Reporting: Qualifying Your SEO Campaign

A professional approach to SEO provides outstanding ROI over the life of a website. Yearly market studies by SEMPO.org have found that the heads of marketing at large corporations consistently rank SEO in the top 3 in terms of ROI.

The results of an SEO campaign, however, are notoriously hard to quantify. At Corporate PA, we've found that the best way to substantiate SEO is through meticulous ongoing reporting.

Many SEO companies rely simply on providing visibility reports that detail the rankings for particular keyword phrases within the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Bing. Although this type of data can be an excellent illustrative example of the success of a project, there are many possible ways that reporting of this nature can be misleading or irrelevant from a conversion/revenue perspective.

Other SEO companies rely on website traffic reports from server logs or analytics programs like Google Analytics. While seeing traffic increase is a good and rewarding experience, it does not tell the story of how and why that traffic is getting there.

Corporate Performance Artists provides comprehensive reporting in various flavors. Our regular activity reports provide you a snapshot of the actions we are taking each week on your behalf, while our monthly progress reports give a detailed analysis of your campaign performance, short and long-term keyword and traffic trends, statistical insights, content strategy and next-step recommendations.

Here's a brief breakdown of our Reporting Deliverables:

Activity Reports

On a weekly basis, we let you know the links being built, the content developed, the optimization implementations accomplished, and various other execution aspects of our process.

Progress Report Summary

This provides an overview of the campaign performance, incorporating various Key Performance Indicators from Analytics and our own Search Engine Ranking aggregators. Results over a one-month period are compared to the previous month's, the previous quarter's, and the previous year's data to examine long-term trends and adjust to seasonal averages.

Search Engine Rankings

A monthly picture of campaign keywords ranking in the top ten on the Big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing), with a quarterly mobility graphic and analysis of highest-performing search terms.

Analytics Reporting

Analytics is the primary driver for actionable data included in SEO reporting. Corporate PA breaks down exhaustive analytic data into easy-to-digest charts and graphs with bullet points calling attention to key trends. Specific analytics metrics can be customized per client but the main KPIs are:

1. Visitors: including total visits, unique visitors, % of new visits, number of pages viewed, average time spent on site and bounce rate (% of visitors who leave the site quickly).
2. Traffic Sources: statistics on site traffic from search engines, referring sites and direct traffic (visitors who enter the url of a website into their browser).
3. Keyword Traffic: incoming traffic from searches, broken down by keyword, as an indication of which key terms are most searched, as opposed to simply the highest ranked by search engines.
4. Landing Pages: the top entrance pages for site traffic, and their corresponding bounce rates, indicate which pages visitors are finding and whether they are getting what they want quickly from the site.
5. Content: an examination of the most-viewed site pages.
6. Goals: funnels for actionable conversion customizable per client.

Insights and Recommendations

An analysis of the current data along with "next-step" suggestions and timetables for strengthening and improving your campaign.

Refining the Process

At Corporate PA, we see reporting as the best way to ensure the results of our efforts are effectively realized by our clients. To that end, our methods are consistently evolving, and we're always looking for new ways to include you in our process. We welcome your comments and feedback as we further develop new formulas to accurately represent SEO performance.