Search engine optimization without proper reporting is like driving at night without headlights or GPS. You may be moving forward, but you won’t know where you’re going and how quickly you’re getting there. Good visibility helps you course correct and make informed driving decisions.
Similarly, SEO reporting lets you see how quickly you’re reaching your goals and what needs to be fine-tuned. It enables you to assess the results of your SEO efforts and ensure your strategy is on track.
Using the right reporting tools can help clarify how to reach your SEO goals. Learn what SEO reporting tools are and the 10 best tools to analyze and improve your SEO efforts.
Table of contents
What are SEO reporting tools?
Search engine optimization (SEO) reporting tools are platforms or software that help you analyze how well your web content is performing on search engine results pages (SERPs). They do this by tracking and analyzing various SEO metrics, including keyword rankings, organic traffic, your backlink profile, and overall site health.
Some SEO reporting tools are automated and many include pre-built dashboards and templates. They’re ideal for marketers who pull regular, consistent reports. Other tools require manual setup and customization, which allows you to combine data sources. They’re suitable for those who want to dive deeper into analysis or visualize specific data.
Types of SEO reporting tools
There are three main types of SEO reporting tools:
1. Rank tracking tools. These tools monitor your website’s rankings on SERPs over time, compare rankings with competitors, and include ranking analysis by location, device, or search engine.
2. Performance tracking tools. These measure SEO performance metrics like traffic, engagement, conversions, and user behavior.
3. Site audit tools. These crawl your website to identify technical SEO issues like broken links and slow-loading pages to give you a view of your site’s health and which pages need optimization.
Some SEO reporting tools aim to provide all three types of reporting in one place. Others focus on specific use cases. It’s worth noting that SEO reporting can be done through entirely SEO-focused tools or more general marketing tools with SEO features. Whereas small business owners often only need one free SEO reporting tool, SEO professionals often use several different tools.
10 best SEO reporting tools
- Google Search Console
- SEMRush
- Ahrefs
- Moz Pro
- Nightwatch
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider
- PageSpeed Insights
- Google Analytics 4
- Looker Studio
- Similarweb
Here are the 10 best and most popular SEO-focused tools, including automated and non-automated ones. Using a combination of these will give you a comprehensive view of your SEO efforts:
1. Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) gives you valuable insights into how Google views your website, how users interact with it in Google search results, and how you can improve the technical performance of your site. It includes metrics like clicks, impressions, average SERP positions, click-through rate for specific search terms, and data on which keywords drive users to your website. You can also drill down into specific URLs to inspect their indexing status and submit updated sitemaps for crawling. GSC’s Core Web Vitals is also a valuable feature to help improve elements of the user experience like page load speed.
Price: Free
Features:
- Directly integrated with Google
- Detailed URL inspection
- Technical Core Web Vitals audits
2. Semrush
Many SEO experts consider Semrush to be the most comprehensive SEO reporting tool. It goes beyond SEO, also covering paid search, content marketing, and social media. It reports on SEO data like backlink analysis, keyword rankings, and organic traffic, letting you create customized reports and perform technical audits with actionable recommendations to fix issues. Marketers can combine all of these features to create a comprehensive SEO overview of their business and automate sending it to stakeholders at regular intervals.
Price: Starts at $140 a month
Features:
- Holistic data reporting across channels
- Actionable recommendations from site audits
- Branded and customizable reports
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs was originally known for its backlink analysis (its name refers to the HTML code for a link: <a href=””>) and for providing detailed insights into the number, quality, and source of links for you versus your competitors.
Over the years, Ahrefs has grown beyond backlink reporting to offer robust keyword reporting and site auditing features. It lets you monitor keyword rankings over time, including estimated traffic from those keywords and historical data. You can also compare rankings to competitors to uncover keyword and content gaps. Although it’s designed more for research and analysis than reporting, its rank and backlink tracking features make it a useful reporting tool.
Price: Starts at $129 a month
Features:
- Extensive keyword and backlink database
- In depth-analyses and site audits
- User-friendly interface
4. Moz Pro
Moz Pro is Moz’s flagship SEO platform. Moz pioneered backlink analysis by being the first to introduce domain authority (DA), a single score for a website’s backlink profile. Compared to Ahrefs and Semrush, Moz Pro focuses more on usability and acts as a unified reporting solution that simplifies SEO management. This makes it better for a small business owner than an SEO professional. Moz’s reporting is simple and automated but not as flexible as Semrush’s. It’s also not used as much as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Screaming Frog for in-depth technical site audits, but its pricing tiers start much lower.
