SEO reporting is of utmost importance. Both your project manager (or team leader) and the client will like to receive a professionally designed and clearly written SEO report to see the work done on the website, so it’s very important to learn how to create a great SEO report for your client.
Work on the design & structure
How does the design of the report matter when we know it’s going to be a technical sheet containing all the link building related jobs done in the past weeks? You may get asked this particular question often, and the truth is “Design mattersâ€. Although you are going to add all the technical details in the entire report, your clients would love to see how you have presented the data and whether your document looks good or not. Remember, they are not necessarily tech-savvy people, and you need to keep that mind when creating your report. “Nothing in the world can beat BEAUTY!â€
There are numerous formats available to choose from while creating the SEO report. Some or probably most SEO people use the MS Excel software to create a detailed SEO report, while others prefer showing the report as a slideshow using MS PowerPoint software. Some SEO people also create the report in pdf format. The end result must be a good-looking yet clean and easily understandable report that any layperson can understand.
While generating the SEO report you have to focus on its design and structure to make sure it looks simple, to the point yet pretty much detailed. Your client or project manager would like to see something valuable in the report and at the same time they won’t like to read bulks of text presented in a disorganized manner. If presented in the correct way, even a complex 20-page report will look simple and engaging. So, yes, how you design and structure your SEO report is of utmost importance.
Include all details
Whether your clients like it or not, you as the SEO provider, have to include all the details in your SEO report. While the well known fact is that nobody in today’s time likes to read bulks of text, the interesting fact is that there are some clients that want to get a fully detailed performance sheet to understand the work done on their websites, and they sometimes demand it.
You have to prepare the food as per your guest’s taste, so if your client wants all the details, never shy away from making one for them. And, in general, you have to include all the job details in your monthly or biweekly SEO report. There is no other option.
Ensure to include details in your SEO report, but don’t make it wordy. Nobody would like to keep on reading your report forever to understand the jobs done on their website. It gets boring after a point. Add all the job details that you think your client needs to know, but keep it precise. A to the point, well formatted report that has all the required details but in an organized fashion is what your client would love. Your experience also plays a major role in creating a good professional SEO report for clients.
The SEO report we’re preparing for our clients today was not the same what we used to prepare 3 or 4 years ago. We’ve added a certain amount of new things in the past and we do that constantly every year to make our SEO report appealing and engaging. We never skip any details that we think our clients need to know, but we try to present the data in a way that human eyes would love to read and consume. After a ton of permutations and combinations and months of research we have understood it now.
Use 100% authentic tools and data sources
While preparing your SEO report you will have to make use of several sources to retrieve the relevant data for the report. Make sure the data sources are 100% legitimate and are able to provide the most accurate data for your report. The data you’re going to add to the fields in your report are able to tell a lot about the website’s exact search engine ranking, search behavior, visitor count and traffic behavior, and probably a lot more.
The ranking tools from third parties and Google’s own analytics and search console applications are very useful for you. You can rely on Google’s own tools, but those third party programs can be a concern unless you do some research about them. We usually do manual ranking check for all clients here at our organization, and on rare occasions if we have to use third party tools for rank verification we make sure they give us the accurate results. Manual results are the best so if any third party tools that are fetching the closest data can also be an alternative when we don’t have enough left to complete the report.
You can trust tools, apps and other promotional platforms that have five star reviews online. There are certain tools that don’t have the best reviews or feedback from users, but they are great tools. If you find them helpful, then there’s no harm to give them a try. After some time and a couple of uses you will automatically understand whether they are authentic sources or not.
Google Search Console is able to provide a lot of help to you by giving you knowledge about how visitors are interacting with your site’s results on search engine results pages. Tools and data sources like that are 100% legitimate and very useful for you.
Cover additional features
Besides the already live links you’ve generated during the past 30 days you should also include the potential links that might be approved soon or you can tell your client about the links you tried to build but the platforms didn’t approve or took so long to approve those links. Show them that you tried your best to achieve top-quality links but there were some that couldn’t be verified or approved by the time of reporting.
Give them enough knowledge and evidence about certain metrics like traffic sources, conversion rate goals, page speed insights, bounce rate and user retention rate of the targeted pages for SEO. They all matter, and your client must know that you’re really taking care of all of that.
“Future recommendations†is also one critically important factor that gives your relationship with the client a psychological boost. You need to help your client learn the current state; visualize a goal and what exactly needs to be done to reach there. Your relationship with your client can only thrive when your client realizes that you are not only their SEO service provider, but also a holistic digital marketing partner that is seriously working towards to achieve something big for their business. Be that aggressive and trust-worthy marketing partner.
This active mindset should also reflect in your SEO report. So, in a way, this SEO reporting is more of an opportunity than a responsibility. We have learned this the hard way here within our company. We have learned that SEO reports are vitally important, and that’s specifically why our entire team puts more effort and spend more time on reporting days than average working days.
Keep striving to make your SEO report the best in the industry
A bit of exaggeration when I say ‘best in the industry’?
Well, you may argue there is no best or worst in the SEO industry especially in terms of creating SEO report. What works for our agency’s clients might be different from what works for yours, but this last tip is actually about pushing the level of your creativity, hunger and skills beyond the boundaries.
Let’s all admit one thing.
Studying the back-link profiles of your competitors is actually a complicated and time-consuming process. It can be very difficult and not feasible to do the entire thing manually, so you may make use of a handy SEO tool to accomplish that easily.
Look at the social media profiles
The SEO world is already tough and extremely competitive with hundreds of thousands of new freelancers and small search agencies entering the SEO field every week. It can make the life of already established search firms and digital agencies even tougher because new people are entering the industry with new, up to date knowledge, better skills and cost-effective solutions for SEO clients.
Do you understand that from a client’s perspective? Why would a client stay with you when there are better options available in an email away?
This is exactly why I want you to keep striving to deliver better results in all aspects. And SEO reporting is one of those aspects where you can make your clients understand what exactly you’ve done for them during the entire past month. You can justify why they should stay with you and don’t go to somewhere else.
Keep putting your best, and keep expanding beyond all limits. Put continuous effort towards making your SEO report better than all others available out there. Make sure you are the best and convey the message to your clients by translating the same into actions.
If you have already been running a digital marketing company or a search firm for a few years, I’m sure you have a reporting schedule that is more or less similar to what we follow here at our company because we understand the importance of creating professional SEO reports for our clients.