A good marketing report answers one question: what did this produce? Enquiries, their quality, and work booked belong at the top, with rankings and impressions supporting them as diagnostics. Reports built the other way round describe activity rather than results, which is why they are hard to act on.
Why reports drift toward activity
Three ordinary pressures push reports in that direction.
They are easy to generate, since reporting tools export them automatically. They generally improve, because most of them accumulate. And they are comfortable, because nobody wants to open a monthly report with a number that fell.
The result is a document that is easy to produce and difficult to act on, which is a fixable problem rather than an inevitable one.
The metrics that belong in a supporting role
Impressions
The share of your listing being displayed somewhere. Impressions can rise while clicks fall, which is now common rather than exceptional for the reasons in conversion tracking. A report leading with impressions can show growth during a decline.
Keyword positions
Once a reasonable proxy for traffic and no longer reliably so. Positions can hold while clicks disappear, and a report of green arrows against a quieter phone is actively misleading.
Total sessions
Not useless, and rarely actionable on its own. Sessions from the wrong country, wrong intent, or automated traffic all count identically, so the total can rise while enquiries do not.
Social followers
Accumulates, almost never falls, and correlates weakly with anything for a local service business. A follower count is the definitive vanity metric because it is nearly impossible for it to deliver bad news.
Domain authority scores
Third-party estimates produced by SEO tools. Useful for rough comparison, not produced by any search engine, and not a thing that can be optimised directly. Reporting movement in one as an outcome mistakes a vendor's model for reality.
Pages indexed
More pages is not better. A site with 400 indexed pages of which 350 are thin is worse off than one with 50 good ones, which is the argument in when deleting content improves rankings.
What belongs at the top
- Enquiries received, by channel where you can attribute them.
- Enquiries that were usable. The filter that changes everything, since volume without quality points the wrong way.
- Work booked, and value where you track it.
- Click-through rate, as the early warning described in the post above.
- Conversion rate by landing page, which tells you which pages earn their place.
- Cost per usable enquiry, where you are spending on anything.
Notice that most of these can fall, which is what makes them useful. A report that can tell you something went wrong is a report you can act on.
The three questions to ask about any report
- What decision does this number inform? If nobody can answer, remove it.
- Could this number improve while the business gets worse? If yes, it needs a companion metric.
- What would a bad month look like here? If the metric cannot produce one, it is not measuring performance.
A fair word for the maligned
Impressions and rankings are not worthless. They are diagnostic rather than outcome measures.
Impressions falling alongside clicks suggests a visibility problem. Impressions holding while clicks fall suggests interception. Both are useful, in the second position, supporting a number that describes the business.
The failure is not tracking them. It is putting them at the top of a report and calling them results.
Getting more from your reporting
A useful test: look back at the last year of reports and identify the decisions they informed. Where the answer is thin, the reporting needs restructuring around outcomes rather than the work being wrong.
A single page answering how many enquiries arrived, how many were any good, and what changed is worth more than twenty pages of charts. It is also harder to produce, because it requires the attribution and follow-up described in conversion tracking, which is the work that makes reporting meaningful.
Frequently asked questions
What is a vanity metric?
A number that reliably increases, is pleasant to read, and does not change any decision. The practical test is asking what you would do differently if it moved twenty percent, and a metric with no answer to that is decoration rather than measurement.
Are impressions a useful metric?
As a diagnostic rather than an outcome. Impressions rising while clicks fall now happens routinely, so a report leading with impressions can show apparent growth during an actual decline. They are useful in support of a metric that describes the business.
Should keyword rankings be in a monthly report?
In a supporting position rather than as the headline. Rankings were once a reasonable proxy for traffic and no longer are, so improving positions alongside a quieter phone is a misleading combination to present as a result.
What metrics should replace vanity metrics?
Enquiries received by channel, the proportion of those that were usable, work booked and its value, click-through rate as an early warning, conversion rate by landing page, and cost per usable enquiry where you are spending on marketing.
Is domain authority a real metric?
It is a third-party estimate produced by SEO tools rather than anything a search engine publishes. It is reasonable for rough comparison between sites, but it cannot be optimised directly and reporting movement in it as an outcome mistakes a vendor's model for reality.
How can I tell if my marketing report is useful?
Ask what decision each number informs, whether any number could improve while the business worsened, and what a bad month would look like in the report. If no decision has been made from it in two years, it is documenting activity rather than measuring performance.
West Coast Media Solutions Inc. builds websites for businesses across Canada. Search and analytics platforms change frequently, and where practitioners genuinely disagree we have said so rather than presenting one position as settled.
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