To Inspire Your Reporting, Here Are 11 Stunning SEO Data Visualizations

We’ve all heard the expression “data tells a story.” But that story can be difficult to follow at times, especially if you’re not a numbers person.

As SEO professionals, we understand that what we do has an impact on a company’s bottom line. So, how do we communicate this to our clients in ways that are meaningful to them?

Data visualization is becoming increasingly popular, and rightly so.

These visualizations demonstrate how SEO data can be used to tell compelling stories.

Whether you’re just starting with data visualizations or looking for ideas to improve your reporting, you’ll find it all here.

What Exactly Is Data Visualization?

The act of converting numbers into visual graphics is known as data visualization.

Those graphs you made in elementary school? Visualizations.

What are gradient maps? Visualizations.

Data visualization is also a method of presenting numbers.

It all adds up to form a picture.

Visualizations can greatly improve your reporting as an SEO expert.

Visuals not only make your data easier to digest for clients, but they also make it more interesting.

And that’s critical when you’re trying to get executive or client buy-in.

11 Stunning Visuals for SEO Reporting Examples

The good news is that you don’t have to start over.

There are numerous data visualization tools and examples available to help you tell the right stories with your SEO data more quickly.

Here are 11 sites to check out if you’re looking for visualizations to improve your SEO reports.

1. Datapine Dashboard

On the left side of the datapine dashboard, there are six blue rectangles.

The lightest shade of blue at the top represents the least qualified audience, while the darkest blue rectangle at the bottom represents the converted audience.

As SEO professionals, we frequently collaborate with others to solve a specific problem.

Whatever the issue, various key performance indicators can indicate whether or not we are on the right track.

The best way to determine these key performance indicators is to start at the end of the pipeline and work backward.

If you want more people to read to the end of the blog post and click on the “related articles,” you’ll need to track those clicks. However, scrolling to the bottom of the blog post, 75% scrolls, 50% scrolls, 25% scrolls, page visits, and page impressions are all indicators of whether or not we are on the right track.

It is also a great way to quickly see where drop-offs are occurring.

I’d hold a workshop with the client to identify all of the KPIs we’ll be focusing on during this left-hand side overview.

Then, I’d work with the client to select graphics for each of those clients so they can associate a picture with the name and refresh their memory about what that KPI means.

Finally, if you report monthly, you could include a comparison number under the name of the metric to let the client know if you are improving month after month.

2. Oneupweb ROI Report

A client’s eyes are drawn to one section of every report first… the one that discusses money.

Far too often, we become overly focused on the details of our work and want to show it off, even though we know that is not what is most important to our clients.

Whether your ROI is increasing or decreasing, the reality is that clients always go there first, so own it.

Make the numbers big and demonstrate your impact.

This example from OneUpWeb arranges the numbers in a way that draws your attention directly to what is important.

The retainer’s cost is shown at the top.

The ROI percentage is shown in large font in the middle, and the formula that calculates the ROI in dollars is shown near the bottom.

This report is straightforward and caters to the needs of the clients.

3. KeySearch.co Keyword Tool

The KeySearch keyword tool generates a lot of data, but the table that organizes the data by URL is extremely useful.

You can see which URLs have the best traffic in a matter of seconds (and which have the worst, too).

While it isn’t overly complicated or artistic, it does a fantastic job of simplifying the data.

While this table is designed to display metrics for specific URLs, it could also be used to track important keyword metrics for clients.

For example, you could keep track of:

• what position you currently rank,
• whether there are any owned rich snippets,
• how much traffic was sent to the site from that keyword,
• buying intent, etc.

4. Smart Insights Bot Traffic Report 2016

Smart Insights is known for producing visually appealing reports, and this one is no exception.

They created this infographic to explain the various types of bots that attack websites.

The color green represents good bots and red represents bad bots, a concept we learned at a young age – that was their first win.

In the center of the infographic is a pie chart. There’s nothing special about it, except that the bottom half of the pie chart is broken down a little further right down the page.

The same color scheme is used in the pie chart to further break down the information and provide context for how the “good” and “bad” bots are constructed.

This idea could be easily applied to devise reports in your SEO reporting.

You could use a pie chart for the device category, and then further down the page, you could break it down by browser type or device model.

5. Lucky Orange Heatmaps

Making a site more user-friendly is a large part of our job as SEO experts.

This can be difficult for our clients to grasp at times.

