There’s no scarcity of search engine marketing reporting instruments to select from—however what are the core instruments it’s essential put collectively an search engine marketing report?
On this article, I’ll share eight of my favourite search engine marketing reporting instruments that can assist you create a complete search engine marketing report for free.
Value: Free
Google Search Console, usually known as GSC, is without doubt one of the most generally used instruments to trace necessary search engine marketing metrics from Google Search.
Commonest reporting use case
GSC has a ton of knowledge to dive into, however the principle efficiency indicator SEOs have a look at first in GSC is Clicks on the principle Overview dashboard.
As the information is from Google, SEOs think about it to be an excellent barometer for monitoring natural search efficiency. In addition to clicks knowledge, you may as well monitor the next from the Efficiency report:
- Complete Impressions
- Common CTR
- Common Place
Tip
However for many search engine marketing reporting, GSC clicks knowledge is exported right into a spreadsheet and was a chart to visualise year-over-year efficiency.
Favourite function
Considered one of my favourite stories in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s helpful for search engine marketing reporting as a result of you possibly can share the listed to non-indexed pages ratio in your search engine marketing report.
If the web site has plenty of non-indexed pages, then it’s value reviewing the pages to grasp why they haven’t been listed.
Value: Free
Google Looker Studio (GLS), beforehand referred to as Google Information Studio (GDS), is a free device that helps visualize knowledge in shareable dashboards.
Commonest reporting use case
Dashboards are an necessary a part of search engine marketing reporting, and GLS permits you to get a complete view of search efficiency from a number of sources via its integrations.
Out of the field, GLS permits you to connect with many various knowledge sources.
Comparable to:
- Advertising merchandise – Google Advertisements, Google Analytics, Show & Video 360, Search Advertisements 360
- Client merchandise – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
- Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
- Social media platforms – Fb, Reddit, and Twitter
- Recordsdata – CSV file add and Google Cloud Storage
Sidenote.
If you happen to don’t have the time to create your personal report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that may assist you to create automated search engine marketing reporting for any web site in a number of clicks
Right here’s what a dashboard in GLS appears like:
With one of these dashboard, you share stories which might be simple to grasp with purchasers or different stakeholders.
Favourite function
The power to mix and filter knowledge from totally different sources, like GA and GSC, means you will get a custom-made overview of your complete search efficiency, tailor-made to your web site.
Value: Free for 500 URLs
Screaming Frog is an internet site crawler that helps you audit your web site.
Screaming Frog’s free model of its crawler is ideal if you wish to run a fast audit on a bunch of URLs. The free model is restricted to 500 URLs—making it very best for crawling smaller web sites.
Commonest reporting use case
In terms of reporting, the Experiences menu in Screaming Frog search engine marketing Spider has a wealth of data you possibly can look over that covers all of the technical points of your web site, resembling analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured knowledge, and extra.
When you’ve crawled your web site, it’s only a matter of downloading the stories you want and figuring out the principle points to summarize in your search engine marketing report.
Favourite function
Screaming Frog can pull in knowledge from different instruments, together with Ahrefs, utilizing APIs.
If you happen to already had entry to some search engine marketing instruments’ APIs, you could possibly pull knowledge from all of them immediately into Screaming Frog. That is helpful if you wish to mix crawl knowledge with efficiency knowledge or different third occasion instruments.
Even should you’ve by no means configured an API, connecting different instruments to Screaming Frog is easy.
Value: Free
Ahrefs has a big number of free search engine marketing instruments that can assist you at each stage of your search engine marketing marketing campaign, and plenty of of those can be utilized to supply insights on your search engine marketing reporting.
For instance, you could possibly use our:
Commonest reporting use case
Considered one of our hottest free search engine marketing instruments is Ahrefs Webmaster Instruments (AWT), which you should utilize on your search engine marketing reporting.
With AWT, you can:
- Monitor your search engine marketing well being over time by organising scheduled search engine marketing audits
- See the efficiency of your web site
- Verify all recognized backlinks on your web site
Favourite function
Of all of the Ahrefs free instruments, my favourite is AWT. Inside it, web site auditing is my favourite function—when you’ve set it up, it’s a very hands-free method to preserve monitor of your web site’s technical efficiency and monitor its well being.
