What are benchmark reports?
In the field of search engine optimisation (SEO), benchmark reports contain a summary of relevant website SEO data at the start of an optimisation project. They are prepared so the client and SEO team has something to gauge the effectiveness of the changes they make against at different stages of the project.
If you wish to learn more about this concept, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What information do benchmark reports contain?
The information benchmark reports contain include things such as:
- Unique and repeat website visitors
- Click through rate (CTR)
- Average page load times
- Business leads generated
- Average Google rankings
- Organic SEO visits
- Google My Business Page performance
- Time spent per page
- Bounce rate
- Session duration
- Conversion rates
- User engagement
- Unique page views
- Non-branded keyword rankings
- Google indexed pages
- Monthly site visits
- Cornerstone content length
- Top 10 Google page 1 rankings
- Backlinks from unique domains
- Scroll depth
- Number of local business citations
- Google Analytics SEO queries
- Domain authority
- Average dollar transaction amount
At this point, you might be thinking, ‘that’s a lot of data!’ Well, you would be right—and that is not even all of it. But do not worry. We will not talk about each one in detail today. That would be an overwhelming amount of information to digest in one go. There are only three things you need to know for now:
- Benchmark reports cover a ton of different metrics
- You do not need to cover all of them in your own report
- You can hire SEO experts to prepare these reports for you
We already talked about the first one, so let us go over the other two.
First your benchmark reports should only contain data that is relevant to your business. Second, you do not have to prepare these reports yourself (unless you are an SEO expert). In fact, it is better to let actual professionals do it to make sure all your bases are covered—that and you have someone to explain everything to you.
Question #2: Why are benchmark reports important?
As we have seen earlier, benchmark reports are important because they give you a means to measure the success of your SEO efforts against. Without them, you will have no way of knowing if the changes you made actually made a difference in the performance of your website.
Sure, you might be able to notice an increase in your sales if you successfully improve your SEO, but you will have no way to definitively establish this connection and identify what you did right. This means you will not be able to recreate this success in the future.
In contrast, by preparing a benchmark report at the start of your optimisation project, you will be able to easily identify improvements such as:
- An increase in overall website traffic
- An increase in total number of conversions
- An increase in overall engagement
- An increase in total number of quality backlinks
But that is not all. You will also get access to information such as:
- Which campaigns and/or changes brought in the highest number of qualified leads
- Which campaigns and/or changes brought in the highest number of conversions
- Which campaigns and/or changes you can do away with
With this information, you will be able to more easily create an optimisation model you can use to constantly improve long after the project is completed.
Question #3: Are benchmark reports always necessary?
Yes, benchmark reports are always necessary for web pages you use to convert, rank, or drive traffic. The only web pages you do not need to create reports for are those you use for non-KPI purposes, such as:
- Contact us pages
- Privacy policy pages
- Terms and conditions pages