I do SEO for my living. I work directly with CEOs, eCommerce Managers, and IT staff of respective businesses. Sometimes, the person from Client-side does not have sound knowledge of SEO, while other Clients are SEO-savvy and they have questions for me. In both the cases, Clients expect frequent updates regarding SEO progress. What’s going on with their Campaign? Are keyword rankings going upward? What’s the traffic statistics? Is the Conversion increasing as promised earlier? Did I say promise? Yeah, whatever you’ve proposed to them before starting the SEO contract is the key. They’ll get back to you with the same goal, every time. Although they will always be busy with their business work, they need to be updated frequently. What’ll happen if you make a shortfall in communication with them? – Anyone can predict the answer – They’ll move. And very early.
One of the foremost things behind any SEO agency’s success is the customer retention. Your expertise in the SEO domain, communication level, quality of services, and transparency with the Clients will not only help you retain your existing Clients but you’ll also experience the referral power and get new gigs. The key to retention and referrals is Website SEO Report.
Dear SEO, It’s Your Turn to Show RESULTS!
Website SEO reports are the thing which keeps Clients updated regarding SEO activities, actions performed and results achieved so far. It’s your time to show the impact of your SEO services on their business but if unfortunately, you don’t have satisfactory things to show, that’s the time when Clients actually switch SEO vendors.
By seeing your SEO report, they (Clients) will mainly be able to see:
- Where does my website rank in Google/Bing/Yahoo for this specific keyword?
- Which web-pages are referring me? Are they credible enough or just SPAM?
- How many people are coming to see my services or read my Blog Posts? What is the ratio of people filling the query form?
- What are the next steps, SEO guy is taking on next month?
Your SEO reports should be detailed and must answer every question.
Website SEO Report Format
What should be the format of showing SEO progress? Well, it depends on you and Clients. The same thing with reporting frequency – Weekly, Bi-monthly or monthly; But I personally prefer bi-monthly period (Client should be updated at least twice in a month). The best way to create a well-aligned in-depth report is the use of an automated tool. This is because we generally do not have much time to get involved in bringing visual creativity into DOCs and PDFs. This is time-consuming and not everyone is PDF editing savvy.
For an example – I am handy over SEO things and I prepare the SEO audit report manually but could it be visually better than the report generated by Report Garden or WooRank? My answer is – NO. So all I need to do is play a little bit with automated reports to add my points and that’s it – I can send it to the concerned person immediately.
Want to Give a Try to Report Garden? Schedule a DEMO here.
TIP#1: Always Add Your Branding
Before sending reports to your Clients, make sure you’ve added properly formatted Header and Footer. Placing your LOGO image, the name of the agency, Client’s Name, your contact information in the footer brings a professional look and of course, a personal touch.
TIP#2: Don’t Baffle Client
A high possibility that your Clients do not understand the SEO jargons, there is no point in showing them the reports that they can’t analyze. The information should be displayed in a way that they can understand, analyze and extract the data for their further marketing strategy. Adding Components in the SEO Report Website ChangeLog: Do inform Clients the same time when you login into the site to optimize it. If you are not keeping the track of the SEO + Design + Code changes, it could be irksome for Development’s side. Changes could be anything from SEO Meta Tags Tweaks to the changes in web-page copy or minify anything under CSS, HTML or JS.
Again, it’s totally up to you and Client’s agreement – Are you responsible for website back-up; or Client has a different team or in-house developer? But keeping a changeLog is a must.
TIP#3: Show Every Change
Make a list of all the changes done on the website and present it to the Client in a way Client understands. Technical SEO activities are connected with Developer’s desk so their developer should also be informed regarding plugging code – 301/302, Canonicals, Query form settings, or back-up etc. Authority Metrics: We all love metrics, right? That’s the way we analyze a website on an initial level. MOZ, Majestic SEO, SEMRush, Alexa, and Similar Web are the most used online tools for getting a website’s authority in the respective industry.
It would be an add-on in the SEO reports to add website’s authority metrics because it is an easy way to monitor the impact of SEO work technically. Have a look at the example of SITE123.com; below are the metrics of the website from MOZ and Similar Web:
It is facile to add MOZ and AHREFS insights into your Report Garden Campaign and reporting segment. TRY it now! Keywords Ranking Progress: A must! You and Client have agreed on the keyword selection at the very early stage of the Campaign, right? Make a comparative progress of the rankings for all those keywords.
- What were the previous rankings and current positions for the set of the targeted keywords?
- Which Page is ranking for a specific keyword?
- What are the secondary keywords (semantically related search terms) for which web-pages are ranking?
I include Google and Bing rankings in my reports but if you like to add Yahoo, Ask or other search engines, do include the ranking insights for them as well.
Tip #4: Try to show as many keywords as possible
Google Search Console Search Analytics insights will help you show the best keyword terms. The report will show the number of clicks, impressions, CTR rate, and the avg. search position in Google for a specific search term from a specific country and for the specified time duration.
An Improvement over Traffic: It’s mandatory to show the traffic improvement from the number of channels you were actively participating.
Your Report should clearly express the following:
- Traffic from Google organic search results
- Visitors to the website from the links you built
- Monthly Comparison of the traffic (Organic + Referral + Social + Paid)
- Goal Completion Rate across all the channels
- Other helpful metrics like most viewed pages, sales funnel, avg. session duration, and bounce rate.
Tip #5: Use Analytic Software
This sort of data would be available in Google Analytics property or any other traffic analytics software you’re already using. Integrate this property (GA Data) into your reporting software and that’s it – everything will be inherited from there, all at one place. You will have to install Goal or event tracking in Google Analytics to measure conversion rate.
Tip #6: For eCommerce Campaigns
In the case of eCommerce Campaign, you need to add one more segment of total ROI. This section will be a detailed segment of sales data from each online marketing channel. In case, if you’ve not configured eCommerce tracking under GA property, read it: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/ecommerce
Linking Data: We all need powerful links. Links which look natural, unbiased, and as per Google webmaster recommendations. You work hard to get featured in major blogs, magazines, and interview series. You bring diversity in anchors, TLDs, geographical locations, and link placements. Show your hard work to Client under this section – Link Report.
- How many backlinks did I create this month?
- The detail about individual link – Live Link URL, metrics of referring domain, anchor text, link attribute (NF v/s DF), and the nature of the referring domain (Directory, Interview, Video, QA, Guest Blog etc.)
- The logic behind the selection of specific website and anchor text.
- The report of News Links v/s Lost Links in Google indexing.
What’s Next? My favorite part – The future plan; Clients would like to see your next steps to get much-improved results. What you’re going to do next? Writing on a specific topic targeting specific keyword? Working on new UX Point? Whatever you are thinking, write down it to the Client. You should ask at least for their submission. Want to showcase accurate SEO reports to your Clients? See the DEMO report by Report Garden.
I’m sure you will have additional points to enlarge this list. What’s your add-on? I would like to hear from you.
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