Guides · Cost and choosing
Published · 7 min
SEO reporting: what to expect every month
A monthly SEO report exists so you can decide whether to keep paying. This guide sets out the numbers that answer that question, where each one comes from, how rankings are misread, and the metrics that look like progress while nothing changes.
Short version: a good monthly SEO report shows four things. What the work produced in enquiries, calls, bookings or sales. Where that evidence comes from, in accounts you own. What was done this month and what is planned next. And what did not move, said plainly. Rankings and traffic belong in it as context, not as the headline. If a report is all green arrows and you cannot find the number of enquiries, the report is hiding something, even if nobody intended it to. Details and sources follow.
What a report is for
A report is not reassurance. It is the document you use once a month to decide whether to continue, change direction or stop. That means it has to answer the question you actually have ("is this paying?") before the questions the agency finds easier ("are we ranking?"). It also has to be honest about lag: SEO work done in March often shows in June, so a good report separates what was done from what has moved, and says which months’ work the movement belongs to.
For a London business the question of "paying" is usually concrete. A dental practice in Croydon wants new patient enquiries. A restaurant in Soho wants bookings and the phone to ring at six. A solicitor in Holborn wants qualified consultations, not form spam. Each of those is measurable, and each should be the first line of the report.
The numbers that matter, in order
Every number below comes from an account that should be in your name, with the agency given access. The table lists where each one lives and what it tells you.
| Metric | Where it comes from | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiries, calls, bookings, sales from organic search | Google Analytics 4 key events (form submissions, calls, bookings), call tracking, your booking system or CRM | Whether the work is paying. The only number that matters on its own. |
| Calls, direction requests and website clicks from your Business Profile | Google Business Profile performance report, which counts calls, direction requests, website clicks and the searches people used | Whether local search is producing customers, for any business with a location |
| Organic clicks to the pages that matter | Search Console Performance report (clicks, impressions, average position by query and page) | Whether visibility is turning into visits, and on which pages |
| Impressions for the searches you want | Search Console Performance report, filtered to the target queries | Whether you are being shown for the right things, before clicks arrive |
| Site health | Search Console indexing reports; Core Web Vitals field data | Whether anything is blocking the work from counting |
| Links earned | A list of URLs, with the date each went live | What was earned, and whether any of it was paid for |
Notice what is not in the table: a "visibility score", a "domain authority" figure, a count of keywords ranking. Those are third-party estimates. They can be useful to the agency as working tools; they do not belong at the top of your report.
Rankings: how to read them without being misled
Rankings are the number clients ask for and the number most easily misread. Three things to know.
First, Search Console’s "average position" is the average position of the topmost result from your site, averaged across every time you appeared. A page can report an average position of 4 while almost nobody who searches sees it there. Read it next to impressions and clicks, never alone.
Second, local results move with the searcher. Google says local ranking is "mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity", so a plumber ranks differently to someone searching in Clapham and someone searching in Balham, a mile away. A single "position 2" checked from one location is close to meaningless. For local businesses, ask for a rank grid: the same search checked from a set of points around your location, so you can see where you appear and where you do not.
Third, rankings for searches nobody makes are free. An agency can report a list of first-page positions that together produce no clicks. The test is simple: for each ranking reported, what were the impressions and clicks in Search Console? If the answer is "a handful", the ranking is decoration.
Work done and work planned
This is the section most reports leave out, and it is the one that tells you whether you are paying for a team or for a template. Each month you should see:
- What was changed on the site, page by page, and why.
- Which content was published, with links, and what search it is meant to answer.
- Which links were earned, with URLs.
- Which technical problems were found and which were fixed, with the evidence (a screenshot, a crawl, a Search Console report).
- What is planned for next month and what it needs from you.
- What did not work, and what the agency is doing differently as a result.
Compare this list to the agency’s month-one commitment. If the work in the report does not match what was promised in the agency’s proposal, that is the conversation to have, before you look at a single chart.
Sources and access: whose accounts are these?
The data in a report is only yours if the accounts are. Google Analytics, Search Console, your Google Business Profile, any call-tracking account and any rank-tracking project should be created in your name, with the agency added as a user. If you leave, you keep the history. If the agency created them in its own name, you leave with a PDF.
Dashboards are a related question. Several London agencies sell a live client dashboard as a differentiator; Breakline, for instance, markets one with Google Analytics 4 and Search Console connected and visibility tracking across Google and AI assistants (its own published pages, profile checked 9 Oct 2026). A dashboard is a good thing. The question to ask is whether the numbers in it come from accounts you control, and whether you would still have them if you stopped paying. A dashboard you cannot export from is a window, not a record.
Vanity metrics that hide flat results
None of these metrics are dishonest. Each one can rise while nothing changes for your business, which is why a report built around them can look healthy for a year.
| Metric | Why it flatters | Ask for instead |
|---|---|---|
| Total keywords ranking | Counts positions 30 to 100, where nobody clicks | Clicks and key events on the pages that matter |
| Impressions alone | Can rise while clicks fall, especially after AI answers appear above results | Impressions beside clicks, by query |
| Domain authority or similar scores | A third-party estimate, not a Google figure, and movable by links of no value | The list of links earned, with URLs |
| Total organic traffic | Includes people searching your brand name, which rises for reasons unrelated to SEO | Non-brand clicks, and the enquiries they produced |
| "Pages optimised" or "tasks completed" | Activity, not outcome | Which pages, what changed, what moved as a result |
| Rankings for long, specific phrases | Easy to win, rarely searched | Impressions for each phrase in Search Console |
| Bounce rate or time on page | Open to interpretation and to measurement changes | Key events per visit on the landing pages |
A monthly cadence that works
Reporting is a rhythm, not a document. The cadence below is what we run and what we would recommend asking any agency for. Reports arrive on a fixed day, so you can plan your own review around them, and every report is talked through by a named person who did the work or managed it.
| When | What | Who |
|---|---|---|
| By the fifth working day of each month | Written report: results against the agreed measures, work done, work planned, what did not move | Your account lead |
| Same week | A 30-minute call to go through it and agree next month’s priorities | Your account lead; the specialist where needed |
| Continuously | Live access to Analytics, Search Console, Business Profile and rank tracking, all in your name | You |
| Each quarter | Strategy review: what the quarter’s data says, refreshed search map, competitor re-benchmark | Account lead and the senior team, at Tower 42 or on video |
| Any time | A written answer within one working day to any question about the numbers | Your account lead |
Our tiers and what each one reports are set out on the pricing page; the figures there are indicative until confirmed, but the cadence is not.
A checklist for reading any SEO report
- Can I find the number of enquiries, calls or sales from organic search on the first page?
- Does every chart name its source, and do I have access to that source?
- Are rankings shown beside impressions and clicks, not alone?
- For a local business, is there a rank grid rather than a single position?
- Is there a list of what was done this month, specific enough that I could check it?
- Is there a list of links earned, with URLs?
- Is there a plan for next month and a statement of what it needs from me?
- Does the report say what did not move?
- Does the work match what the proposal promised?
- Could I hand this report to a new agency and have them understand what was done?
If the answer to more than three of those is no, ask for a different report. If the agency cannot produce one, our guide to questions to ask an SEO agency will help with the conversation that follows.
Get your free SEO auditSend us your last report alongside your website and the review will say what it shows and what it leaves out.
Sources
6 sources · accessed 9 Oct 2026
Questions
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