An SEO report should answer three questions: what was done, what changed and what will be done next. Reports made only of charts that go up each month, with no link to enquiries, are decoration. This timeline shows what a sensible engagement looks like in the UAE, in English and Arabic, and which numbers to ask for. Timing varies with competition and the state of your site, so treat the months as a guide.
Month 1: foundations
Work: technical audit, fixes for crawl errors, speed, duplicate pages and redirects; tracking set up for calls, WhatsApp and forms; keyword and content plan built from real queries. Report should show: the audit findings with priority, what was fixed, tracking confirmed, and the content plan with page titles.
Month 2: first content and local signals
Work: new or rewritten pages published, internal links added, Google business profile completed, review requests started. Report: pages published, pages indexed, early impressions in Search Console and any problems found.
Month 3: first movement
Work: more content, links earned from relevant sources, improvements to pages that get impressions but few clicks. Report: impressions and clicks by page and query, ranking movement for the target terms and the first organic enquiries.
Months 4 to 6: compounding
Pages that were published early start to rise, and the rest of the plan builds topics around them. Reports should now show enquiries from organic search, which pages generate them and what they are worth.
The numbers that matter
| Number | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Organic enquiries (calls, WhatsApp, forms) | The point of the whole exercise |
| Impressions and clicks by page and query | Shows which topics are gaining visibility |
| Average position for target terms | Useful as a trend, not as a promise |
| Indexed pages and errors | Shows whether search engines can see your site |
| Page speed and Core Web Vitals | A technical quality signal; see Core Web Vitals |
| Links earned | Quality and relevance, not quantity |
Numbers to ignore
Total keyword count in the thousands, traffic that includes your own staff and bots, and domain scores from third-party tools used as targets in themselves. They can be useful context but are easy to inflate.
Seasons and the UAE calendar
Demand moves with Ramadan, summer travel, back to school and shopping seasons, so compare with the same period last year as well as with last month. See the business calendar.
Ask for access, not just a PDF
You should have read access to Search Console and analytics at all times, with the agency or consultant as an extra user. Our overview of what good SEO looks like and SEO for UAE businesses give the wider picture. Send us your site for a first review.