Content reporting

What content reporting is

Content reporting is a regular, usually monthly, written account of whether the content is doing its job, in language the person paying for it can read without a translator. It answers three questions: what happened, why, and what we will do differently next month.

It is not a dashboard. A dashboard shows forty numbers and leaves the reader to decide which matter. A report shows four and says what they mean. Most businesses that have a dashboard do not open it; the ones that get a one-page report read it.

What is in it

One page. Occasionally two. Always in the same order, so that after three months you can read it in the time it takes the kettle to boil.

1. The numbers. The three or four KPIs agreed at the start, this month against last month and against the same month last year. Qualified inquiries is always one of them. Page views are never the headline.
2. What moved, and why. Two or three sentences per number. If inquiries rose, which pages they came from. If a page fell, whether that was seasonal, a search-engine change or something we did.
3. What was published. The list, with one line on how each piece is doing so far. Early figures for new pages are marked as early.
4. The one decision. The single thing to do, stop or change next month, and why. If there is nothing to change, the report says so; that is information too.

The numbers that are in it, and the ones that are not

Which numbers are tracked is decided before the first report, in a short session on content KPIs. The shortlist almost always includes qualified inquiries and where they came from; inquiry quality, scored simply on arrival; branded search, meaning people typing your name, which is the closest thing to a measure of reputation; and one number specific to your business, such as bookings or quote requests.

What is left out on purpose: raw traffic, social follower counts, "engagement", rankings for keywords nobody buys with, and anything that can go up while the business goes down. Most searches now end without a click, so a page can do its job and register as nothing in analytics. The report is built around what reaches the business, not what reaches the server.

A worked example

An illustration. A physiotherapy clinic's report for one month reads, in full: inquiries 23, up from 17, and 14 of them named a specific condition, which is the highest quality score yet. Eleven of the 23 came from the three condition pages published in the spring. Branded searches up a little. Traffic down by about a fifth, which matches the search-engine change that month and did not affect inquiries, so it is noted and not acted on. Published this month: one page on post-surgery rehabilitation, too early to judge. The decision: write the next two condition pages the inquiry emails keep mentioning, and stop the general wellness posts, which have produced no inquiry in six months.

That is the whole report. The owner read it, agreed the decision by email, and the month's work was set.

Scoring inquiry quality

One number in the report needs explaining, because it is the one most businesses have never measured. Every inquiry is scored on arrival, out of four: did they name a specific problem, did they mention a budget or a timeframe, are they the person who decides, and did they say where they found you. An inquiry that scores four is a conversation worth having today. One that scores zero is usually a supplier selling to you.

The average score matters more than the count. Twenty inquiries averaging one are a worse month than twelve averaging three, and a report built on the count alone would tell you the opposite. Scoring takes a minute per inquiry and it is the single most useful column in the spreadsheet.

How it is built

You give read-only access to analytics, search data, and whatever records inquiries: a form log, a CRM, an inbox. Each month I pull the numbers, read the inquiries to score quality, check what changed in search, and write the page. It arrives on a fixed day each month. If something needs saying before then, it is said before then.

The first report takes longest because it sets the baseline. After that it is a few hours a month, and the cost reflects that.

What it costs

Reporting is included in every month of the Content Engine. On its own, for a business that produces its own content and wants an independent monthly read on it, it is a small fixed monthly fee, quoted after the half-hour call once I have seen what data exists.

What happens next

Every third report is a longer one: the quarterly content review, which looks at the 90 days as a whole and adjusts the plan. Once a year, the ROI analysis puts the year's cost and return side by side, honestly. Neither of those is possible without the monthly reports underneath them; that is the main reason to keep them.