How to Create an SEO Report in Excel with AI

Building an SEO report in Excel often feels like a necessary evil, turning into hours of downloading CSV files and wrangling data just to prove your work is paying off. And by the time you're done, the data's already stale. This article will show you how to use AI to slash that reporting time, helping you build better, more insightful SEO reports right inside the familiar layout of Excel.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

First Things First: Gather Your Core SEO Data

An insightful report is built on good data. Before you can let AI work its magic, you need to pull the raw materials from a few key sources. Your goal here isn’t analysis, just collection. Download your data as a CSV or Excel file from each platform.

Be sure to set the date range to be consistent across all platforms (e.g., the last 30 days, last quarter).

Essential Data Sources and Metrics:

• Google Search Console (GSC): This is your primary source for organic search performance.
• Google Analytics 4: This tells you what users do after they land on your site.
• Backlink Analysis Tool (e.g., Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz): You need to understand your off-page health.
• Rank Tracking Tool (e.g., Semrush, Ahrefs, SERPWatcher): Monitor your most important keywords.

Once you have these files, you’re ready to organize your spreadsheet.

Structuring Your Excel Report for Success

A clean setup makes the AI analysis step much smoother. The best practice is to separate your raw data from your final report, which will prevent formatting issues and keep your workbook tidy.

Open a new Excel workbook and follow this structure:

1. Create a tab for each data source. Name them something simple like "GSC_Queries," "GSC_Pages," "GA4_Landing_Pages," and "Backlinks."
2. Copy-paste the data. Go into each CSV file you downloaded, copy all the data, and paste it into its corresponding tab in your main workbook.
3. Create a "Dashboard" tab. Make this the first tab in your workbook. Leave it blank for now - this is where you’ll build your final report with charts and summary tables.

At this stage, your Excel file should have one main dashboard tab and several other tabs filled with your raw SEO data. Now for the fun part.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Using AI in Excel for Analysis and Visualization

This is where you trade manual effort for smart prompts. Instead of wrestling with PivotTables or trying to remember chart-making steps, you’ll simply tell the AI what you want to see. There are two primary ways to do this.

Method 1: Using Excel’s Built-in Copilot (for Microsoft 365 Users)

If you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you might have access to Copilot directly within Excel. It's a powerful feature that can analyze your data tabs and create new elements for you.

Select your data in one of the raw data tabs (e.g., "GSC_Pages") and click the Copilot button on the Home ribbon. Then, you can use prompts like these:

Example Prompts for Excel Copilot:

• To understand your top-performing content:
• To visualize organic traffic trends:
• To find keyword opportunities:

Copilot will generate the chart or table for you. You can then copy and paste these visuals onto your "Dashboard" tab to slowly build your report.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Method 2: Using Tools Like ChatGPT for Analysis (Universally Accessible)

What if you don't have Copilot? No problem. You can leverage a tool you already know: ChatGPT. This workflow involves copy-pasting your data into the chat and asking for insights, formulas, and summaries.

A quick note on privacy: avoid pasting any sensitive or personally identifiable information into external AI tools. For SEO data like keyword clicks or anonymized traffic numbers, this is generally safe.

Here’s how you can use ChatGPT to speed up your SEO reporting:

1. For Actionable Insights from Data Tables

Copy your data from an Excel tab (e.g., your keywords from "GSC_Queries") and paste it into ChatGPT with a prompt like this:

"Here is my Google Search Console performance data for my top keywords. The columns are Query, Clicks, Impressions, CTR, and Position. [...paste your data here...] Please act as an expert SEO analyst and give me three actionable insights from this data. Focus on identifying 'low-hanging fruit' - keywords with high impressions but low CTR."

ChatGPT will provide a plain-English analysis you can use as commentary on your dashboard, saving you from having to interpret all the numbers yourself.

2. For Writing Complex Excel Formulas

Let’s say you want to combine GSC data with GA4 data on your dashboard. You need to connect clicks (from GSC) with conversions (from GA4) for each landing page. Doing this requires an XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP formula, which can be tricky to write.

Instead, just ask ChatGPT to write it for you:

"I have two tabs in Excel: one with GSC data and another with GA4 data. I want a formula that can match URLs from both tabs and output conversions from GA4 against clicks from GSC in my Dashboard."

AI will provide the exact formula you can paste into your Excel cell, instantly connecting your data tables without any frustration.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Putting It All Together: Building Your SEO Dashboard

Your "Dashboard" tab is the final product. It’s a one-page summary designed to tell a clear and persuasive story to anyone who reads it - your boss, your clients, or your team.

Anatomy of a Strong SEO Dashboard in Excel:

1. Top-Level KPIs at the Top: Start with the most important numbers. Use large, bold font for key metrics like:
2. Trend Visualizations (Key Charts): Arrange the charts you generated with AI to show trends over time. Good options include:
3. Summary Tables for Deeper Analysis: Include the important tables you created.
4. Actionable Commentary and Next Steps: Reporting is not just about numbers. Add text boxes next to your charts and tables and explain what they mean in plain terms - the exact insights you pulled from ChatGPT! For instance, "This chart shows our organic traffic increased by 15% month-over-month, primarily driven by growth in our blog post area, which we will continue to focus on next quarter."

Final Thoughts

Building an effective SEO report in Excel doesn't have to be a daunting, time-consuming task that you procrastinate on every month. By leveraging AI assistants like Excel Copilot or ChatGPT, you can automate chart creation, generate complex formulas, and even uncover narrative insights that make your reports faster to build and far more valuable.

While this AI-assisted workflow greatly improves the old process, we built Graphed to eliminate the manual steps of downloading, cleaning, and uploading data altogether. Instead of working out of static spreadsheets, you simply connect your sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and your ad platforms one time. From there, you can ask questions in plain English - like "Show me a comparison of organic sessions vs. conversions by landing page for the last 90 days” - and get a live, interactive dashboard built instantly, which stays up-to-date automatically.