What should be in a monthly SEO report?

Indexed pages, impressions and clicks with period-on-period change, position for defined target queries, click-through rate by page, a list of work completed, and priorities for next period with reasoning.

What is a good SEO report template?

One section per area: indexing, traffic, target query positions, CTR, work completed, and next steps. Search Console and GA4 both export to CSV, so a spreadsheet is enough for a single site.

Should an SEO report include Domain Authority?

No. Domain Authority is a third-party estimate from Moz that Google does not use. It is useful for rough comparison at best and does not belong in performance reporting.

seo report template

What Belongs in an SEO Report

RankWise · Measurement

An SEO report should answer one question: is this working, and how do you know? Most don't. They arrive as a wall of charts that proves activity happened without ever showing whether anything improved.

What belongs in a monthly SEO report

Six things, in this order. Anything beyond them is usually decoration.

1. Indexed pages

From Search Console. If pages aren't indexed, nothing else on the report matters. This belongs at the top and it's the item most client SEO reports leave out entirely.

2. Impressions and clicks, with the change

Not just this month's number — the delta against last month and the same month last year, since search has seasonality. A search engine ranking report showing only current figures gives you no way to judge direction.

3. Position by query, not sitewide average

Sitewide average position is close to meaningless: it blends a #3 ranking for something valuable with #78 for something irrelevant. A useful SEO keyword ranking report tracks a defined set of target queries individually.

4. Click-through rate by page

High impressions with low CTR means you rank but your title isn't earning the click. That's the cheapest problem in SEO to fix, and it only shows up if the report includes it.

5. What was actually done

A plain list of changes made this period. Pages published, technical fixes shipped, issues found. Without this, a monthly SEO report is just weather reporting — numbers moved, cause unknown.

6. What's next, and why

Two or three priorities for the coming period, with reasoning. If the plan is identical every month regardless of results, that's a signal nobody is reading the data.

Include	Skip
Indexed vs total pages	Domain Authority score
Impressions, clicks, CTR by page	Bounce rate
Position for defined target queries	Sitewide average position
Work completed this period	Total backlink count
Organic conversions	Social media follower counts

Building your own SEO reporting template

You don't need SEO reporting tools with a subscription attached. Search Console exports to CSV, GA4 exports to CSV, and a spreadsheet joins them. A workable SEO report template is one tab per section above, with last period's figures beside this period's.

Paid platforms mainly save assembly time and add white-labelling. Genuinely useful once you're managing several sites; unnecessary for one.

The honest part most reports omit

Months where nothing improved. SEO is not linear, algorithm updates happen, and competitors act too. A report that shows growth every single month is either a very unusual site or a selectively edited report.

Saying "traffic was flat this month, here's what I think is happening and what I'm changing" builds far more trust than a green arrow that turns out to be a rounding artefact.

Primary sources: Google's documentation on the Search Console performance data explains exactly how impressions, clicks, and position are calculated — worth reading before interpreting any report built on them.