The report that tells you what people actually want

The four numbers

Impressions are how often one of your pages was shown. Clicks are how often somebody chose it. Position is roughly where you appeared.

Click through rate is clicks divided by impressions, and it is the one that tells you whether your title and description are doing their job.

Each can be broken down by search, by page, by country and by device.

All four are filtered by date, and the default period is short. Widen it before drawing conclusions, because a small site needs months rather than days to show anything real.

Widen the date range before drawing conclusions. A small site needs months rather than days before anything it shows is real.

Start with queries

Sort by impressions and read the list. These are the actual words people typed before seeing you.

Most owners find surprises immediately. People ask about services you mention in passing, or use words you never use.

That list is the best content brief you will ever get, and it costs nothing.

Read the long tail as well as the top. A dozen searches with three impressions each often describe one subject nobody has written a page about, and together they are worth more than the top row.

Read the long tail as well as the top. A dozen searches with three impressions each often describe one subject nobody has written a page about.

The gap worth mining

Look for searches with many impressions and very few clicks. You are appearing and being passed over.

Sometimes the page is genuinely wrong for the search. Often the title simply does not say what the searcher wanted.

Rewriting a title is ten minutes and it is the highest return change available on most small sites.

Check the page that is appearing before rewriting anything. Sometimes the wrong page is showing for the search, and the fix is a new page rather than a new title.

Rewriting a title is ten minutes and it is the highest-return change available on most small sites, which is covered in title tags.

Then look by page

Switch to the pages view and see which ones earn everything. On most small sites a handful carry nearly all of it.

Pages with impressions and no clicks are candidates for a better title. Pages with nothing at all may not be indexed, which is a different report.

This also shows which pages nobody needed, which is useful when deciding what to write next.

What does average position actually mean?

Average position mixes every search and every appearance, so it moves for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

It is useful as a trend across months on a specific query. It is close to meaningless as a single site wide number.

Never report it to anybody as a measure of success. It invites exactly the wrong conversation.

Comparing periods

Compare a month to the same month last year rather than to last month, because most businesses have a season.

Look for changes in queries as well as totals. A drop in one search family is a story. A drop in the total is a headline.

Small sites should compare quarters rather than weeks, because weekly numbers are mostly noise.

Compare a month to the same month last year rather than to last month, because most businesses have a season and the season will otherwise look like a trend.

Turning it into work

Once a month, pull the top queries with low click through, fix those titles, and note any question appearing repeatedly that you have no page for.

That single habit produces a better content plan than any keyword tool, because it is your audience rather than an estimate.

Pages here are written from a conversation about your business, so a gap found in this report can become a page without starting from a blank screen.

Keep the list. Doing this monthly for a year produces a documented record of what your audience asks for, which is more valuable than any single change you make from it.

• Pull the top queries by impressions once a month
• Find the ones with many impressions and few clicks
• Check which page is actually showing for each
• Rewrite that title to answer the search
• Note any question appearing repeatedly with no page behind it
• Check the same rows a month later