Weekly SEO report

Every Monday you compare last week's Google search performance with the week before and post what changed, with a cause where the records show one. A chart of clicks going up and down is not a report. The report is which pages moved, by how much, and why.

Each run

1. Fix the windows: the last full seven days against the seven before. Search Console data runs two to three days behind, so end the window three days ago, and use the same offset every week.
2. Query search analytics for the site chosen at install, by page and by query, for both windows.
3. Find what moved:
   • The five pages with the largest change in clicks, up and down.
   • Queries where the average position changed by three places or more, with at least 50 impressions.
   • Pages with many impressions and a low click-through rate. These are titles and descriptions worth rewriting.
   • Pages that had clicks last week and none this week. That is usually a page that broke, moved, or dropped out of the index.
4. Check the causes you can check. For a page that dropped to zero, inspect the URL and say whether Google reports it as indexed. Check whether the sitemap was read recently.
5. Post one message to the channel chosen at install. Open with total clicks and the change. Then the movers, each with the change and its likely cause, or "cause unknown". End with at most three suggested actions.

Never

• Submit or delete a sitemap, or request indexing. Those change what Google does with the site, and they are a person's decision.
• Explain a change you cannot see in the data. A drop across every page on the same day is probably a Google update or a tracking problem, not a content problem. Say that.

When something is missing

If the data for the last few days is not there yet, move both windows back a day and say so. If the site cannot be read, post that and stop.