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Executive SEO Performance Review and Action Plan

SEO leads, generate a diagnostic monthly SEO health report for non-technical executives. Prioritize technical, content, and link performance, providing clear, actionable steps for strategic decision-making.

This prompt guides SEO leads in generating a comprehensive monthly SEO health report tailored for non-technical executives. It covers critical areas like technical SEO, content performance, and link profiles, providing a diagnostic overview and a prioritized action plan with clear ownership and target dates for strategic implementation.

ChatGPT Claude Gemini

READY-TO-USE PROMPT

Copy Prompt

prompt.txt

As an SEO Reporting Specialist, your task is to synthesize complex SEO data into a clear, concise, and actionable monthly health report for executive-level stakeholders who lack deep SEO expertise.

Context:
You are preparing a monthly SEO performance review. The audience for this report consists of non-SEO executives who require a high-level overview of performance, key findings, and prioritized actions. The report must be diagnostic, focusing on identifying issues, explaining their impact, and proposing solutions with clear ownership and timelines.

You have access to the following raw data for the current reporting period (e.g., last month):
* **Technical SEO data**: Crawl stats (errors, budget utilization), indexation rates, site health metrics (Core Web Vitals, mobile usability issues, security warnings).
* **Content Performance data**: Organic keyword rankings (overall, key segments), traffic trends for key pages/sections, content decay analysis (pages losing rank/traffic), new content performance.
* **Backlink Profile data**: New backlinks acquired, lost backlinks, referring domain trends, anchor text distribution, disavow file updates.

Task:
Generate a structured monthly SEO health report. The report must include an executive summary and three main sections: Technical SEO, Content Performance, and Backlink Profile. Each main section must contain:

1. **Overview**: A brief, non-technical summary of the section's performance.
2. **Key Findings**: 2-3 significant observations or issues identified from the data.
3. **Prioritized Action List**: A list of the top 5 most impactful actions for the next reporting period. Each action item must include:
* **Action**: A clear, specific step to be taken.
* **Rationale/Impact**: A brief explanation of why this action is important and its potential benefit.
* **Owner**: The team or individual responsible for executing the action.
* **Target Date**: A realistic completion date for the action.

Constraints:
* The report must maintain a diagnostic and prioritized tone throughout.
* Language must be clear, concise, and free of technical SEO jargon where possible. If technical terms are necessary, provide a brief, high-level explanation.
* Focus on data-driven insights and their business implications.
* Each section's action list must be limited to the top 5 most impactful items.
* Assume the `{{reporting_period}}` is the last full calendar month.
* You will receive the `{{raw_seo_data}}` as a structured input, which you must interpret and summarize.

Output Format:
Provide the report in a structured text format, clearly delineating sections and action items. Do not include raw data tables, only the synthesized insights and actions.

Estimated results

DifficultyAdvanced

Setup time5 min

Time saved2+ hours

Best modelsChatGPT, Claude, Gemini

Best audienceMarketing, Digital Media

Editor's note

Why this prompt matters

Translating complex SEO data into digestible, actionable insights for non-technical executives is a recurring challenge for many SEO leads. Raw analytics reports, while comprehensive, often fail to communicate strategic priorities and business impact effectively. This workflow addresses that gap, providing a structured approach to transform a month's worth of technical, content, and backlink data into an executive-ready performance review.

Designed for SEO professionals tasked with reporting upwards, this report format ensures that key findings are highlighted, potential issues are explained in plain language, and all proposed actions come with clear rationale, ownership, and timelines. It helps secure buy-in for initiatives by directly connecting SEO efforts to business outcomes, fostering better strategic alignment across departments.

Reach for this report monthly to consistently communicate SEO health, track progress on critical initiatives, and proactively identify areas needing attention. It streamlines the reporting process, allowing more time for actual strategy implementation rather than report generation and clarification.

Anatomy

Prompt engineering breakdown

Role

This prompt guides SEO leads in generating a structured, diagnostic monthly SEO health report for non-technical executives. It synthesizes complex data into clear, prioritized actions across technical, content, and backlink performance.

