Every SEO agency sends reports. Most business owners skim them, not sure what’s important and what’s filler. Here’s how to read an SEO report and know whether your investment is actually working.
The metrics that matter
Organic traffic (visitors from search engines, not ads). Keyword rankings for your target terms. Conversion rate (what percentage of visitors contact you). Phone calls and form fills attributed to organic search. These are the business metrics. Everything else is supporting information.
Vanity metrics to ignore
Domain Authority (a third-party score, not a Google metric). Total impressions without clicks. Page views without conversions. These numbers can go up without your business improving at all.
What “rankings” actually means
Ranking for keywords no one searches is worthless. Ask your agency: what is the monthly search volume for the keywords we’re tracking? Are those keywords producing traffic and leads? Keywords with 500+ monthly local searches in your market are worth tracking. Keywords with 10 monthly searches are not.
The trend matters more than the number
An SEO campaign that’s consistently moving in the right direction over 6 months is healthy, even if you’re not at #1 yet. Flat or declining metrics after 6 months warrant a conversation.