What should a monthly SEO report include?
A monthly SEO report should tell you what work was completed, what the available evidence shows and which decision comes next. It should also name unfinished tasks and explain what is preventing them from moving forward.
Start with the business question the work is meant to address. A report about attracting suitable local enquiries needs more than a list of search positions. Equally, a list of enquiries does not show whether a promised website change was delivered. The useful report connects the two while keeping each type of evidence clear.
What belongs in the monthly report?
Use a structure that lets a reader understand the month before opening the supporting detail:
| Part | What to include |
|---|---|
| Scope and period | The business, locations, website and dates covered |
| Completed work | Named changes or deliverables, with references and completion status |
| Measurements | Relevant figures, sources, filters and a suitable comparison |
| Interpretation | What is known, what is uncertain and what needs investigation |
| Open work | Outstanding tasks, dependencies and responsibility for the next action |
| Next decisions | The proposed priority and why it deserves attention |
Separate recommendations from implemented changes. "Review the service pages" might be a planned task, a completed assessment or shorthand for rewriting the pages. The report should make clear which occurred. If a change was approved but is not yet live, label it accordingly.
For Business Profile work, Google's third-party policies require providers to inform clients about profile changes. A brief change log helps turn that requirement into something both sides can check.
Which Business Profile numbers are useful?
Google's Business Profile performance guide defines the available measures. Search terms describe queries that brought up the profile; views relate to profile viewing; Calls counts call-button clicks; Directions counts route requests; Website clicks counts clicks on the profile's website link. Availability varies by business. Performance data can include both organic results and Google Ads.
Label those measures accurately. A direction request is not proof that someone visited. A website click is not a confirmed enquiry. Avoid renaming a platform interaction "new customer" unless separate evidence justifies that description.
Choose figures relevant to the service. For example, direction requests may be useful to discuss for a business that receives visitors, while a service delivered at a customer's premises may need a different emphasis. That is a reporting choice to agree, not a reason to hide a decline in a previously agreed measure.
Which website numbers should appear?
Google's Search Console performance overview covers clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. CTR is clicks divided by impressions. Average position concerns the topmost result from the site, aggregated for the selected view. These measures describe Search performance rather than completed sales.
Ask the provider to show the pages and searches that matter to the business, not merely an overall total. A rise concentrated on an unrelated topic deserves a different discussion from a rise on a service page intended to attract customers. A total can describe movement without explaining its usefulness.
Search Console is not the only legitimate source for a report. Website analytics, suitably collected enquiry records and other tools may add relevant evidence. Name each source and define what it measures. If a figure is an estimate, a tool-specific score or a manually classified result, say so. Do not present it as a Google metric.
Make comparisons that a reader can reproduce
Put the date range beside every important chart. Record filters that materially affect the result, such as the selected property, search type, device or page group. If one report covers a full month and the next covers only part of it, do not display them as equivalent totals without explanation.
Select comparisons that answer the question at hand. The previous month may show a recent change; a comparable seasonal period may add useful context where that history exists. Neither is automatically the right answer for every business. Explain the choice and avoid selecting a favourable period solely to improve the picture.
Show the underlying counts alongside percentages. An illustrative move from two to four enquiries is a 100% increase, but it is still a change of two. That arithmetic example is not a client result. Small counts deserve especially careful interpretation.
If figures disagree, first check whether they cover the same thing. Search Console notes that chart and table totals may differ because their aggregation differs. Do not force figures to match by silently changing filters or dropping inconvenient rows. Document a known limitation and investigate an unexplained discrepancy.
Why does the reported position differ from my search?
A report may show an average, whereas your search shows a single result under particular conditions. Google's Search Console guidance notes that results vary with factors including time, location, device and recent history. Your observation can help raise a question, but it is not a replacement for the report's defined measurement.
For Maps, Google's local ranking guidance also identifies distance as a factor. If a provider reports local positions, ask where and how the observations were taken. Keep the search phrases and observation method visible between reports.
Do not assume that using another phone removes every contextual difference. It gives you another observation. A useful report explains what each observation represents and avoids selling a sampled result as a position every customer will see.
Calls increased, but the business feels no busier
Begin by checking what the label "calls" means in that particular report. Then compare the period with the records the business is authorised to use. Look for a supported explanation rather than blaming the reception desk or assuming the marketing worked.
Possible questions include whether the contact route is correct, whether enquiries concern services you provide and whether the business's own records capture the same period consistently. These are investigation prompts, not findings about your business. The report should identify what can be checked and who will check it.
A chart does not establish a cause merely because two events occurred in the same month. If a page changed and enquiries rose, record both facts. Explain what other evidence would be needed before attributing the increase to that change.
What does a good SEO report look like?
Make the summary readable on a small screen and keep supporting evidence accessible. A screenshot is helpful when it shows the relevant dates, labels and context. Arrows or annotations can guide the reader, but they should not cover the information needed to understand the figure.
Use ordinary language where possible and explain necessary terms at first use. The aim is not to remove every technical word; it is to let the reader understand what action is proposed and why. A colleague who was not in the last meeting should still be able to follow it.
When sharing a report outside the agreed audience, check that it does not expose private customer records or account details. Google's third-party policy also prohibits comparing or sharing one customer's Business Profile-specific data with other customers. Use synthetic data for a demonstration report for another client. Anonymising real metrics is not a stated exception to that rule.
How long should an SEO report be?
There is no universal page count. A small project may need a brief summary and change log; a larger one may need appendices for several locations or workstreams. Judge whether the reader can find the main decision and trace it to evidence.
Do not treat brevity as proof of honesty or length as proof of effort. Ask whether each section serves a reporting purpose. Move necessary detail out of the opening summary, but keep the evidence available.
How often should I get a report from my agency?
Agree the cadence in the service scope. A monthly review can work alongside short progress notes when approvals or dependencies need attention. Urgent problems should have an agreed route that does not depend on the reporting calendar.
Some data is not immediately complete. For example, Business Profile search terms update monthly and may take up to five days to appear, according to its performance guide. State when the data was collected and flag incomplete figures instead of presenting a partial period as final.
The reporting interval is not a promised time for SEO results. Set it according to the decisions you need to make and the evidence available, rather than assuming that a tool's default date range establishes a results deadline.
What should the first report contain?
Establish a usable starting point: the scope being measured, available history, relevant settings or gaps, confirmed issues and the first priorities. Record work already completed separately from work proposed for approval.
If historical data is missing, say so. Start recording a consistent basis for later comparisons instead of reconstructing figures from memory. Identify anything needed from the business and explain which task depends on it.
At the next review, the reader should be able to follow that thread: what was agreed, what happened, what the evidence now shows and what decision remains. For the related approach to the work, see our method, written out.
This article is part of the Local visibility guide.