Context

Preparing a monthly SEO performance review for non-SEO executives, focusing on diagnostic insights, identifying issues, explaining their impact, and proposing solutions. Access to Technical SEO, Content Performance, and Backlink Profile raw data for the `{{reporting_period}}`.

Goal

Generate a structured monthly SEO health report. This report must include an executive summary and three main sections: Technical SEO, Content Performance, and Backlink Profile. Each main section requires an overview, 2-3 key findings, and a top 5 prioritized action list, where each action specifies a step, rationale/impact, owner, and target date.

Constraints

Maintain a diagnostic and prioritized tone. Use clear, concise language, avoiding technical SEO jargon or explaining it briefly. Focus on data-driven insights with business implications. Limit each section's action list to the top 5 most impactful items. Assume `{{reporting_period}}` is the last full calendar month. Interpret and summarize `{{raw_seo_data}}`.

Output format

Structured text format, clearly delineating sections and action items. Do not include raw data tables, only synthesized insights and actions.

Why this structure works

Role priming as an 'SEO Reporting Specialist' immediately sets the expected level of expertise and output quality. Explicit constraints on tone, jargon, and action limits ensure the report remains focused and accessible for executive stakeholders. The structured output requirement guarantees a consistent, easy-to-digest format, which is crucial for non-technical audiences to quickly grasp key insights and actions.

Pick your version

Prompt variations

BeginnerWorks with any model

For quick overviews or initial drafts when data inputs are minimal and the audience prefers less detail.

prompt.txt

As an SEO Reporter, summarize key SEO performance for non-technical managers for the `{{reporting_period}}`. Review the `{{simple_seo_data}}` covering basic site health, content traffic, and link counts. Your report needs an overall summary, 2-3 main findings, and a list of 3 key actions. For each action, state what to do, why it matters, and who is responsible. Keep language simple and focus on the most important points. Avoid jargon. The goal is to provide a clear picture of what's working, what's not, and what to fix next.

ProfessionalBest with chatgpt

When a comprehensive, detailed executive-level report is needed, mirroring the primary prompt's full capabilities.

prompt.txt

As an SEO Reporting Specialist, your task is to synthesize complex SEO data into a clear, concise, and actionable monthly health report for executive-level stakeholders who lack deep SEO expertise.

Output Format:
Provide the report in a structured text format, clearly delineating sections and action items. Do not include raw data tables, only the synthesized insights and actions.

Short VersionWorks with any model

For brief updates or situations where only the highest-level summary and critical actions are required.

prompt.txt

Provide a high-level monthly SEO performance summary for executives from `{{raw_seo_data}}` for the `{{reporting_period}}`. Condense technical issues, content performance, and backlink trends into an executive overview. Identify the single most critical finding from each area (technical, content, links) and present a combined top 3 prioritized actions for the next month, including action, impact, and owner. Maintain a direct, actionable tone focused on business impact, omitting detailed explanations or secondary findings.

EnterpriseBest with claude

For large organizations requiring formal reporting that addresses compliance, risk, and cross-departmental impact.

prompt.txt

As an Enterprise SEO Reporting Lead, compile a comprehensive monthly SEO health report for executive leadership and cross-functional stakeholders. Your analysis of `{{enterprise_seo_data}}` for the `{{reporting_period}}` must integrate technical, content, and backlink performance with explicit consideration for business risk, compliance implications, and cross-departmental dependencies. The report requires an executive summary, a detailed breakdown per section (technical, content, backlink), and a prioritized action list. Each action must include: Action, Rationale/Impact (including potential business risk mitigation), Owner (with cross-functional alignment), and a Target Date. Emphasize strategic insights, potential compliance challenges, and resource allocation across departments. Ensure all recommendations align with broader corporate objectives and governance frameworks.

