How SEO Pros Build Looker Studio Reports that Influence Strategy

will talk about commonly-faced reporting challenges, how to resolve them, and how to use your dashboards to make decisions for SEO, and other areas of marketing. We asked agency managers, who use SE Ranking to tell us their biggest challenges when it comes to reporting in Looker Studio. Here’s what they shared: Let’s go through each of these challenges. A common challenge when it comes to reporting at an agency-level is the need to cater dashboards to audiences ranging from technical experts to non-technical stakeholders. There are several things you can do to alleviate this challenge: The first one is to create a layered reporting structure, organizing the dashboard in a way that starts with a high-level overview that concerns all stakeholders, then as people move through the pages they can drop out, based on their level of expertise, project involvement, and context familiarity required. For example, If you're working on a dashboard that reports on SEO performance, you can organize it to start by showing key metrics positioning organic search

as a channel in the context of other marketing channels, alongside other key metrics like user adoption, revenue, and channel ROI. You can then move onto overall campaign progress reporting, and then to sub-channel reporting (like content marketing, technical SEO or link building). Another thing you can do is to create separate reporting dashboards for different interests, all linked from a high-level overview dashboard that provides key metrics in simple language. You can also utilize dashboard annotations not only to provide context, but also to guide users with nuanced needs (be it too technical or too senior) to sections of interest via page links. Making dashboards accessible to different stakeholder groups is challenging, but confusion can be minimized by making sure each dashboard has supporting documentation, clear and accessibly-written titles and chart descriptions, and annotations are indeed added.

You can add annotations for key internal and external events, and for expert commentary. You can also take advantage of the Looker Studio page sharing option to only share certain dashboard pages with different people. This ensures that even though the report is created in one place and used by different stakeholders, they are only able to access information that is relevant to them which is not overwhelming. Often, reports can suffer from data overload. Meaning, you try to cram in as many metrics as you can with the aim of demonstrating that you have a holistic approach and are monitoring every aspect of the campaign. This is not a bad way to approach a dashboard that is used internally, by a very high-intent, expert team that knows how to navigate the complexity. But this is often the wrong way to approach a client report. Instead, only focus on the business-critical output metrics and the input metrics that your team (and the teams you work closely with) are responsible for impacting. In

short, prioritize simplicity and relevance. Utilize the functionalities of filters, and drill-down pages to enable access to detailed data for those who need it. Some managers report struggling with making reports actionable. For reports to be valuable, they need to drive action, not just present data. Here are just a few tactics you can incorporate to make Looker Studio dashboards more actionable: Before building the dashboard, define its objective. What type of report is it - exploratory or explanatory? Who is the target audience? How often will it be used? How often should it be updated? Organize the report based on input and output metrics, demonstrating clearly the relationship between the two. Incorporate annotations to enable more nuanced understanding of key events (internal and external) and their relationship to metric performance, and expert commentary. This can emphasize the need of amplifying or discontinuing actions,

and it can help highlight anomalies or trends. Ensure that each section in your report is organized in a way that clearly demonstrates responsibility, next steps, and ties that with a team and a point-person. Some managers report struggling with making reports user-friendly. This is often a challenge as SEO is filled with jargon and complexity that is necessary for understanding progress reports but the same can alienate senior audience members or non-expert clients. Here are some tips to make reports user-friendly: Use clear and concise labels with descriptive titles, and incorporate tooltips for additional context without clutter. Highlight key metrics by prioritizing important data and providing summary sections for quick overviews. Consult with members of different teams to ensure that the titles of charts and metrics use the language that is accessible at a company-level and used internally as well. Use a consistent color scheme and font,

with contrasting colors for key metrics. Use an intuitive page layout that incorporates commentary, filters, data views, and page navigation elements. Avoid using charts that are too complex or difficult to understand. Many agencies are hesitant to fully automate reporting, preferring to verify data and potentially add descriptions manually to avoid errors. This can be time-consuming and tedious, yet is vital to ensure the accuracy and reliability of your dashboards. Here are a few ways this challenge can be overcome: Set up robust data validation and anomaly detection systems, outside of your Looker Studio dashboards that pull data directly from the data sources. This will alert you to potential issues before the reports reach your clients, saving time and maintaining trust. Ensure that when you are presenting third-party data, like keyword search volume or competitor traffic estimations, you are providing

a benchmark figure from another platform, and whenever possible - triangulating the data from third parties with first-party data. Control the connection by connecting APIs through BigQuery - this can not only help reduce dashboard errors and broken charts but can also allow you to always show the data without automated sampling applied. Since pre-made templates rarely meet every client's needs, agencies frequently have to start from scratch for each report. To address this challenge, start keeping a log at an agency-level for the report customizations that clients have requested, revisiting your approach in creating templates every six months. This can help you to overtime create a library of customizable report templates that you can use not only to report on performance, but to also compliment the delivery of key elements like audits via impact monitoring dashboards.

Keep dashboard templates modular via designing short pages, organized with the input/output metric logic that you can enable and disable at will via the page view function. This can help you mix and match pages to meet specific client reporting requirements without starting from scratch every time. Many agency managers struggle with bridging the gap between the features that tools provide and the degree of appeal and customizations needed for building effective reports. To improve the visual appeal of dashboards, replicate successful practices from other dashboard designers and creators on the web. You can also work with a designer to enhance the design component of your dashboard in a way that reflects your brand while simultaneously aligning the report with best practices. To customize the reports beyond the connectors’ capabilities, use direct API connections to

the tools’ databases. Also, take note of ways to incorporate parameter controls, dynamic filters, and custom calculated fields to extend flexibility. For instance, you can create custom formulas to label aspects like search intent for queries you are ranking for, or even incorporate into your dashboards analyses like entity analysis or sentiment analysis, executed via scripts or third-party integrations in Google Sheets or Big Query. Let’s talk a bit about how to build dashboards that endorse decision-making. Effective data visualization helps you quickly grasp complex information, making it easier to spot trends and anomalies. Ensure your visualizations are clear and intuitive, so that stakeholders can understand the data at a glance. One of the standout features of Looker Studio is its ability to integrate real-time data from

various sources, providing up-to-date insights in a visually-compelling way. This real-time capability is crucial for making timely decisions, especially in fast-paced industries like organic marketing. Ensure that you are presenting data blends that help bridge the gaps between the actions of different teams and use annotations to highlight what is working and where the strategy should be shifted. Encourage stakeholders to interact with the dashboards, exploring different data views to gain a comprehensive understanding of the information presented. Incorporate annotations, context, and commentary to highlight key insights and trends. By weaving a narrative around the data, you can help stakeholders understand the implications of the data and the actions needed to address identified trends or issues. To maximize the effectiveness of your Looker Studio dashboards, continuously review and refine them. Gather feedback from users to understand what is working well and what could

be improved. Regularly update the dashboards to reflect changing business needs and the emerging data trends. This iterative approach ensures that your dashboards remain relevant and continue to drive effective decision-making. To ensure everyone is making the most of these capabilities, conduct regular training sessions. This empowers your team to leverage the full potential of Looker Studio, making every report a valuable tool for strategic decision-making. By tackling these challenges head-on with the solutions we've discussed, you'll enhance your reporting efficiency and effectiveness, leading to better-informed decisions and higher client satisfaction. Remember, each step towards improving your