Nowadays, everything runs on data, especially businesses. Google Looker Studio helps to “make every bit of your vital data accessible and useful, so your team can find and share the answers to your most important questions.” No matter where you’re pulling your data from, Looker Studio takes care of access rights, data authentication, and the structure of the calculations and data visualizations. The Looker Studio reports allow users to “transform your raw data into the metrics and dimensions needed to create easy-to-follow reports and dashboards. Cleanse, combine, explore, and transform all your data without writing code or creating SQL queries.”
When it comes to pulling together the SEO data for your business, according to SEMrush, Looker Studio “is one of the most powerful SEO reporting tools available.” Google Looker Studio reports allow you to pull data from a multitude of sources, including Google Ads, Google Analytics, Campaign Manager 360, MySQL, and Google BigQuery.
Read on to see what you should include in your Looker Studio SEO report.
How to Create a New Google Looker Studio Custom Report
Creating a Looker Studio custom report is easy and can be done in just a few steps. The first thing you’ll need to do to create a new report is sign in to Looker Studio. Click Create and select Report.
Add Data to Your Looker Studio Reports
- Once the report editor tool is open, look for the Add data to report panel. This panel shows the option to Connect to data and My data sources.
- Click Connect to data and select a connector to create a new data source. Add that information to your report.
- Select the type of data you want to showcase in your report.
- Provide your account credentials.
- Click Add in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen to add the data to your report.
- Click My data sources to add data from an existing data source, such as your Google Analytics data. To do so,
- Find and click on the data source you want to include in your report.
- Click Add in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen to add the data to your report.
- Click Connect to data and select a connector to create a new data source. Add that information to your report.
- Once you’ve selected your data source(s), a table will appear in your report with the fields from that data source. Note: You can use the properties panel on the right side of the Looker Studio report screen to change the data output and style.
- Be sure to name your report by clicking Untitled Report and entering the name you want for your Looker Studio report.
You can add as many sources to your Google Looker Studio report as you’d like by following the same steps listed above.
Add Charts to Your Google Looker Studio Report
Adding charts to your Looker Studio custom report can make it easier to understand the raw data your report is pulling in. To add charts to your Looker Studio report:
- Click Add a chart in the toolbar.
- Click the canvas where you want the chart to appear. Note: If you’re using an Analytics data source, Looker Studio automatically adds the Date dimension and the Source metric.
- To adjust the location of your chart on the report canvas, click and drag it to its new location or select the chart and move it around with the arrow keys on your keyboard. Each press of the arrows moves the chart over one row or column (10 px) on the grid.
Style Your Google Looker Studio Report
Looker Studio reports have a number of preset themes available to add color and style to your custom report. To add a theme to your report:
- Click the Edit button.
- Open the Theme and Layout panel, which will appear on the right side of the screen when no other components are selected. Once you’ve reviewed the options, select the theme you want for your report and click to apply it.
- You can also customize the preset themes available so that they match more closely to your brand’s colors by clicking on Customize in the Theme and Layout panel.
- Scroll down to the Background and Border section.
- Use the color picker to set the Background color.
Further Customize Your Looker Studio Reports By Adding a Banner
Give your Google Looker Studio SEO report a professional finish by adding a banner to the top as a report header.
- Click the Page component by clicking anywhere on the report grid area.
- Click on the Rectangle tool on the toolbar and draw a rectangle across the top of the page.
- Click on the Style tab within the Rectangle Properties panel on the right side of the screen.
- Select the rectangle background color that matches your brand colors.
- Select the Text tool from the toolbar to add a title to the banner across the top of your report.
- Draw a textbox that stretches across the banner rectangle.
- Once you’ve typed in your title into the textbox, highlight everything in the textbox, and use the Text Properties panel to alter the font style, color, and size that best matches your brand guidelines.
What Should Be Included in Your Looker Studio SEO Report?
When you’re developing your SEO Report, Google Looker Studio includes the following sections in the SEO report template available for download:
- Overview
- Audience Insight
- Top Landing and Queries
- E-commerce – only applicable if you’re site is set up to process e-commerce data
- Lead Generation
While your report should provide, at a minimum, the information for the sections listed above, you can certainly add more sections to your Looker Studio SEO report. For example, Webris provides a much more detailed and comprehensive template you can use for your Google Looker Studio SEO report, including the following sections:
- Summary Page — This may be self-explanatory, but it’s important to provide a concise summary of your report’s findings as well as a list of each of the different sections.
- Organic Traffic Summary — This high-level evaluation allows you to understand the ebbs and flows of your organic traffic over time.
- Organic Traffic Breakdown — This section of your Looker Studio report can provide detailed insight into how your organic traffic is engaging with your website, including how the different devices impact the organic traffic and identifying the demographics of your SEO traffic.
- Organic Landing Pages — This section provides a better understanding of how your best and worst web pages are performing as a result of your SEO efforts.
- Channel Comparison — This part of your report provides a direct comparison of the average engagement metrics, referral traffic, social traffic, paid traffic, direct traffic, and email for each of your visitors’ sessions.
- E-commerce Conversion and Revenue Analysis — If you’re looking to understand how your organic traffic is impacting the sales on your website, this section of your Looker Studio SEO report will provide you with a direct comparison of your non-organic vs. organic traffic and how each of them impacts your bottom line, including a summation of average revenue per page and the average order value.
- Organic Revenue — This section allows you to visualize how your organic traffic, device types, and landing pages impact your revenue.
- Lead Generation and Conversion Analysis — If one of the goals for your website is to produce more leads for your business, this page will show the success of your organic traffic’s goal conversion as well as which of your web pages are driving conversions.
- Lead Generation By Entry Page — This part of your Google Looker Studio Seo report should include a list of your organic landing pages broken down by pages per session, average time on page, bounce rate, goal completion, and goal conversion rate.
- Organic Leads and Revenue By Demographic — Provides a better understanding of your business’s target audience demographic for organic traffic, which includes location, age, and sex.
- Local SEO Reporting Breakdown — This data readout works best for businesses with physical locations who want to understand how your business is performing in local markets. In order to successfully incorporate this page in your Google Data Studio report, you’ll need a local URL on your website.
- Keyword Visibility Progression — Including this page allows you to understand how the top 3 positions have performed since the beginning of your SEO campaign as well as the overall keyword ranking position and impressions via Google Search Console.
- Keyword Performance — This page of your Looker Studio SEO report displays the search queries visitors used during your reporting period and the top-ranked keyword across all of the pages of your website for this reporting period as well as the previous reporting period.
- Links and Content Published — Because content generation and link building are part of SEO growth, this is a great place to summarize the links and pieces of content published during your reporting period.
Need Help Setting Up Your Looker Studio Reports?
While Looker Studio is one of the best tools available for compiling SEO data for your business or agency, it can be intimidating to work with. If you’d like your staff to learn how to do SEO, PPC, Google, Analytics — including Looker Studio reports — and/or WordPress, we are happy to help. We can train your staff on a one-off or regular basis to do any of the things we specialize in. Contact us today to set up training sessions for you and your team.
*Photo Credits: Google