Fourteen pages, mostly green arrows. Owners open it, scan for something bad, find nothing, and file it. That has been the monthly ritual on a lot of accounts I later inherited, and in several of those cases nothing of value had happened for a year. A report is not evidence of work. It is a presentation of selected numbers, and the selection is made by the person being paid. None of which means your provider is deceiving you. Most are not. But you should be able to read the thing properly, and it takes about ten minutes a month once you know where to look.
The Number That Cannot Be Dressed Up
Organic traffic, month over month, and against the same month last year. Year-over-year matters because search has seasons. A landscaper comparing November to July concludes the campaign collapsed. Compare November to last November and the picture is accurate. If organic sessions are flat or down against the same month last year, something needs explaining. That is a fair question to put in an email, and a good provider will have an answer involving a core update, a seasonal factor, or a specific problem they are working on.
Rankings: The Most Manipulated Section
Ranking tables are where reports get flattering. Watch for the keyword set changing between months. Terms that dropped quietly disappear, new easy ones appear, and the average improves without anything improving. Keep an old report and compare the lists. Same keywords or a documented reason for the change. Watch for terms nobody searches. “Affordable emergency plumber northwest Calgary weekend” at position two is not an achievement, it is a phrase with no volume. Ask for monthly search volume beside every keyword in the table. Its absence is itself informative. Watch for map pack and organic being blended into one position. They are separate results with separate causes, and averaging them produces a number that describes nothing. Local pack presence should be reported on its own.
Where the Early Truth Lives
Impressions and average position in Search Console, on a widening set of queries. Months one to four rarely produce ranking wins. They should produce a rising number of queries where your site appears at all, even on page four, because that is what indexing and relevance look like before they become positions. A report showing flat impressions at month four is a more serious signal than one showing flat rankings. Rankings lag. Impressions do not.
The Section Most Reports Omit
What was actually done. Not “ongoing optimization”. A list. Pages published with their URLs, technical fixes with what was broken and what changed, links acquired with the domains named. Any provider can produce this because they did the work, or they cannot because they did not. It is the single most useful thing to request if your reports currently lack it, and the reaction to the request tells you a great deal. Named link sources matter particularly. “Twelve links built” is unverifiable. Twelve domains you can open in a browser is a fact, and you find out quickly whether they are real publications or a network of empty blogs.
Conversions, Not Traffic
Traffic is a proxy. Enquiries are the point. A report that stops at sessions is only telling you half the story, and the wrong half. Ask for form submissions and calls attributed to organic search, with the trend over several months. Watch for a pattern that looks like success and is not: traffic up sharply, enquiries flat. That usually means the content is pulling informational searches from people who will never buy. Interesting for a publisher. Worthless for a plumbing company. Beware round numbers in conversion reporting. Real data is untidy. Suspiciously clean figures deserve a question about how they are being counted.
Four Questions Worth Emailing Every Month
What was the single most important thing you did this month, and what did it change. Which keyword moved most, up or down, and why. What is planned for next month. What is not working. The last one is the one that matters. Every campaign has something underperforming, and a provider who reports only good news is managing your perception rather than your site.
When the Report Is Fine and the Business Is Not
This happens, and it is worth naming. Rankings improve. Traffic rises. Phone stays quiet. Wrong intent, usually. Research phrases ranking where buying phrases should be. Sometimes the site simply converts poorly once people land on it. Neither shows up in a standard SEO report. So the owner reads good news while the business sees nothing. Raise it directly. Ongoing website SEO support should include noticing that gap and changing course, not simply reporting the same metrics more precisely.
Ten Minutes a Month
Organic traffic against last year. Impressions trend. The same keyword list as last month, with volumes. A written list of work done. Conversions, not sessions. That is the whole check. Anything that fails it is worth an email, and the quality of the reply is generally more revealing than the report itself. SEO Company To-The-TOP! has been reporting monthly on client positions since 2007, and the standard above is the one I would want applied to my own reports.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should be in a monthly SEO report?
Organic traffic compared to the same month last year, impressions and average position from Search Console, a consistent keyword list with search volumes, conversions attributed to organic search, and a written list of work completed. Anything missing the last item is describing outcomes without evidence of effort.
How do I know if my SEO report is misleading?
Check whether the keyword list changed between months. Check whether search volumes appear at all. Check whether map pack and organic sit blended into one figure. Those three habits flatter a report without anything improving. Comparing this month’s table to one from six months ago exposes it quickly.
Why is my traffic up but I get no enquiries?
Usually the content is ranking for research phrases rather than buying ones, so visitors arrive with no intention of purchasing. Sometimes the site converts poorly once they land. Neither shows in a standard report, so raise it directly and ask for targeting to shift toward commercial intent.
How often should I get an SEO report?
Monthly suits most businesses, since search moves too slowly for weekly reporting to say much. What matters more than frequency is consistency of format. A report that keeps the same keyword set and the same metrics month to month can be compared. One that changes shape cannot.
SEO Company To-The-TOP! Contact Information
Address
1509 14 Ave SW, Calgary, AB T3C 0W4
Phone
(403) 308-5949
Hours of Operation
Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.