Common Enterprise SEO Reporting Mistakes You Need To Avoid

You may have heard that investing in SEO practices is insufficient without monitoring your performance and keeping an accurate report. They say that you can use your SEO data to improve your search engine results in the long run. So, you take it seriously and monitor your performance with the necessary tools and keep an SEO report. All that effort, but it doesn’t make any difference, now you’re wondering what are you doing wrong.

While reporting your SEO performance can help improve your these practices and give you better results, we have found that many businesses don’t understand SEO reporting.

SEO reporting should be accurate and well-designed to give you a clear picture of your inputs. The accurate reporting of your SEO data is like a forecast that can help you make informed future decisions. Accurate data reporting will show every detail about your SEO efforts without any aspect missing or distorted. Your SEO report needs to be well-designed so that anyone who picks it up can immediately understand and interpret it. When you get your SEO reporting right factoring these two elements; design and accuracy, you will be able to make the best use of it.

That said, here are three SEO reporting mistakes that you need to avoid.

Mistake 1: Believing There Is A Source or Metric That Measures Everything Accurately

In the past, when users searched for a keyword on Google, they got the same results regardless of their geolocation, search history, demographic, and whatnot. It was easier to determine the accurate search ranking of keywords.

But now, when users search for a keyword, they are more likely to get different search results based on their geolocation, search history, demographic, and Google’s personalization. Search results now contain ads and other search engine results page (SERP) features, which are all tailored to give each user a robust search experience. As a result, getting the accurate search ranking of keywords is no longer as straightforward as before. So when you use a tool to find the current rank of a keyword, you may not get the full picture.

Another SEO element that is no longer straightforward like before is search volume. Many businesses and marketers use Google’s Keyword Planner for obvious reasons. It is supposed to be the most accurate because it is a tool from the number one search engine on the internet, which also has all the search data. But surprise surprise, Google’s Keyword Planner is not 100% accurate because Google usually aggregates volumes for similar keywords.

Let’s say you want to know the search volume for “shoe’s” using Keyword Planner, you will get the search volume for “shoes” and “shoe’s” instead, which is 122 million altogether. However, when you evaluate the clickstream data of “shoe’s” you will see that it gets less than 100 searches per month.

The truth is that any metric can have discrepancies because data interpretation is dependent on how the source of the metric sees and understands the data. Hence, relying on any metric for complete accuracy is an SEO reporting mistake that will not let you get the best results from your SEO efforts. A better way to understand SEO data is to monitor trends over time.

Mistake 2: Focusing on The Wrong Metric And Ignoring The Metrics That Matter

The PR traffic gets in eCommerce is so big that you might think all you need to do is monitor how much traffic you’re getting so that you can determine how to increase it. Since high-volume keywords generate more traffic, marketers tend to target high-volume keywords over other types of keywords; medium-tail and long-tail keywords.

While long-tail keywords don’t get high search volume, they tend to represent users who are more inclined to take action about their search immediately. As a result, long-tail keywords have a high clickthrough rate and conversion rate because the users are generally searching for specific keywords that address their concerns. Therefore, it will be better to focus on lead generation, clickthrough, and conversion.

On the flip side, businesses focus on the wrong metrics, and they also tend to ignore some metrics that matter. For example, the Featured Snippet and People Also Ask offer traffic opportunities, but marketers often ignore them.

Ensure to pay attention to SEO metrics that are relevant to your business and what it needs at the particular point in time. Also, have a habit of searching for metrics that you’re not already using that can impact your SEO efforts positively.

Mistake 3: Poor Interpretation of Your SEO Data

Data without meaningful interpretation is meaningless numbers that will not add value to anyone or show any relevant result. And this is a common mistake among businesses and marketers. When creating an SEO report, marketers tend to show every data about all their SEO efforts without considering who will use the data or the objective of the efforts.

For example, if you create an SEO report to show investors your business growth, they don’t need to see data about which product gets the best search volume. It doesn’t matter to them. Instead, they want to your general traffic, noting a gradual progression from where you were and where you are at that point. They want to see a progression in your lead generations, conversions, and sales. They want to see data that shows that your business as a whole is growing. Learn to use segmentation to customize your SEO report for different purposes.

Additionally, it is not sufficient that your SEO report shows progressions that only states that you achieved some SEO results within a timeframe. That doesn’t inform anyone that you achieved anything relevant to your business goals. Your SEO report should highlight your objectives at the beginning, detailing results that show you achieved your objectives. If you start some SEO strategies to reduce the number of abandoned carts you get monthly, your report should have a segment titled “Reducing Abandoned Carts.”

Lastly, have a habit of annotating your SEO report where necessary so that every important piece of data is clear to anyone who reads the report. Make sure your SEO data is clear, explain the impact of every SEO data in the report, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

An SEO report is like telling a story, make sure that you stay on the plot, show how you resolve the challenge, and present a clear moral lesson.