What good SEO reports show and bad ones hide

This lesson we will talk about how to choose metrics to report on using the input output metrics concept. We will also go through a metric selection process that you can follow as well as frequently used data sources that you should consider incorporating in reports and why. Let's start with the concept of input and output metric which is fundamental to understanding how to report on data and the projects you've worked on. Output metrics are what the client cares about and how we measure performance. They are backwardlooking and they show us what happened. Think about output metrics as things like organic revenue, item purchases or purchase revenue per user. These metrics result from events that have taken place influenced by various factors such as SEO, UX, digital PR, campaign messaging, and product descriptions. In SEO, output metrics

can include organic traffic, organic revenue, or user engagement. These are end results of numerous actions and components across the organization. To put it bluntly, the only way that you as an agency manager can directly influence these metrics, let's say revenue, for example, is if you start making purchases of the company products and services, which as we all know is not what our role is about. Yet metrics like revenue are what your role and the role of almost all teams in the marketing department are benchmarked on. So instead of solely reporting on this one output metric, you should also incorporate input metrics over which you have direct control via the actions in your strategy. Reporting solely on output metrics doesn't show the specific actions taken to achieve them. You can't simply flip a switch to improve metrics like organic traffic or engagement rate. It's a combination of many actions. Instead, we should focus on controllable

input metrics. These are the metrics that help define the progress towards achieving an output. Input metrics are current. They reflect on what is happening at the moment and what actions we are taking to progress towards a goal or KPI. For example, if we aim to increase organic revenue, we need to ask what are we going to do to achieve this? This might include publishing new pages, updating existing ones, or building links. These actions can be grouped into different objectives such as improving content quality or crawability, which can lead to more pages being indexed, better user experience, and ultimately more sales. Aim to make this logic specific and actionable to improve how you track projects and activities, and how you report on performance. One approach is to group input metrics based on campaigns and projects and allocate responsibility for these actions. It's also important to include client teams in the tracking to highlight how

their actions impact the KPIs. For example, a website redesign or migration might temporarily affect traffic metrics. Explaining why certain metrics might decrease and the expected recovery timeline helps manage client expectations and illustrates the relationship between various metrics and the overall KPI. Input metrics are beneficial because they allow reporting on progress even if results are invisible yet. They are directly controllable and measurable helping identify performance issues within teams. They demonstrate expertise by showing the detailed efforts behind achieving goals. They allow you to clearly delegate responsibility and highlight external factors that are influencing performance. Input metrics enable better planning and collaboration between teams such as SEO and digital PR, ensuring that efforts to improve traffic are well coordinated. They also provide a clear framework for adjusting strategies even if

actions aren't yielding expected results. For example, if organic revenue is down, analyze whether the number of transactions, conversion rate, or sessions have changed. Drill deeper into any changes in page messaging or page loading speed that might have influenced this. or identify whether external factors like stock issues, changes in the SER or site errors are to blame. This framework can be applied to diagnose almost any KPI shift. For SEO agency managers, understanding how to select and utilize metrics effectively is crucial for both client reporting and internal strategy refinement. Here's a short process on leveraging this concept to enhance your SEO reporting. Identify output metrics. Begin by determining your key output metrics, which are the results you aim to achieve through your SEO activities.

For an SEO agency, typical output metrics might include organic traffic growth, keyword rankings improvement, revenue growth, and conversion rate optimization. These metrics directly reflect the objectives of your clients and are vital for measuring campaign success. Choose relevant input metrics. Input metrics are the actions or efforts your team controls that influence the output metrics for SEO. These could include the number of articles published or optimized per month, backlinks acquired, or even page speed improvements or other technical fixes. Map your team's efforts towards the main KPIs. Identify the links between input and output metrics and different teams actions. Establish a clear link between your input and output metrics. This means understanding how moving tangible metrics like number of pages, number of keywords ranked, percentage improvements in a given metric change the output metrics. Make reports as specific and

actionable as possible. Group the input metrics per campaign team and allocate responsibility. If the output is dependent on teams from different parts of the organization, this is a great way to invite collaboration. Regular analysis and adjustment. Use data to continually analyze the effectiveness of your input metrics on desired outputs. If certain inputs are not yielding the expected impact on outputs, it might be time to revise those tactics or shift focus. This approach not only demonstrates the direct value of SEO efforts, but also enhances the ability to adjust tactics swiftly in response to realtime data and collaborate with other teams on shared objectives. No agency's Looker Studio dashboard should go out to a client without incorporating data that addresses the areas of content quality, technical SEO, SER performance and rankings,

authority and links and user experience. Typically, these areas can be addressed via Google owned sources like G4, Search Console, and the Chrome UX report, as well as third-party sources like SE Rankings connectors. Next, let's move on to the metrics that you should be pulling from various sources. If your agency is benchmarked on revenue as an output metrics, ensure to add the following input metrics to your report from G4. Add metrics on user engagement. Examples include bounce rate, exit rate, total users, active users, metrics around engagement time, metrics around engagement overall like engaged sessions, session duration, and pages per session, and custom event interactions, conversions, and conversion rate. From your stock management system, add metrics on number of products available, product variations, color variations, and out of stock items. from Chrome UX

report. Add page speed and UX metrics like loading performance like LCP, interactivity like inpole. Add metrics like impressions, clicks, average position, CTR and also custom metrics like number of pages indexed, zeroclick pages and query search intent. from SE Ranking. Add website audit metrics including onpage and technical issues such as missing canonical tags, non-indexed pages, and orphan pages, number of keywords ranked, keywords ranked search volumes, and number of backlinks. Changes in any of these metrics could influence site revenue. If your agency's work is benchmarked on organic traffic growth as a percentage of overall traffic, you might need to add aspects to your reporting that also monitor the work of other teams like email marketing, PPC or social media as big shifts in those areas would also influence your output too. Similarly,

if you are benchmarked on performance against competitors, you should incorporate metrics for key players you're up against. This can be done via the SE Ranking connector via the my competitors feature. In the next lesson, we will talk about the SE Ranking connectors in more detail. To wrap up, remember the importance of the input and output metrics concept when choosing which metrics to add to your reporting dashboards. Make sure to build a report that leverages a variety of relevant metrics from different data sources. This will not only help to communicate the value of your agency's efforts, but will also invite collaboration with other teams, making it easier to communicate the value of your team's work for the overall business strategy and KPIs.