If you have already got entry to Google Search Console, it’s a no brainer to arrange a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your web site(s).
Value: Free
Ahrefs’ search engine marketing Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension helpful for diagnosing on-page technical points and performing fast spot checks in your web site’s pages.
Commonest reporting use case
For search engine marketing reporting, it’s helpful to run an on-page verify in your web site’s prime pages to make sure there aren’t any severe on-page points.
With the free model, you get the next options:
- On-page search engine marketing report
- Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
- Outgoing hyperlinks report with hyperlink highlighter and damaged hyperlink checker
- SERP positions
- Nation changer for SERP
The search engine marketing toolbar is great for spot-checking points with pages in your web site. In case you are not assured with inspecting the code, it may possibly additionally offer you priceless tips about what components it’s essential embrace in your pages to make them search-friendly.
If something is incorrect with the web page, the toolbar highlights it, with purple indicating a essential situation.
Favourite function
The part I exploit essentially the most continuously within the search engine marketing toolbar is the Indexability tab. On this part, you possibly can see whether or not the web page could be crawled and listed by Google.
Though you are able to do this by inspecting the code manually, utilizing the toolbar is far quicker.
Value: Free
Like GSC, Google Analytics is one other device you should utilize to trace the efficiency of your web site, monitoring classes and conversions and far more in your web site.
Commonest reporting use case
GA provides you a complete view of web site visitors from a number of totally different sources, resembling direct, social, natural, paid visitors, and extra.
Favourite function
You possibly can create and monitor as much as 300 occasions and 30 conversions with GA4. Beforehand, with common analytics, you could possibly solely monitor 20 conversions. This makes conversion and occasion monitoring simpler inside GA4.
Value: Free
Google Slides is Google’s model of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you happen to don’t have a dashboard set as much as report in your search engine marketing efficiency, the subsequent smartest thing is to assemble a slide deck.
Many search engine marketing businesses current their report via dashboard insights and PowerPoint shows. Nevertheless, should you don’t have entry to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is a superb (free) different.
Commonest reporting use circumstances
The commonest use of Google Slides is to create a month-to-month search engine marketing report. If you happen to don’t know what to incorporate in a month-to-month report, use our search engine marketing report template.
Favourite function
Considered one of my favourite options is the power to share your presentation on a video chat immediately from Google Slides. You are able to do this by clicking the digicam icon within the prime proper.
That is helpful if you’re working with distant purchasers and makes sharing your stories simple.
Value: Free
Google Tendencies permits you to view a key phrase’s recognition over time in any nation. The info proven is the relative recognition ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct quantity of search queries.
Commonest reporting use circumstances
Google Tendencies is beneficial for displaying how the recognition of sure searches can improve or lower over time. If you happen to work with an internet site that always has trending merchandise, providers, or information, it may be helpful for example this visually in your search engine marketing report.
Google Tendencies makes it simple to identify seasonal tendencies for product classes. For instance, individuals need to purchase BBQs when the climate is sunny.
Utilizing Google Tendencies, we are able to see that peak demand for BBQs often occurs in June-July each 12 months.
Utilizing this knowledge throughout the final 5 years, we may very well be pretty positive when the BBQ season would begin and finish.
Favourite function
Evaluating two or extra search phrases towards one another over time is certainly one of my favourite makes use of of Google Tendencies, as it may be used to inform its personal story.
Embellishing your report with tendencies knowledge permits you to achieve additional insights into market tendencies.
You possibly can even dig into tendencies at a regional stage should you want to.
Closing ideas
These free instruments will assist you to put collectively the foundations for a well-rounded search engine marketing report.
The instruments you utilize for search engine marketing reporting don’t at all times should be costly—even giant corporations use most of the free instruments talked about to create insights for his or her shopper’s search engine marketing stories.
Obtained extra questions? Ping me on X 🙂