A What question

What should an SEO company report include?

3 min read Cites 1 source

A useful SEO report answers three questions in order: is the work moving the business toward its goals, what was done to get there, and what happens next. Everything in the report should serve one of those questions, and the numbers should come from accounts you own so you can check them. A report that is mostly charts, with no explanation of what was done or why the numbers moved, tells you what happened without telling you whether your money is working.

The sections a report should have

  1. A short summary against the goals you agreed: two or three sentences on where things stand compared with the targets, what changed since the last report, and anything that needs your decision.
  2. Business outcomes from organic search, such as inquiries, calls, and sales, measured in your analytics and your own records. These come first because they are the reason for the work.
  3. Search visibility from Search Console: clicks and impressions broken down by the queries and pages that matter, with searches for your brand name kept apart from the rest so growth among new customers is visible.
  4. Visibility in AI features in Google Search, which Search Console now reports directly, so it does not have to rely on third-party estimates.
  5. A list of work completed: pages written or changed, technical fixes, links earned with the linking sites named, and anything else in the scope.
  6. The state of technical health: indexing problems, errors, and page speed, with what was fixed and what is outstanding.
  7. An interpretation of why the numbers moved, in plain language, including results that went the wrong way.
  8. The next steps: what will be done before the next report, and why those priorities.

Visibility in Google’s AI features

Google’s Search Console now includes a generative AI performance report. Google’s documentation states: “As of August 31, 2026, we’ve rolled out these insights to all websites worldwide.” The report “includes impressions for the following generative AI capabilities on Google Search”, listing AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Google notes that “Search Console doesn’t include data from experiments in Search Labs.” It shows impressions, which pages receive them, and where they come from by device or country.

That makes AI visibility something a report can measure from Google’s own data for your site. If a report presents AI visibility only through a third-party tool’s estimate, ask whether this Search Console report has been included, and what the two show side by side.

Signs of a report that is not doing its job

It leads with numbers that sound large but are not tied to your goals, such as total impressions or the count of keywords tracked. It lists no work, or describes it only in general terms. It never reports a result that went down. Its figures come from the company’s own tools, with no way for you to check them against your accounts. Any one of these is worth raising; several together are a reason to ask for a different report.

Make sure you can check it

Ask for the report’s numbers to come from your own analytics and Search Console, with the company working through user access, and for the report to say where each figure comes from.

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