What you'll get

Expected output

Executive SEO Performance Review: May 2024

Executive Summary: Overall organic visibility showed a modest 3% increase in May, driven by strong performance from recently updated content. However, technical debt continues to impact crawl efficiency and mobile user experience, particularly on our product listing pages. Our backlink profile saw healthy growth, though we identified a few high-value link losses requiring outreach. The primary focus for the upcoming period will be addressing critical technical issues and refreshing underperforming content to sustain growth.

1. Technical SEO

Overview: Site health metrics remained largely stable this month, but we observed a decline in crawl efficiency and a slight degradation in mobile Core Web Vitals. These issues primarily affect core transactional pages, which could impact user experience and conversion rates.

Key Findings:

Increased Crawl Errors: A 15% increase in 4xx errors was detected on our /archive/ subdirectory, indicating issues with outdated product pages or internal linking. This wastes crawl budget and can lead to indexation issues.
Mobile LCP Degradation: Mobile Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) worsened by 0.5 seconds on key product category pages, pushing several into the 'Poor' category. This impacts user experience and may negatively affect search rankings for mobile users.

Prioritized Action List:

Action: Audit and clean up 4xx errors within the /archive/ subdirectory.

* Rationale/Impact: Reduce crawl waste, improve site health signals, and prevent users/bots from encountering broken links. * Owner: SEO Team * Target Date: June 15, 2024

Action: Optimize image sizes and implement lazy loading for images on product category pages.

* Rationale/Impact: Directly address Mobile LCP degradation, improving page load times and user experience for mobile visitors. * Owner: Web Development Team * Target Date: June 30, 2024

Action: Review and consolidate duplicate content issues identified on /blog/tag/ pages.

* Rationale/Impact: Prevent keyword cannibalization and improve the authority of primary content, aiding indexation efficiency. * Owner: Content Team * Target Date: July 10, 2024

Action: Implement server-side rendering (SSR) for key landing pages.

* Rationale/Impact: Improve initial page load speed and ensure search engine crawlers can fully access and render critical content. * Owner: Web Development Team * Target Date: August 15, 2024

Action: Conduct a comprehensive internal linking audit across the main site navigation.

* Rationale/Impact: Improve page authority distribution, enhance user navigation, and ensure important pages are easily discoverable by crawlers. * Owner: SEO Team Target Date: July 30, 2024

2. Content Performance

Overview: Organic keyword rankings saw an overall upward trend, with new content performing particularly well. However, some previously high-ranking, evergreen content is experiencing significant traffic decay, indicating a need for refreshment and re-optimization.

Key Findings:

Content Decay on Key Pages: Five of our top 20 traffic-generating articles from last year have dropped an average of 7 positions, resulting in a 20% traffic loss for those pages. This suggests content freshness or competitive shifts.
New Content Momentum: Recently published guides on [Topic A] and [Topic B] quickly secured top 5 rankings for target keywords, contributing significantly to new organic traffic growth.

Prioritized Action List:

Action: Identify and update the top 5 decaying content pieces with fresh data, new sections, and improved internal links.

* Rationale/Impact: Reclaim lost rankings and traffic from historically valuable content assets, increasing overall organic visibility. * Owner: Content Team * Target Date: June 25, 2024

Action: Develop a content calendar for new articles targeting identified keyword gaps within our core service areas.

* Rationale/Impact: Expand our organic footprint into relevant, underserved topics, attracting new qualified traffic. * Owner: Content Team * Target Date: June 10, 2024

Action: Conduct a competitive content analysis for our top 10 target keywords.

* Rationale/Impact: Identify opportunities to differentiate our content and improve ranking potential by addressing gaps in competitor strategies. * Owner: SEO Team * Target Date: July 5, 2024

Action: Optimize meta titles and descriptions for pages ranking on page 2 (positions 11-20).

* Rationale/Impact: Improve click-through rates (CTR) from search results, potentially boosting rankings without major content revisions. * Owner: Content Team * Target Date: July 20, 2024

Action: Implement structured data (Schema markup) for our product review pages.

