Creating Enterprise SEO Reports for Stakeholders

Reporting to stakeholders is different to reporting to marketing teams and SEOs. 

They don’t want to know the technical aspects of SEO. All they want to know is how SEO is affecting business.

You can do this by presenting business-driven metrics. These include metrics like ROI, LTV, CAC, etc. 

7 Steps to Creating Enterprise SEO Reports for Stakeholders 

Understand Stakeholder Priorities 

Before creating the report, understand why the stakeholders want the report. 

For example, they may want to know the business’s year-on-year growth, Q4 SEO ROI, or the current LTV of search users.

Each stakeholder will have different priorities. Therefore, understand what report they want first before moving on to the next steps. 

Know the Metrics for the Report  

Understand what metrics are needed to create the report for your enterprise SEO campaign.

You may have a simple report that only requires a comparison of one metric. For example, organic search traffic in 2022 compared to 2023. 

Other reports, however, may be more difficult—reports such as SEO ROI, LTV, CAC, etc. 

These reports require more than one metric. For instance: 

• ROI = (SEO Revenue - SEO Costs) / SEO Costs x 100
• LTV = Average Revenue per Customer x Average Purchase Frequency x Average Customer Lifespan
• CAC = Total SEO Costs / Number of New Customers Acquired via Organic Search

Now you know how to calculate the report, you can identify what tools are required to track/find the correct metrics. 

Select the Right SEO Tools 

The tools needed to gather these metrics will vary based on the priorities of the stakeholders. 

Going back to the reports required in step one: 

As you can see, the metrics you require can come from various tools. Therefore, know what metrics you require and then find the tools that include them. 

Calculate the Metrics 

Please note you only need to do this step if the report requires a calculation involving several metrics.

For instance, SEO ROI is (SEO Revenue - SEO Costs) / SEO Costs x 100.

Most reporting tools won’t be able to perform this calculation. You will, however, be able to do this on a platform such as Excel. You can create a formula to perform the calculation over a series of cells. 

Create a Visual Representation of Data 

Once you’ve completed the calculation, you can then create visual representations of the data. 

For example, for organic YOY Growth, you could have a bar chart comparing current and last year: 

Source: ChartExpo 

Another example would be for CAC and LTV, showcasing the relationship between both of the metrics. 

Source: Visible VC (Medium) 

You can get really creative here. However, stick with the priorities of the stakeholders. 

If they want to know the YOY organic growth since 2015, show them the YOY organic growth since 2015. Likewise, if they want to know the relationships between LTV and CAC, show them exactly that. 

Highlight the Impact of the SEO Campaign on the Business Goals 

Alongside the visualisation, you also want to highlight important data regarding the business goals and the SEO campaign’s performance. 

For example, let’s say the overall business goal was to increase organic traffic by 20% YOY. If you’ve exceeded this goal, for example, let’s say it’s 40% this year, then highlight that the SEO campaign exceeded the original goal by 20%. 

Likewise, if the goal was to increase LTV by $50.00 in Q4, show them how the SEO campaign helped achieve this goal. 

Also, don’t skip out on the negatives - just mix the negatives with a reason. For example, we were unable to hit the Q4 LTV target of $50.00 per user. We believe this is because our content efforts in Q1 were disrupted by “XYC”. 

Include Actionable SEO Insights 

Based on the results, you can also offer actionable insights into what the stakeholders should consider moving forward. 

Perhaps you reached a new LTV target, and organic growth is projected to meet their requirements. Perfect. However, we believe that the CAC is too high compared to historical data. 

In that case, you can suggest to the stakeholders a new SEO strategy that can keep LTV and organic growth targets alive while reducing CAC. 

Summarise the Enterprise SEO Report 

You should also summarise the report at the end.

This should just break down key performance areas and challenges/plans for moving forward. By doing this, everyone reviewing the report is on the same page. 

Tips for Better SEO Stakeholder Reporting 

Simplify Complex SEO Metrics 

Stakeholders aren’t interested in SEO metrics. For instance, the number of referring domains, page load speed, backlink profile health, meta tags, etc. 

What they’re interested in are common business terms. Terms such as ROI, CAC, LTV, etc. These are the numbers they really care about. 

Because of this, try to focus on the money metrics, not the SEO metrics. Yes, the SEO metrics are required to calculate the money-metrics, but they’re not interested in that. They just want to know the money metrics outright. 

Talk About Results, Not Tactics 

Tactics are good, they generate the results. However, stakeholders want to see the results and the results only. 

They don’t need to know how the latest link-building plan generated 25 links from high DA and relevant sources. Though great, it’s not something they care about. What they care about is the impact these backlinks have on the business’s performance. 

For example, don’t explain the backlink strategy in detail and then show the results. Just say, after implementing our new backlinks strategy, we saw “XYC” increase by “XYC”. 

Create Separate Dashboards for Stakeholders 

As an enterprise SEO specialist, you’ll have various dashboards. For example, website performance as a whole, technical performance, on-page performance, etc. 

Don’t show these dashboards to stakeholders. Create separate dashboards for them. Dashboards that report their specific goals in a way suitable for them. 

If you can, you should also make them interactive. By doing this, stakeholders can explore different metrics themselves and discover more about the SEO campaign's performance. 

Keep the SEO Report Short and Focused 

Only report on what’s important. Keep it short and snappy. Try your best to avoid long, detailed reports, and really just focus on what matters most to your stakeholders. 

A good way to do this is to just use bullet points and visuals. You should also segment the report into the following sections: 

• Performance Overview 
• Key Business Metrics 
• Challenges and Solutions 
• Next Steps

That’s it. You don’t need anything else. You can even explain each of these areas in a few bullet points or with visuals. 

5 Enterprise SEO Reporting Tools to Consider 

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Looker Studio 

Looker Studio is a free enterprise SEO reporting tool powered by Google. It also allows you to integrate various Google and third-party tools to create custom dashboards. 

Some of the key features are that it’s customisable, shareable, and can integrate with over 1,000 different tools. These tools range from SEO tools all the way to advertising platforms and CRMs. 

Excel 

Excel is one of the most powerful enterprise SEO reporting tools. The only issue is that it’s hard to use. You’ll likely need to hire a professional or purchase a customised reporting template. 

One of the main reasons enterprises use Excel is due to the advanced data manipulation and calculation tools provided. With Excel, you can get access to advanced metrics at scale, such as LTV, CAC, ROI, etc. 

AgencyAnalytics 

Though AgencyAnalytics is for agencies, it’s not bad for enterprise SEO reports. To create a dashboard, all you need to do is drag and drop report panels. 

Like Looker Studio, this platform can be integrated with various different third-party tools. These range from Google Analytics all the way to SEMRush and Ahrefs. 

Power BI 

Power BI is a business intelligence tool that allows users to create advanced data visualisations and reports. Like a lot of these tools, you can integrate various tools into Power BI. 

The platform itself has a lot of advanced features. As a result, you can create advanced reports based on revenue, customer acquisition, and more. 

Final Word

After reading the above, you should have a better understanding of how to create enterprise SEO reports for stakeholders. 

As you can see, it’s a little different. Instead of focusing on SEO-specific metrics, you need to focus on business-driven metrics like ROI, CAC, LTV, and so forth. 

Yes, you use SEO metrics to determine this. However, stakeholders don’t want to see this. They want to see the business figures and the business figures only.