As an SEO professional, you know that tracking your campaigns is crucial. But preparing a report that a client will actually read and understand is a different story. Many reports are overwhelming and confusing, filled with technical jargon and data that a client can’t interpret. The result is that a client might not see the value of your work, which can lead to a canceled contract.
Key Metrics to Include in Your SEO Reports
An effective SEO report should tell a story. It should connect your work to a client’s business goals and show them how their SEO is improving. A good report should include a few key metrics:
Traffic and Engagement
This is the most fundamental metric. It shows your clients how many people are visiting their website and how they are interacting with it. You should include:
- Overall monthly traffic
- Monthly traffic compared to the previous period
- Traffic by source/channel
- Average session duration
- Bounce rate
Conversions
This is the most important metric for any business. It shows how many visitors are completing a desired action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase. You should include:
- Overall conversions
- Conversions by traffic source
- Highest-converting pages
Keyword Rankings
This metric shows your clients where their website is ranking for specific keywords. You should include:
- All keywords the client ranks for
- Top keywords the client ranks for
- Rising and declining keywords
Content Performance
This metric shows you which of your content pieces are performing the best. You should include:
- Highest-converting content
- Content that gets the most traffic
- Content that is rapidly getting more traffic and conversions
Backlinks
Backlinks are a signal of trust and authority. You should include:
- The website’s Domain Authority
- New and lost backlinks
- The percentage of high-quality vs. low-quality backlinks
How to Create Actionable SEO Reports
The key to a good report is not just to show data, but to provide insights. A client wants to know what the data means and what you are going to do about it.
Website SEO Health Check-up
You should include a website SEO health check-up in your report. This is a technical audit that identifies problems like broken links, structured data issues, and pagespeed. You can present this as a health score with a to-do list of items that need to be fixed. A professional SEO platform Clickrank can help with this. The platform automatically crawls your website and provides a prioritized list of tasks to fix these issues. This allows you to focus on your content and other SEO tasks while the platform takes care of the technical side.
Key Insights and Summary
You should always start your report with a summary that is easy to understand. You should explain what you have done, how it has affected the client’s metrics, and what you plan to do next. This tells a story with your data and helps a client see the value of your work.
How to Use the Right Tools
You can use a combination of tools to create a comprehensive report.
- Google Search Console and Google Analytics: These free tools from Google are a must-have for tracking your website’s performance.
- A professional SEO platform: A platform Clickrank can help you with this by automating your audits and providing you with a clear roadmap of what to do next.