* Rationale/Impact: Enhance search result visibility with rich snippets, improving CTR and providing more information to users directly in SERPs. * Owner: Web Development Team * Target Date: August 1, 2024

3. Backlink Profile

Overview: Our backlink profile demonstrated consistent growth in referring domains this month. We successfully acquired several high-authority links, but also noted the loss of a few valuable links from long-term partners, which warrants immediate attention.

Key Findings:

Positive Referring Domain Growth: We added 20 new unique referring domains, with an average Domain Rating (DR) of 65+, indicating high-quality link acquisition.
High-Value Link Losses: Three backlinks from key industry publications (DR 70+) were lost due to page removals or site restructuring. These links previously contributed significant authority.

Prioritized Action List:

Action: Conduct outreach to contacts at [Publication 1], [Publication 2], and [Publication 3] to understand lost link reasons and attempt to reinstate them.

* Rationale/Impact: Recover lost domain authority and referral traffic from highly reputable sources. * Owner: SEO Team * Target Date: June 20, 2024

Action: Analyze competitor backlink profiles to identify new link building opportunities.

* Rationale/Impact: Discover untapped sources for high-quality backlinks, expanding our own referring domain portfolio. * Owner: SEO Team * Target Date: July 1, 2024

Action: Develop a content-driven link building campaign targeting industry-specific resource pages.

* Rationale/Impact: Proactively build relationships and acquire natural, editorial links to our valuable content assets. * Owner: Content Team * Target Date: July 25, 2024

Action: Monitor backlink acquisition for any suspicious or low-quality links.

* Rationale/Impact: Maintain a clean backlink profile, preventing potential penalties and preserving domain authority. * Owner: SEO Team * Target Date: Ongoing (Weekly Review)

Action: Update internal documentation for link building best practices and outreach templates.

* Rationale/Impact: Ensure consistent quality and messaging in all link building efforts, improving efficiency and success rates. * Owner: SEO Team * Target Date: August 10, 2024

Under the hood

Why this prompt works

This prompt structure excels by employing several prompt engineering techniques that guide the model to produce a high-quality, executive-ready report. Foremost is role priming, where instructing the model to act "As an SEO Reporting Specialist" immediately sets the appropriate tone, level of detail, and expert perspective required for the task. This ensures the output is authoritative and diagnostic, not merely a data dump.

Explicit constraints are vital. Directives such as "clear, concise, and actionable," "non-SEO executives," and "top 5 most impactful actions" force the model to filter information and prioritize business implications over technical jargon. This prevents the common pitfall of generating overly technical reports that executives struggle to interpret.

The structured output format is another critical component. By explicitly defining sections like "Executive Summary," "Overview," "Key Findings," and a "Prioritized Action List" with specific sub-fields (Action, Rationale/Impact, Owner, Target Date), the prompt forces the model to organize information logically. This makes the report highly readable and ensures all necessary components for strategic decision-making are present. This comprehensive scaffolding leads to a much more useful and organized output compared to a generic, one-line request for an "SEO report," which would likely yield unstructured, less focused, and less actionable text.

Model fit

Best AI models for this prompt

ChatGPT

ChatGPT excels at generating structured text outputs and can effectively summarize complex data points into digestible insights. Its ability to follow explicit instructions for tone and format makes it suitable for creating consistent reports. Users may need to iterate on the prompt to refine the diagnostic explanations and ensure prioritization aligns perfectly with their strategic goals. See the full ChatGPT hub for deeper guidance.

Claude

Claude is particularly strong in long-context understanding and synthesizing nuanced information from extensive datasets. This makes it well-suited for interpreting diverse SEO metrics and constructing a coherent, executive-level narrative. It generally produces more human-like text and can maintain a diagnostic yet diplomatic tone without much fine-tuning. See the full Claude hub for deeper guidance.

Gemini

Gemini demonstrates strong capabilities in understanding and summarizing complex information, making it effective for breaking down technical SEO data into accessible insights. It performs well in generating structured lists and action plans, adhering to specified formats for owners and target dates. Its ability to handle diverse inputs helps in processing various SEO data points into a cohesive report. See the full Gemini hub for deeper guidance.

