How To Read An SEO Report Without The Jargon

SEO reports can feel like a foreign language, but they don’t need to. Here’s how to cut through the jargon and find the five numbers that actually tell you if your SEO is working.

The only line in your SEO report that pays your mortgage is calls and enquiries.

The quick rundown

• Look for a spread of keywords climbing over time, not just one lucky term on page one.
• Read impressions and clicks together, since a gap between them points to a titles and descriptions problem, not a ranking one.
• Check your click-through rate against a realistic benchmark, roughly four to eight percent for local service campaigns.
• Always follow traffic through to real leads and phone calls, because that’s the number that actually pays the bills.
• Judge everything on a trend, never a single month, since SEO results build gradually and can quadruple heading into peak season.

Want to go deeper? Read a plain English SEO report guide and SEO KPIs worth tracking locally.

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