What is an SEO dashboard?
An SEO dashboard is an interface tool that consolidates data from multiple sources (e.g., Google Search Console, Ahrefs, SEMrush) to track and display key performance indicators (KPIs) (e.g., keyword rankings, organic traffic, backlinks), enabling teams and agencies to monitor SEO performance and create presentations for clients and executives.
SEO dashboards are typically built using flexible tools like Google Looker Studio, Power BI, Google Sheets, or platform-specific solutions to enable high customization and integration of multiple data sources.
What to include in an SEO dashboard?
An actionable SEO dashboard balances context and specificity based on the audience (executives, managers, and analysts) and their use cases.
Executive SEO dashboards
Executive dashboards for CMOs, CEOs, and clients show SEO's bottom-line impact. Reviewed weekly, monthly, or quarterly, they include:
- SEO ROI analysis: by channel, using attribution for large budgets (≈100k/mo).
- Traffic analysis: organic traffic growth, bounce rate, session duration
- Cohort analysis: retention, expansion, and LTV by customer cohort (sign-up period, acquisition channel)
- Add text for additional context to translate metrics for non-technical audiences. Present in slide decks and simplified Looker Studio reports.
SEO manager dashboards
Manager dashboards have cross-channel views with drill-downs to see performance by client, brand, region, team member, funnel stage, and campaign. They help align teams, define tactics, and include:
- Cross-channel reporting: overall SEO performance, product, client, or region reporting across channels
- Goal tracking: compare current performance vs objectives
- Audits for prioritization and spotting issues
- Competitive analysis for keyword and backlink mapping
- Topic, keyword, content, audience research
Operational SEO Dashboards
Operational dashboards for analysts and SEO managers have granular, customizable KPIs to solve technical issues. Monitored hourly, daily, or weekly, they cover:
- Keyword performance: rankings, impressions, clicks
- Technical SEO: site speed, crawl errors, mobile usability
- Backlink analysis: new and lost backlinks, domain authority
- Content performance: page views, engagement metrics
Operational SEO dashboards are highly customized, built in flexible tools like Google Sheets or Looker Studio to enable data cleaning, blending, annotations, and integrating multiple sources.
How to build an SEO dashboard?
To build an SEO dashboard, connect your data sources, choose a template on Looker Studio or Sheets, build your queries by selecting metrics and dimensions, choose charts to visualize your data, customize the dashboard, design and share via link, PDF or email.
Here’s the breakdown:
Connect data sources
Define and connect the data sources to bring to your dashboard. Common sources are Google Search Console for organic performance, Ahrefs or SEMrush for backlink data, and Google Analytics for web analytics.
To connect your data sources, go to portermetrics.com, choose the data sources to bring to your dashboard.
You can follow these tutorials on connecting your data:
Choose a template
Choose from dozens of SEO dashboard templates in Google Sheets or Looker Studio, designed for use cases like keyword monitoring, backlink analysis, and technical SEO audits.
Learn to copy Looker Studio templates.
While templates are the starting point. Make them specific for your business or agency. Map your specific metrics, especially custom conversions, CRM contact data, GA4 events, and all the fields and metrics that you define as "conversions" and "revenue".
Depending on your reporting tool—Google Sheets or Google Looker Studio, pick any of the dozens of templates created by our team and customers to solve your SEO reporting use cases, such as keyword monitoring, backlink analysis, and technical SEO audits.
Select metrics, dimensions, and charts
Once your dashboard template is downloaded, you may 1)modify it or 2) create a blank page to build it from scratch. Whatever the case, setting up a query always follows these steps:
- Select the data source and the account connected to it
- Choose metrics (e.g., Clicks, impressions, Sessions, bounce rate, etc.).
- Choose breakdowns to segment your data (e.g., by date, keyword, page, etc.)
You can follow these tutorials on adding data to your dashboards
Design
To make your SEO dashboards truly white-label you can add logos, colors, fonts, and styling to mirror your brand.
Follow these tutorials to design your SEO dashboards:
Share
Share your SEO dashboards via links, PDF, schedule emails, and control permissions.
KPIs to include in an SEO dashboard?
SEO dashboards should include a mix of visibility, engagement, conversion, efficiency, effectiveness, and cost metrics and KPIs to fully understand the performance of SEO efforts towards business goals. They include:
SEO funnel KPIs measure the buying process (from the marketer perspective), regardless of the channel:
- Visibility metrics: impressions, search visibility, keyword rankings
- Engagement metrics: clicks, bounce rate, average session duration
- Conversion metrics: goal completions, leads, purchases
Efficiency KPIs compare your SEO outputs to the cost, including:
- Visibility: cost per impression
- Engagement: cost per click
- Conversion: cost per acquisition
Effectiveness KPIs compare the input with the output from one funnel stage to another
- Visibility: search frequency
- Engagement: click-through rate, engagement rate
- Conversion: conversion rate
Sales and cost KPIs show the bottom-line impact of your SEO performance:
- Sales: customers, revenue
- Cost: SEO spend, OPEX, payroll
- Efficiency: ROI, ROAS, CAC
- Effectiveness: AOV, ACV
To analyze these SEO KPIs, segment them by:
- Channel: organic, referral, direct
- Time: Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly
- Campaign: funnel stage, objective
- Business: client, branch, region
- Audience: geo, tech, demographics, interests, behavior, placement
- Content: creatives, format, topic, keyword
