Are you able to tell your clients how search engine optimization (SEO)is going?
You are not the only one who has struggled to communicate progress. A report about technical SEO shows that 20% of respondents believe communicating the value of their work to be the most difficult part of their job.
This is where SEO reports can be a great help to show clients the value of your work. Here are some tips and templates that will help you create an SEO report that inspires stakeholders and builds trust and retains customers.
What’s an SEO analysis report?
DashThis template for backlinks and SEO reports.
You can track keyword rankings, organic traffic, and link-building progress across all tools with SEO analysis reports. These reports communicate to clients the effectiveness of the work of your SEO agency.
These reports not only present critical metrics visually but also offer your clients:
- Analysis: This report explains the key metrics and shows the progress made in comparison to the previous month.
- Recommendations: What should your client do next? What should they avoid? These recommendations should be tailored to each client’s business goals and campaign goals.
A Template for an SEO Report Helps You Build Confidence With Your Clients
They show clients the value of SEO
SEO metrics may not be relevant for your client.
A well-structured SEO Report Template highlights the most important metrics and KPIs for the client and avoids overwhelming readers.
It can understand which goals are important to the reader and only presents the necessary information. To show an increase or decrease in metrics over time, you can show how they compare between reporting cycles (weekly and monthly).
When deciding what information to include in your report, think about your audience. A campaign performance report should be sent to a marketing leader. Include operational metrics for pay-per-click campaigns (PPC) along with your SEO metrics.
You should focus on the number of leads that came from your organic channels. If possible, include revenue from organic traffic.
Build trust and transparency with your client
Not only are your immediate clients interested in the reports that you send, but so are their friends.
These documents are sent to management for investor reporting, quarterly business reviews, or SEO strategy planning.
Your report’s quality is a key opportunity to engage with clients and their stakeholders. A great report will add more value to your client, and help them appear professional before their peers and superiors.
This is a chance to show your agency’s reliability, attention to detail, and other positive qualities that will help you secure repeat business.
A well-presented, consistent and accurate data set with actionable recommendations creates trust and makes your SEO agency a trusted partner for clients.
It offers you upselling opportunities
Understanding your clients’ performance will help you become more attentive to their needs. It will be easier to create recommendations and proposals that resonate with clients if you have a clear starting point. If necessary, you might consider supporting your recommendations with case studies and supporting data.
Increases speed of reporting
Marketing is difficult because of data duplication. Marketing leaders surveyed by 2021 found that 34% of the information they have is duplicated across multiple sources, including spreadsheets, documents, apps, and other applications.
Data duplication can lead to more time spent cleaning up and aggregating data, and less time planning and executing SEO strategies.
Relying on a pre-made report template that is tailored to your client will save you time in putting together reports, and allow you to spend more time providing analysis that can help your clients get new business.
What to include in your SEO Report Template
These are the most important KPIs to help you achieve your goals
Consider these things when deciding on which metrics to report:
- What is the main purpose of this SEO campaign and how does it relate to my clients?
- What metrics are most effective in communicating what I want to say?
Multiple data sources
An October 2020 survey by SEO consultant Aleyda Solis revealed that most SEOs only use two to four paid tools. Some may use more than eight. Each tool has its way of showing data and metrics. You’ll need to combine data from different sources to create a coherent story in your report.
Bonus: These two elements will improve your monthly SEO report template
Comments and Notes
Comments and notes are an easy way to add value to your data without having to clutter up an SEO reporting dashboard.
Here are four examples of things that you can add to your dashboard notes or comments:
- As an overview, summarize key insights in a few sentences
- Explain unfamiliar terms or define KPIs
- Incorporate objectives and goals into a KPI
- Explain a data trend, or give more information about an unusual rise or fall in a key metric
Images and visuals
Images are processed faster than words. Use images to show relationships, details, and trends in data over time.