As a result, sharing click maps with clients is one of my favorite things to do.

Here’s an example from Lucky Orange that shows them what people are clicking on the most on their pages.

As you can see, a glance at this visual can give anyone an idea of where clients may become disoriented.

Forms are the best place to use heatmaps. You’d be surprised how the click density decreases as the form lengthens.

This may be especially useful when comparing the performance of forms on mobile versus desktop.

6. Gov | DNA By Werner Helmich

It’s no surprise that this next visualization won the World Data Visualization Prize.

The Gov | DNA site bubble graph is stunningly simple.

Unlike traditional scatter plots, this bubble graph has color-coded bubbles of varying sizes.

This is a great way to visualize a large number of metrics in one place.

The bubble graph, on the other hand, is similar to a scatter plot in that it makes identifying outliers very simple.

This, in my opinion, would be a great way to map out the sessions vs. conversions of various keywords.

I’d also use the color groups to represent different keyword groups, with the size of the bubble representing the keyword’s total monthly volume.

7. Popular Programming Languages On The Cran Network Visual

Tracking the performance of blog posts and categories of blog posts, like tracking keywords, can become complicated.

However, after looking at this visual, it appears that there may be an easy way to do it.

The graph above depicts the various programming languages, the number of CRAN packages written in each language, and the different types of packages.

The languages are color-coded and located in the center of the visual, while the types of packages are located in the outer circle and are associated with the respective languages.

The same setup could be used for blog content.

The colors and large cells in the middles could be based on the categories and how much traffic they bring in, and all of the large cells in the outer circle could be linked to individual blog posts in each category.

This type of setup may make it simple for anyone to see where the biggest wins are coming from as well as which categories may require additional attention.

8. The Women Of Data Viz

This is a one-of-a-kind visual with a lot of moving parts.

I’m not sure I’d keep everything, but I believe the concept could be used to track progress for an audit.

A heart with all of the potential attributes can be found on the left side.

These characteristics indicate whether or not a qualification has been met. If the qualification is met, it is placed on the heart; if it is not, it is not placed.

As a result, this image could be used to represent an “optimized page checklist.”

You could easily show the progress made on the site as a whole in an easy-to-digest way if you created attributes for all of the things that need to be done for any given page.

Looking at this visual, we can see that the majority of the hearts at the bottom have a larger white ring; if that larger white ring represented content length, we can see that the other pages (hearts without rings) still need a bit more content.

9. The Invisible Heartbeat Of New York City

There are numerous ways to depict geography, but none of them are particularly exciting.

You eventually begin to look past the visuals you’ve seen many times before.

However, Justin Fung’s image of New York City is sure to catch your eye.

This map uses 3D bars that move up and down to represent each population block in the city.

Color is also used as a secondary population indicator.

This could be a great way for local SEO marketers to shake up their reporting and show their clients something new.

Imagine using this awesome visual to show your clients where directions were requisitioned from on their Google Business Profile!

10. Hoaxy

Hoaxy is a tool for identifying misinformation spreaders on Twitter.

However, it can also be used to identify information sharers and the circles they influence.

In this case, I looked up the name of a new Search Engine Journal article to see who shared it and encouraged others to do the same.

What’s particularly intriguing about this is that it pulls in all of the Twitter usernames – which could be extremely useful.

This would be a fascinating way to show your clients how a specific blog post performed on Twitter and who shared it.

This is especially useful if you’ve been working with public relations professionals to build links.

Finally, this could be useful information for identifying potential candidates for guest posting opportunities.

11. Visual Link Explorer

This is a cool visualization because it comes from a tool designed specifically for SEOs!

The Visual Link Explorer from Cognitive SEO can tell you (and your clients) a lot about how their pages are acquiring links in a visually appealing manner.

Because of the size of the element, you can not only see which pages have the most links at a glance, but you can also tell how authoritative those links are by looking at how far out those links reach.

The greater the distance between the tether and the center, the more authoritative the link.

This tool is also interactive, allowing you to color-code the theaters based on the type of domain linking to the page and whether the link is active or inactive.

This list could go on for days, but hopefully, it has given you some ideas!

I challenge you to look at the reports you’re currently providing to clients and create at least one new visual to replace or supplement the data you’re already reporting.

I have a feeling it will end with more compelling reports and happier recipients.

Learn more from SEO and read A Quick Reference Guide to International SEO.