Price: Starts at $49 a month
Features:
- Lower prices than others
- Ideal snapshot view for smaller businesses
- Robust supporting educational resources
5. Nightwatch
Nightwatch’s most significant feature is its location-based keyword rank tracking, which is valuable for ecommerce businesses that need to improve local SEO for their brick-and-mortar stores. It also includes customizable reporting and visualizations like graphs, charts, and automated alerts for significant keyword changes. Nightwatch can integrate with Google Analytics and Google Search Console for a more comprehensive analysis of the business impact of SEO work.
Price: Starts at $39 a month
Features:
- Detailed, geographical-based rank tracking
- Customizable reporting and visualizations
- Integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console
6. Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a website crawler primarily used for technical site audits to identify performance and ranking issues. This is an example of a non-automated tool; whereas other tools periodically crawl your site, Screaming Frog will only crawl your website when you ask it to. But this lets it give you a much more robust site audit report.
You can use the tool to generate reports on several possible technical issues, including broken links, duplicate content, missing or duplicate headers and title tags, and image sizes. You can also integrate Screaming Frog with Google Analytics, which lets you run crawls with different user segments or combine crawl data with traffic or behavior metrics to prioritize improvements.
Price: Free or $259 a year for the premium plan
Features:
- In-depth technical analysis with customizable crawls
- Integration with Google Analytics
- Easily exportable reports
7. PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights is a free tool created by Google to analyze web pages for user experience and performance. Because page speed is a ranking factor, it’s beneficial for marketers to check this every few months to continue making improvements on slow-loading pages. PageSpeed Insights produces a speed score for specific URLs as well as Core Web Vital metrics scores, which include actionable recommendations to address specific issues.
Price: Free
Features:
- Synthesizes complicated technical issues into a single, user-friendly score
- Includes actionable recommendations for solutions
- Aligns with Google’s ranking priorities
8. Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a free service offered by Google. It’s designed primarily for smaller ecommerce businesses that only need to track website performance, user engagement, and visitor behavior. GA4 offers reports on all visits to your website, segments them by source, and attributes conversions to the visits. This lets you contextualize your SEO performance by comparing traffic and conversions from organic search to other channels.
Although GA4 doesn’t directly provide site audit or rank tracking, it includes real-time reporting and customizable reports to drill into particular areas and aspects of website performance—such as identifying which landing pages drive the most organic traffic and their effect on conversions.
Price: Free
Features:
- Customizable reporting to understand user behavior and conversions
- Automatic channel segmentation and conversion attribution
- Real-time reporting
9. Looker Studio
Formerly Google Data Studio, Looker Studio is a dashboarding service run by Google that visualizes and reports on data from multiple sources. On Looker Studio, you can create interactive and customized dashboards integrated with tools like Google Ads, Google Sheets, Google Search Console, and more. This means you can view all your SEO metrics in one centralized location, focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your business goals. Looker Studio supports live connections, so you get real-time data flowing into reports and custom fields for more specific data analysis.
Price: Free or $9 per user, per month for Looker Studio Pro
Features:
- Customizable and flexible dashboards for centralized marketing reporting
- Lots of integration options
- Real-time functionality
10. Similarweb
Similarweb is a digital intelligence tool that provides insights into website and app usage, traffic sources, and competitors. While Similarweb does have some keyword ranking tracking functionality, it’s best used for benchmarking (comparing your metrics with industry standards) with its robust competitor analysis tools.
Similarweb’s referral reports are also valuable for SEO in analyzing backlinks and understanding their quality and impact. Although Similarweb is a powerful tool, its cost may be a barrier for small businesses, as the Starter plan has limited features.
Price: Starts at $125 per month
Features:
- Strong competitor intelligence and benchmarking
- One of the most accurate data estimates
- Includes Amazon and YouTube keyword research
SEO reporting tools FAQ
What is the best automated SEO reports tool?
The best automated SEO reports tool depends on your needs. Semrush and Ahrefs are two of the most popular ones for automated rank tracking, whereas Google Search Console and Looker Studio are the best for overall performance reporting.
What is the most used SEO tool?
The most used SEO tools are free and easy to use, such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
How do I report SEO performance?
To report on SEO performance, start by compiling data about organic traffic, keyword rankings, backlinks, and conversion rates within a specific timeframe (such as month or quarter) using tools like GA4, GSC, Semrush, or Ahrefs. Then, visualize the data in a tool like Looker Studio and include an analysis of current progress and actionable insights for improvements to achieve business goals.
