What an SEO Monthly Report Should Include (Real Example)
Five sections every monthly SEO report needs, shown on a real month from a site we run: clicks down 12% while impressions rose 10%, and how to read it.
Elmrank editorial3 min readLast reviewed
On this page
A business owner asked r/SEO what to do after three months with an agency: no improvement, and fewer leads than before. The most upvoted reply asked a question the agency's report should have answered already: "What does 'before' mean? The previous 3 months or the year before during the same period? If the previous 3 months, it could be seasonality."
The five sections
| Section | What it should show | Where the numbers come from |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Results | Clicks, impressions, CTR and average position, this month vs a named comparison period | Search Console Performance report |
| 2. Work done | Pages published or changed, technical fixes, with dates | The agency's own log |
| 3. Why it moved | The pages and queries behind the change, or "not known yet" | Search Console, filtered by page and query |
| 4. Next month | What will be published or fixed, and why | The plan |
| 5. Business result | Leads, calls or sales from organic visits | Analytics or CRM |
A report that skips section 2 leaves you unable to match work to results. Another reply in the same thread asked exactly that: "in 3 months - what deliverables did they provide?"
A real month, written up
Here's section 1 to 4 for September 2026 on the game news site we own and run, built from its Search Console data. The site's name and domain stay hidden, so the query and page details in section 3 are described rather than listed.
1. Results: September vs August 2026
| Metric | August | September | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clicks | 22,304 | 19,625 | down 12% |
| Impressions | 1,102,025 | 1,212,464 | up 10% |
| Click-through rate | 2.02% | 1.62% | down 0.4 points |
| Average position | 8.3 | 7.7 | better by 0.6 |
Google Search Console, web search, final data, calendar months; snapshot Oct 13, 2026.
2. Work done
The site published 200 new articles in the weeks starting in September (38, 26, 41 and 95 by week), up from 126 in August's weeks.
3. Why it moved
The site showed up in more searches and ranked slightly higher on average, but a smaller share of people clicked. We haven't confirmed why, and we'd write that down rather than guess. The report should name the pages and queries that gained impressions without clicks; that's where to look first.
4. Next month
Look at the pages behind the new impressions, fix titles and descriptions where the click rate is lowest, and hold publishing volume until the click rate recovers. (Publishing 200 articles didn't stop the drop.)
5. Business result
We don't publish revenue for our sites, so the sample stops at section 4. For a business site, this is where leads or sales from organic visits go, from your analytics or CRM, because Search Console doesn't track them.
How to read the Search Console numbers
A few definitions matter when you read any report, including ours.
- A click is counted when someone clicks your site in Google Search results; an impression is counted each time your site appears in them.
- Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions.
- In the chart, average position is "the average position of the topmost result from your entire site." It can improve while clicks fall, as it did above.
- The newest data can be preliminary, "still being collected and may change in the next few hours." A report should use complete days.
- Search Console has a built-in Compare option for date ranges. Ask which comparison the report uses: last month, or the same month last year.
What agencies put in their reports
Published packages show what's typical. WebFX's lists "Ongoing monthly traffic, goal & CPL reporting" and quarterly keyword ranking reports. Digital Elevator's lists "Monthly performance reporting across rankings, traffic, and AI citations." Both are a fine start. What you should add to any agency's report, if it's missing, is section 2: the dated list of what was actually done.
The report in our plan
Our plan includes a monthly report on how your site does in search, built on your own Search Console data, so you can open the same numbers yourself. It sits alongside the work it reports on: technical fixes and up to 30 articles a month for $300, after a $500 first month. If you're comparing it with an agency's report, our guide to vetting an SEO agency's case studies uses the same checks, and the technical SEO service page covers the fixes side.
How we know this
Written by Elmrank editorial. Every source below was read on the date shown; the page was last reviewed on Oct 14, 2026.
- Search Console Help, Performance report (Search results), accessed Oct 14, 2026
- Search Console Help, How are you performing on Google?, accessed Oct 14, 2026
- Search Console Help, preliminary data, accessed Oct 14, 2026
- WebFX, SEO Pricing (packages table), accessed Oct 14, 2026
- Digital Elevator, Managed AEO/SEO, accessed Oct 14, 2026
- r/SEO, three months with an SEO agency and fewer leads (comments by u/JakeHundley, u/WxMan2201), accessed Oct 14, 2026
- Elmrank, Search Console data for three sites we own (snapshot Oct 13, 2026), accessed Oct 14, 2026
Email us your site.
We reply within 12 hours with what we'd fix first. Then we run it for you, technical SEO and content: $500 for the first month, then $300 a month for up to 30 articles. You don't need any technical knowledge, and you can cancel any time.