookings or revenue that came of it. Reports that lead with the third are rare and usually good. Reports that only answer the second are describing effort.
The habit worth building is comparison. Every number in a report is meaningless in isolation and meaningful against something: the same month last year, the period before the work started, or a competitor. "Traffic is up 12%" is not yet a claim. Up on what, over what period, and was last year's figure unusually low. Asking "compared to what" is not scepticism, it is just how you read a measurement.
A note on vanity metrics, and it is gentler than the usual version. Impressions, keyword counts and traffic totals are not fake numbers and the agency is not hiding behind them by default: they are genuinely easier to move and faster to show, and they can be early signs of real progress. The problem is only when they are presented as the outcome rather than as the leading indicator. The fix is simple and not adversarial: ask which numbers on the page are leading indicators and which are outcomes, and expect at least one outcome.
Two shapes worth recognising, offered as things to ask about rather than accusations. First, a report where the comparison period changes between months makes trends impossible to read, and it is usually accidental. Second, a report that only shows the terms that improved is showing you a selection. Ask for the whole set, including the ones that went backwards. A good agency will already have it, and is often relieved to be asked.
What a report is answering
The three questions in order, and the fourth one that often replaces them. Read down the left column and ask which your report actually answers.
| The question | What it looks like on the page | Is it an outcome |
|---|---|---|
| What changed | Rankings, visibility, enquiries, against a stated comparison period | The evidence |
| What we did | The work performed this period | No: this is effort |
| What it was worth | Enquiries, bookings, revenue | Yes: this is the outcome |
| How much activity took place | Counts of things done, impressions, keyword totals | No: these can be leading indicators, but only if labelled as such |
Takeaway: Compared to what. Ask it of every number.