What a monthly SEO report should show you

You pay for SEO. Once a month a PDF shows up. It has charts, colors, and a lot of jargon. Is it telling you anything?

A good report answers three questions. Did more of the right people see you? Did they contact you? What was done, and what happens next?

Here is what to look for.

Start with the business results, not the rankings

The first page should show real actions from real people. For a local service business, that usually means:

• Phone calls from your site and your Google listing
• Form submissions and quote requests
• Direction requests, if customers visit you in person
• Bookings, if you take them online

These are the numbers that pay your bills. A report that opens with a keyword ranking chart has its priorities backward.

Ask your provider to show these as month over month and, when you have enough history, year over year. Many Twin Cities businesses are seasonal. A snow removal company in January and a lawn company in January are not comparable. Compare to the same month last year when you can.

Check that conversions are actually tracked

If the report says "0 leads," ask whether tracking is set up. Google's own help pages explain how Google Analytics key events mark the actions that matter on a site. A missing or broken setup can make a good month look empty. Ask how calls, forms, and button taps are counted.

Search visibility from Google Search Console

Google Search Console is free, and it comes from Google itself. Its Performance report shows how your site does in Google Search. Your report should pull from it. You should be able to see four things:

• Clicks: how many times people clicked through to your site.
• Impressions: how many times your site showed up in results.
• Click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions.
• Average position: where your pages tend to appear.

Do not obsess over average position. It blends many searches into one number. It can drop when you start showing up for more searches, which is often a good sign.

Instead, ask for the top search terms and top pages. Look for your real services and your real towns. If you are a plumber in Edina, you want to see searches about plumbing in Edina. You do not want to see only your own business name. Searches for your name show people who already know you.

Ask for branded and non-branded separately

Branded searches include your company name. Non-branded searches are the ones where a new customer finds you. A useful report splits these. Growth in non-branded clicks is a clear sign SEO is working.

Your Google Business Profile numbers

For most local businesses, the Google listing matters as much as the website. Google explains in its help pages how to understand your Business Profile performance. It covers things like calls, messages, bookings, and direction requests.

Your report should include these, plus a short note on what changed. Did you add photos? Update hours? Get new reviews? Reviews belong in the report too. Show the count of new reviews, your average rating, and whether you replied to them.

A plain list of work done

Numbers show the result. You also need to see the effort. A good report lists what was done that month, in sentences you can follow. For example:

• Rewrote the service page for water heater repair
• Fixed three broken links
• Added new photos to the Google listing
• Published one article answering a common customer question

If the list is vague, such as "on-page optimization" or "technical improvements," ask for details. You are entitled to know which pages changed and why.

What is next, and what is stuck

The last section should say what comes next month. It should also flag problems. Maybe the site is slow. Maybe you have not sent over photos. Maybe a page is waiting on your approval. SEO often stalls because of a missing answer from the owner, and an honest report says so.

Numbers you can mostly ignore

Some figures look impressive and tell you little:

• Total keywords ranked. A large number can be full of searches nobody makes.
• Domain scores. These come from third party tools such as Moz. As Search Engine Journal explains, Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor, and Google does not use it to grade your site.
• Raw traffic alone. Ten thousand visits from people who will never hire you are worth less than twenty visits from people who will.
• Average position by itself. As noted above, it hides too much.

A simple table to compare reports

Use this as a quick checklist when your next report arrives.

Section	What you should see	Red flag
Results	Calls, forms, directions, bookings	Only rankings
Search data	Clicks, impressions, top searches and pages	Only brand name searches
Google listing	Calls, direction requests, reviews	Not included
Work done	Named pages and tasks	Vague labels
Next steps	Plan and open questions	Nothing listed

Questions to ask when the report confuses you

Can I log in and see the raw data?

You should have access to your own Search Console, Analytics, and Google Business Profile. Reports are a summary. The source data should be yours.

What changed, and why?

Every rise or drop deserves one sentence of explanation. "Seasonality" is fine if it is true. "Google updates" with nothing more is not an explanation.

What would you do differently next month?

A provider who reads the data will have an answer. If every month's plan looks the same, the report may be filler.

How long to wait before judging

SEO takes time, and a single month can be noisy. Look at trends over several months instead of reacting to one dip. That said, a report should never leave you guessing about what you are paying for.

If you want a second opinion on a report you already get, Ellment Creative is a web design and search visibility studio in St. Louis Park, and we can walk through it with you.