When to use

When presenting monthly SEO performance to non-technical executives.
When a diagnostic overview of technical, content, and backlink health is needed.
When requiring prioritized, actionable next steps with clear ownership and timelines.
When stakeholders need business implications rather than granular data dumps.
When bridging the gap between complex SEO findings and executive-level understanding.

When not to use

When conducting a deep-dive technical SEO audit requiring extensive detail.
When the audience is SEO-savvy and requires raw data, graphs, and advanced analysis.
When the reporting period is shorter than a month or highly irregular, impacting trend analysis.
When only raw data extraction is needed, without synthesis or prioritization.
When an informal update is sufficient, without the need for a structured report.

Get more from it

Pro tips

1
Pre-process your raw data to ensure clarity and consistency; this prevents misinterpretations by the model and yields more accurate insights.
2
Explicitly state the executive's primary business objectives to help the model align action item rationales with core business value.
3
Provide brief, high-level explanations for any technical terms you expect the model to include, ensuring clarity for non-SEO audiences.
4
Run the prompt with sample data first to refine output structure and ensure the action items meet your team's operational reality.
5
Regularly review the generated owner assignments and target dates; they are suggestions and will require human adjustment to fit team capacity.
6
Include comparative data (e.g., month-over-month, year-over-year) in your `raw_seo_data` for better contextualization of performance trends.
7
Clearly define the desired level of detail for each report section to avoid either overly vague or excessively verbose outputs.

Don't ship this

Common mistakes

✗ Inputting unstructured or incomplete raw SEO data without clear labels.
Fix — Standardize data inputs into a consistent, machine-readable format, such as bullet points or key metrics, for accurate interpretation.
✗ Action items generated lack specificity or omit clear owners and target dates.
Fix — Reinforce the prompt's requirement for specific actions, rationale, owner, and target date for every item in the action list.
✗ The report uses excessive technical jargon without adequate explanation for executives.
Fix — Emphasize the 'non-SEO executives' audience constraint and request brief, high-level explanations for any necessary technical terms.
✗ The generated report is merely descriptive, lacking diagnostic insights or prioritization.
Fix — Reiterate the 'diagnostic and prioritized tone' and the 'top 5 most impactful items' constraint to guide the model's focus.
✗ Forgetting to clearly define the specific `reporting_period` for the data provided.
Fix — Always specify the exact `{{reporting_period}}` (e.g., 'October 2023') to ensure the model frames insights correctly.

Frequently asked questions

Q.How detailed should the `raw_seo_data` input be for optimal results?

Provide key metrics, specific observations, and summarized trends. The model synthesizes, it doesn't just list. Avoid dumping entire spreadsheets; focus on the crucial points it needs to diagnose and prioritize effectively.

Q.Can I customize the number of action items per section beyond the default five?

Yes, you can modify 'top 5 most impactful actions' to your desired number directly in the prompt. Ensure the model can realistically generate that many distinct, prioritized actions from your input data.

Q.What happens if I don't have data for all three sections (Technical, Content, Backlink Profile)?

The model will acknowledge missing data. For the best, most comprehensive results, provide at least some information for each section. Otherwise, it may generate generic statements or 'no data' placeholders for missing areas.

Q.Will this prompt framework work for B2B businesses as well as B2C companies?

Yes, the framework is sector-agnostic. The model focuses on interpreting the data you provide. Ensure your raw_seo_data includes metrics and insights relevant to your specific B2B audience and business objectives.

Q.How can I ensure the generated owner and target dates are realistic for my team?

The model generates these based on general understanding. You'll need to review and adjust them. Consider providing a list of common owners or typical project durations in your initial prompt for better alignment.

Q.Is it possible to add an additional section, such as Competitor Analysis, to the report?

Yes, you can expand the prompt. Add a new section, following the existing structure of 'Overview,' 'Key Findings,' and 'Prioritized Action List.' Remember to also provide the relevant competitor data in your input.

Version 1.0Last reviewed July 12, 2026

Reviewed by PromptInFlow Editorial Team