These are some examples to help you select the right visuals for your report.
| Goal | Graph | Example of SEO Reporting |
| Trends | Column graphs or lines | Monitoring organic sessions over time |
| To compare data | Column charts, pie, and doughnuts. | Comparison of the traffic percentages of organic traffic and referral traffic to a website. |
| To illustrate the relationship between multiple data sets | Plots with dual-axis lines | Monitor the relationship between SERPS, organic performance, or domain authority |
| To demonstrate progress toward a goal | Gauge charts | You can track the page speed and the average position for a target keyword on your client’s site. |
Option 1 Table format
| Goal | Graph | Example of SEO Reporting |
| Trends | Column graphs or lines | Monitoring organic sessions over time |
| To compare data | Column charts, pie, and doughnuts. | Comparison of the traffic percentages of organic traffic and referral traffic to a website. |
| To illustrate the relationship between multiple data sets | Plots with dual-axis lines | Monitor the relationship between SERPS, organic performance, or domain authority |
| To demonstrate progress toward a goal | Gauge charts | You can track the page speed and the average position for a target keyword on your client’s site. |
Option 2 – Text format
See trends with Line and column graphs.
Example: Monitoring organic sessions over time
To view and compare data, pie, donut, or column charts.
Example: This is how to compare the traffic percentages of organic traffic and referral traffic to a website.
To illustrate the relationship between multiple data set: Dual-axis line plots
Example: Monitor the relationship between SERPS, organic performance, or domain authority
To demonstrate progress towards a goal, Gauge pictures.
Example: Tracking page speed and the average position for a target keyword on your client’s site.
Five Time-saving Report Examples
We have five ways that you can track and report on your SEO performance. These will vary depending on which campaigns you are running and who is reviewing your report.
SEO Report Template
Start your client reports with DashThis’s SEO Report!
All key SEO metrics have been compiled in one dashboard. This includes organic traffic, channel comparison, and landing page rank. Headers allow you to organize your metrics for clients.
This template is perfect if you are running multiple Miami digital marketing campaigns for clients and SEO is one of them.
This template tracks organic conversions, search visibility, and your PPC campaign performance. You can add as many sections to each paid search campaign as you need. A simple overview at the top summarizes what your client should know.
Google Analytics report template
This report provides critical performance metrics such as conversion rates and website bounce rates. It allows you to identify areas for improvement on your client’s website.
Tip: Combine this report with Google Search Console data (GSC), to gain a comprehensive view of the impact of your SEO efforts on website performance.
Local SEO Report Template
Local business clients may not be well-versed in marketing. Talk about metrics that busy business owners care about. For example, the Google review score of their company or how many leads they generated each month.
DashThis’s local SEO Report for Small Businesses
Google Business Profile Template
Google Business Profile is often what potential customers see when they search online for F&B and local businesses.
They will look there first if they need to know the opening hours of a local business, what other people think about them, and a number they can call online.
Google Business Profile, in addition to Google Search Results, also impacts their visibility on Google Maps results.
You can make sure that your client’s Google Business Profile performance is covered in a separate report, or as part of your reporting if your work involves the above verticals.
How to create an SEO report in DashThis
Step 1 Register to create an account at DashThis (your 15 first days are free!)
Step 2 Connect your favorite marketing tool in seconds (we support more than 40 integrations with the best-rated SEO reporting tools like Ahrefs and Moz),
Step 3 Select the SEO KPIs that you want to track using DashThis’ preset widgets
Step 4 – Drag and drop as many KPIs as you wish to create your search engine optimization report.
Create SEO reports that WOW Your Clients
These are the five essential elements of a great SEO report template that you can give to your clients:
- Include a summary of key results and recommended actions
- You can use key metrics to help you understand your client’s goals.
- Visuals matter! Use graphs and tables to illustrate relationships between metrics and to communicate progress towards goals.
- Include analysis and recommendations to help your client make better business decisions.
- Automate data aggregation in your marketing tools so that you can spend your time on analysis.
Go wow your client with your next reporting session.
