How to Make the Perfect SEO Reports for Clients

Having a host of SEO clients coming to your beckoning call for every request is a great feeling. But you need to retain the value in your service. Have a really effective report to help your clients visualise all that you’ve done for them.

It gives your client something to look at, what can be viewed as a drawback to their current progress and what to focus on next month.

Having an effective and clear report is also key to this, so we’re sharing some of our top tips and priorities to have when you’re looking at putting together your monthly report.

Show the Core Web Vitals

Seen as one of the most essential parts of an SEO audit and reporting process, Core Web Vitals will help your client visualise what’s exactly going on with their website. It shows how a particular website is performing, page speed, and individual URL quality.

These are also one of the bigger ranking factors that Google references when ranking websites. If your client’s website is performing poorly, then the Core Web Vitals report should show you where to now put your focus.

In adding this to your report your client is going to really see where particular focus should be. For next month you can look at they can improve their SEO based on your advice.

Ranking drops and increases

A key thing your client is going to want to know is how they’re performing in the rankings. When you sign up a client there should be a set of keywords that your client will rely on to see improvements. 

If there are drops, then your client is going to want to know why that is. You should accompany your report with reasoning as to why a drop could have occurred.

Improved rankings will also look great on a report. It’s a no-brainer that adding rewarding information to your report makes you look good. It’s also something to show how much work you have done for your clients.

Even when there are ranking drops, showing that you know your stuff will really impress clients. Make a point of adding an action plan to address the keywords that have suffered ranking drops. From here you can lay out what can be done to make the report look better for next month.

SEO traffic comparison

Comparing month on month, or even year on year, can show your client just how much work you’ve put in for them. This is where you should show off all that you’ve done to help make their website a better place to visit. With this, add reasoning as to why the website has improved.

You may have made content recommendations for example, or optimised their particular keywords within meta data to help support each page on the site. They all matter, and it can help your client see all that you do and when to rely on you again.

While the organic traffic of your website is important, take a look at the rest of their channels and see if there’s anything worthy of note.

Your client may have a robust PPC campaign in place that has helped improve traffic overall, or a successful email campaign that has boosted sales. Keep these in mind when putting together your report, while still keeping the focus on SEO performance.

Provide a clear list of recommendations and next steps

Your client needs a clear plan of action for them to review. If there are significant changes required, it’s in your best interest to have a list of requirements and next steps to move forward.

Your client is going to be impressed with both your detective work and your future goals for their business if there’s a clear plan of action in place.

It doesn’t need to be an elaborate summary. It should be clear and concise so the client can go away and speak to the relevant people about next steps. Bullet points and a summary paragraph will keep everything clear for the client. Then you’re not writing reams of information that can bore them.

Final words

Having a good and clear report will help your client trust you, know where you’re putting your focus and gives you a better understanding of their performance as well.

Providing a clear and valuable report will do wonders to your relationship with your client. And there could be a lot of potential to having a good rapport from the analysis you provide.