Understanding Your SEO Report

Section 1: What SEO is

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In plain terms: it’s the work we do to help your website show up on Google when people search for what you offer.

The goal: bring more of the right people to your website

How it works: When someone types something into Google, Google looks through billions of websites and picks which ones to show. We help your website be one of the ones it picks.

What we focus on:

• Making your site easy for Google to read
• Creating pages that match what people search for
• Building your website’s reputation on Google

Section 2: Why your numbers may not always be exact

Your report pulls numbers straight from Google. These are the best tools available, but they don’t catch every single visit. Here’s why your numbers might shift a little.

Some people block tracking: Many people use browser settings or tools that block websites from counting their visit. The visit still happens — Google just doesn’t see it.

Some people say “no” to cookies: When someone visits your site, they may see a popup asking about cookies. If they click “no,” their visit isn’t counted. This is the law in many places.

Google needs time to update: After a day ends, Google takes 1–3 days to fully count everything. Numbers you see right after month-end can still shift a little.

Google only keeps 16 months of search data: Anything older than 16 months isn’t available. This is a Google rule, not something we control.

Search Console and Google Analytics count differently: Search Console counts clicks from Google. Google Analytics counts actual visits to your site. They won’t always match exactly. Someone might click but leave before the page loads — that’s a click but not a visit.

Bottom line: These small gaps happen to every website. The trends — whether your traffic is going up, down, or staying steady — are still accurate. That’s what really matters.

Section 3: Why landing pages help — even when they show low traffic

When you look at your Top Pages report, you’ll usually see your home page and contact page at the top. That’s normal — and it’s not what we measure SEO success by. Here’s how to think about the different pages on your site and what each one is doing.

Your home and contact pages
These are usually your highest-traffic pages, but the traffic isn’t really coming from SEO work. People searching your business name on Google land on your home page. People ready to reach out go to your contact page. These pages would get traffic with or without SEO. They’re important — but they’re not the pages we’re trying to grow.

Your main SEO pages (Tier 1)
These are the pages we build to bring in new people through search — people who don’t know your business yet but are searching for what you offer. A Tier 1 page might be something like a specific service page or a location page.

These pages usually won’t get more traffic than your home page. That’s not the goal. Their job is to bring in the right kind of traffic — strangers who could become customers — not to be your highest-traffic page overall.

Supporting pages (Tier 2, 3, and 4)
These are pages designed to support your Tier 1 pages. They cover more specific topics, narrower audiences, or related questions. They’re connected to your Tier 1 pages through internal links across your site.

A supporting page might only get a handful of clicks each month. That’s expected. Their job isn’t to bring in lots of traffic on their own — it’s to make your Tier 1 pages stronger. Here’s how that works:

• When supporting pages link to your Tier 1 pages, they pass credibility along. Google sees more well-written pages connected to a Tier 1 page and trusts that Tier 1 page more.
• Supporting pages tell Google you cover a topic in depth. A site with one page about therapy is much weaker than a site with a Tier 1 therapy page supported by Tier 2 pages on specific therapy types, supported by Tier 3 pages with even more detail.
• Supporting pages catch very specific searches your main pages would miss.

How to read your Top Pages report

When you look at the report:

• Don’t be surprised if your home page is the top page. That’s almost always true and isn’t a sign of SEO problems.
• Look at how your Tier 1 SEO pages are performing relative to each other and over time, not relative to your home page.
• Don’t worry if supporting pages have low click numbers — they’re doing their job quietly.
• The most important number is your total organic traffic growth over time. If that’s going up, the strategy is working — even if specific pages don’t look how you might expect.

Section 4: Glossary

Average Position: Where your website usually appears on Google for a search. Position 1 is the very top. Position 10 is the bottom of the first page. Lower numbers are better.

• What’s good? This depends a lot on what people are searching. For specific searches like “therapist in Costa Mesa,” getting into the top 10 (page 1) is the goal. For broad, generic searches like “therapy” or “doctor,” even position 30 or 50 can be good — because you’re competing with the entire internet for those words. Don’t be alarmed by higher position numbers on broad searches. The number you really want to watch is whether your position is improving over time.

Branded Search: When someone searches for your business name directly. People doing branded searches usually already know about your business.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): Of the people who saw your site on Google, the percentage who actually clicked. If 100 people saw you and 3 clicked, your CTR is 3%.

• What’s good? This depends on where you rank. Sites in position 1 typically get 25–30% CTR. Sites in positions 2–3 get 10–15%. Anything in positions 4–10 usually gets 2–5%. So a CTR of 5% might sound low, but if you’re ranking in position 6, that’s actually great. A CTR of 10% or higher is excellent at almost any position.

Clicks: How many times someone clicked your site from Google’s search results. This doesn’t include people who clicked on a paid ad.

Impressions: How many times your site appeared in Google’s search results, even if no one clicked.

• What’s good? Higher is generally better — it means Google is showing you to more people. But impressions only matter when paired with clicks (CTR). It is extremely common to have impressions be much larger than clicks.

Indexing: Google adding your page to its list of pages it can show in search results. A page must be indexed before anyone can find it on Google. New pages can take days or weeks to be indexed — we manually submit important pages to speed this up.

Keyword: The words someone types into Google when searching. Like “therapist near me” or “best ADHD doctor.”

Landing Page: The page someone lands on when they click through from Google to your site. This is often the home page, but for SEO traffic it’s frequently a specific service or location page we built to match what the person searched for.

New Visitors: In your report, this means clicks from people who searched for what you do — not your business name.

• What’s good? This depends on how well-known your business already is. For newer or local businesses, 30–50% new visitors is healthy. For very well-known businesses with lots of brand searches, this number is naturally lower (10–20%) because so many people search the business name directly.

Non-Branded Search: A search that doesn’t include your business name. Like “therapy near me” or “ADHD specialist costa mesa.” Growing this is one of the main goals of SEO — these are the searches that bring in people who don’t know your business yet.

Organic Traffic: Visitors who came to your site from Google without you paying for an ad. The opposite of paid traffic from Google Ads.

Ranking: Where your site shows up on Google for a specific search. The same website can rank differently for different searches — you might rank #2 for “costa mesa therapist” and #50+ for “depression therapy.”

Search Console: Google’s free tool that shows how your site does in search. This is where most of the search data in your report comes from — clicks, impressions, average position, and the specific words people searched.

Session: One visit to your website. One person can have many sessions if they come back multiple times.

User: A unique person visiting your site. One user can have many sessions. The “Users” number in your report is usually a better measure of how many real people visited than the “Sessions” number.