What makes a good SEO dashboard ?
Creating an effective SEO dashboard involves more than choosing the right visualization tools. It’s about selecting the right metrics and data points that will help improve our strategy, track performance, and demonstrate the impact of your SEO efforts. Whether you’re presenting to clients, stakeholders, or simply keeping a pulse on your own campaigns, knowing which metrics to include—and how to present them—is crucial.
In this article, we’ll break down the essential components of a good SEO dashboard, discuss key metrics to include, and show how these elements can provide a complete picture of your SEO performance.
1. Search Performance Metrics:The Foundation of SEO Analysis
The core of any SEO dashboard should focus on search performance metrics. These metrics tell you how well your site is performing in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Common tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and third-party platforms like SEMrush or Ahrefs will be your go-to sources for this data. Here’s what to prioritize:
Impressions: How often your site appears in the search results for relevant queries. Tracking impressions can help gauge your overall visibility and detect new ranking opportunities.
Clicks: While impressions show visibility, clicks reflect engagement. A good SEO dashboard should highlight the number of clicks generated from organic search, helping you assess the effectiveness of your titles and meta descriptions.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): Calculated as clicks divided by impressions, CTR reveals how enticing your search snippets are. A low CTR can indicate a need for optimization, even if you have high rankings.
Average Position (Rankings): Understanding your average position for high-priority keywords is critical. A robust dashboard will show which keywords are climbing, which are losing traction, and where opportunities for improvement exist.
Recommendation: Visualize these metrics using trend lines and bar charts to highlight changes over time. You can also set up comparison periods (e.g., last month vs. this month) to show growth or decline and see how your changes impact your main KPIs.
2. Conversion Metrics: Tying SEO to Business Goals
Ultimately, SEO is not just about driving traffic but about contributing to your business’s bottom line. Including conversion-related metrics in your dashboard is essential to demonstrate ROI and justify your SEO investments:
Goal Completions: Set up goals in Google Analytics (e.g., form submissions, downloads, sign-ups) to track how organic visitors are converting. This metric can be a direct measure of SEO success.
Ecommerce Revenue: If applicable, track ecommerce revenue from organic traffic. A spike in revenue from search can signify a successful SEO campaign.
Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action. A low conversion rate might mean that while your SEO strategy is bringing in traffic, the content or user experience needs to be optimized.
Recommendation: Use funnel visualizations to track how organic visitors move through the sales funnel. Annotate key points to highlight where drop-offs occur.
3. Keyword Performance: Tracking SEO Success by Search Queries
Your keyword strategy is at the heart of your SEO efforts. A dedicated section in your dashboard should focus on keyword performance metrics such as:
Top Keywords by Traffic: Track which keywords are driving the most traffic and which have the potential to grow further.
Keyword Ranking Distribution: Display the percentage of your keywords that rank in the top 3, top 10, and beyond. This breakdown helps pinpoint where to focus optimization efforts.
Branded vs. Non-Branded Keywords: Understanding the split between branded and non-branded search queries can indicate how much of your traffic is from brand awareness versus new discovery.
Recommendation: Use tables and bar charts to show keyword rankings and their movement over time. Color coding (e.g., green for improved rankings, red for declines) adds quick visual cues.
4. Content Performance: Tracking SEO Success by landing pages
Your content strategy is as important as your keyword strategy. It’s better to have a dedicated section in your dashboard to focus on content performance metrics such as:
Top content page by Traffic: Track which landing page are driving the most traffic and which have the potential to grow further.
Page Ranking Distribution: Display the percentage of your landing page that rank in the top 3, top 10, and beyond. This breakdown helps pinpoint where to focus optimization efforts.
Recommendation: Same as for keyword, use tables and bar charts to show keyword rankings and their movement over time. Color coding (e.g., green for improved rankings, red for declines) adds quick visual cues.
5. Technical SEO Health: Monitoring Site Structure and Performance
Technical SEO metrics should also be part of your dashboard, as they affect your site’s crawlability and user experience. Key metrics are also known as Core Web Vitals by Google:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. LCP is the time it takes for the largest content element (e.g., image, video, text block) to become visible within the viewport. A good LCP is under 2.5 seconds.
First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. FID tracks the time it takes for a user to interact with the page (e.g., clicking a link, tapping a button) after the page has loaded. An optimal FID is less than 100 milliseconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. CLS tracks how much content shifts unexpectedly during page load. An ideal CLS score is below 0.1, indicating that the page layout is stable as it loads.
Recommendation: Incorporate a device filter so you can compare you website performance between web and mobile. You can display Core Web Vitals in a performance gauge format, using color coding to indicate “Good”, “Needs Improvement”, or “Bad”.
6. Backlink Profile: Authority and Link Building Metrics
Links remain a crucial ranking factor. Include backlink data to track your link-building efforts and monitor the health of your site’s authority is the best. But it’s hard to find free tools that allow to collect these types of data. Key metrics include:
Total Backlinks: Shows the cumulative number of backlinks pointing to your site. Use this to track link-building efforts over time.
Referring Domains: The number of unique domains linking to your site. A diverse backlink profile is a positive indicator of authority.
Domain Authority (DA): Although not a direct Google ranking factor, DA is a helpful benchmark for assessing site strength relative to competitors.
New vs. Lost Links: Track how many links you’re gaining and losing. Sudden drops can indicate a penalty or loss of key partnerships.
Recommendation: Visualize new vs. lost links using a bar chart, and set up alerts for any significant changes in your link profile.
Conclusion
A good SEO dashboard goes beyond presenting data: it tells a story about your SEO performance, uncovers insights, and suggests actions. By focusing on these key areas—search performance, traffic, user behavior, conversions, backlinks, keyword performance, and technical health—you can create a dashboard that serves as a powerful tool for decision-making and strategy optimization.
Discover the SEO dashboard made by Queriestation here
