Build an SEO Performance Report That Wow Clients

Crafting SEO reports is tough, especially when trying to grow a marketing agency. It’s one thing to put them together; it’s another to do it over and over, without missing a beat. To create an SEO report, follow a step-by-step guide to build professional and digestible reports that emphasize the importance of consistent reporting for SEO strategies.

Instead of getting stuck in a never-ending cycle of report, rinse, repeat, it’s worth taking a step back to ask: Why do we even bother with SEO reporting? Am I spending my time in the most efficient way possible? What are the key metrics we should focus on for tracking organic traffic? How can we keep an eye on keyword rankings without getting bogged down? And—is there a perfect SEO report template out there, somewhere?

Manually collating data from Google Analytics, SEMrush, various social channels, and other platforms was extremely tedious. This process not only took far too long and wasted valuable resources that could be spent on actual SEO, but the reports also lacked professionalism. 

Brad Russell, Founder, Digital Hitmen

Let’s break down what SEO performance reporting really means for agencies and how to nail client reports. It’s about getting to the heart of SEO reporting, picking the right metrics, finding ways to streamline the process, and tailoring reports to not just deliver data, but to truly impress your clients.

Continuously updating your client’s content, engaging in off-page SEO strategies for link building, and implementing tactics to elevate keyword positions and organic reach are all part of the SEO grind. However, the tangible outcomes of these efforts might not immediately dazzle your clients. The reality is, SEO campaigns demand patience for significant ROI, with traffic numbers often showing variability.

That’s where an SEO performance report comes into play. It is your agency’s tool to make it easy to highlight achievements and deliver on the promise of organic search benefits. An SEO report provides a comprehensive overview of leading and lagging key performance indicators and core metrics, shedding light on the client’s site performance within the organic search landscape.

For agencies, the challenge lies in effectively tracking and demonstrating these evolving trends, tailoring reports to align with the specific aspirations of each client.

Are the keyword rankings increasing? Have more high-authority backlinks been generated?  How is that impacting organic search traffic?  Those are all questions that your clients will want to have answered.

SEO performance reports act as a strategic extension of your agency’s overall SEO approach, reflecting the objectives you’ve set in alignment with your client’s business ambitions. Ideally, these goals would have been identified and agreed upon during the initial SEO proposal stage, fostering ongoing dialogue as your client’s campaign evolves.

We use AgencyAnalytics to provide detailed analysis for our SEO clients, with site audits and keyword tracking helping us demonstrate the value we deliver.

Andy Hill, Founder, Distribute Digital

The Key Elements of a Professional SEO Performance Report

Your agency's SEO performance report is crucial for connecting the dots between your agency’s commitments and actual performance, detailing the journey from initial SEO strategy to current results, and outlining the road ahead. This ensures a transparent, results-focused narrative that reinforces trust and underscores your agency’s dedication to exceeding those objectives.

KPIs keep us accountable. KPIs provide the client transparency into what work we deliver, and most importantly, KPIs demonstrate that we are on track and achieving mutually agreed upon goals.

Dave Krauter, Founder & SEO Strategist, Websites That Sell

A well-crafted SEO report transforms complex data webs into actionable insights, empowering clients with the knowledge to make informed decisions. Before you create SEO reports, the first step is to determine the relevant metrics to highlight. These should be the ones that align with your client's goal and show the impact of your agency's SEO efforts.

Here are the most important elements to include in a professional SEO performance report:

1. Report Cover Page

The journey into your agency’s SEO report starts with a cover page, setting the stage for the detailed analysis within. This is your chance to make a strong first impression, incorporating your agency’s branding through customized backgrounds and images. A well-thought-out cover page signals your commitment to quality and professionalism, laying the groundwork for a strong agency-client relationship.

2. Executive Summary

Here, you distill the progress of SEO campaigns, highlighting achievements, and identifying the next steps in a concise overview. This section is critical, often being the primary takeaway for busy executives. It should succinctly summarize your agency’s efforts, align them with client goals, and outline future strategies, providing a clear snapshot of the report's contents.

3. Traffic Overview by Channel

Highlighting organic search traffic at the beginning of your report directly addresses clients’ main concerns, showcasing the immediate impact of your SEO efforts. This analysis reveals the role of organic traffic in enhancing overall site performance and user engagement. By tracking and improving rankings on search engines and measuring the impact on website performance, you connect the dots between SERP improvements and customer growth.

4. Conversions from Organic Traffic

Conversions are the ultimate measure of strategy success, showing how effectively organic traffic meets business goals like lead generation and sales. Highlighting this demonstrates SEO's tangible contribution to your client's bottom line.

5. Landing Page Insights

Analyzing traffic on specific landing pages provides insights into audience engagement and the effectiveness of the content strategy. This analysis offers insights into the performance of top-performing pages, shedding light on user behavior and the success of targeted keywords.

6. Keyword Performance

In SEO performance reports, the spotlight should be on how top-ranking keywords draw in the ideal audience for your clients. By leveraging metrics from tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, you can refine SEO tactics to enhance site visibility and improve search engine rankings.

Rather than getting lost in the minutiae of individual keyword rankings, present a compelling overview with a keyword performance tool. This approach highlights the strategic wins, demonstrating your agency’s skills, expertise, and overall performance.

7. Google Search Console Insights

Utilizing Google Search Console data underscores your commitment to monitoring the client's online footprint. This includes insights into website health, page indexing, and potential areas for improvement, ensuring the site's optimal performance in search results.

8. Backlink Profile Overview

A strong backlink profile is important for establishing site authority. A robust backlink profile signifies a site's authority and relevance. This report section highlights your agency’s link-building strategies, focusing on acquiring high-quality links to bolster the client's domain authority and competitive standing.  It's about reinforcing your dedication to enhancing the client's domain authority and competitive edge.

9. SEO Site Health

The technical integrity of a website is fundamental to its SEO success and user experience. Technical SEO audits are essential for maintaining website integrity and user experience. Regular checks help identify and resolve issues and ensure compliance with search engine best practices for improved visibility and ranking.

Each of these components plays a pivotal role in crafting an SEO report that informs and impresses your clients.

Choosing an SEO Reporting Tool to Enhance Efficiency

Selecting an effective SEO reporting tool is critical for marketing agencies aiming to streamline their reporting efforts. Automated SEO reporting platforms integrate various data sources and popular SEO tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Moz, SEMrush, and Ahrefs, significantly reducing the time spent gathering and presenting SEO data.

Once the key SEO data has been collected, the priority should be generating comprehensive reports that give agencies more time and resources to refine their clients’ SEO tactics and drive stronger results.

The right tool simplifies the entire reporting process and boosts the quality of insights shared with clients, ensuring that each report is both meaningful and actionable.

It's very difficult to explain the value of a service to a client without visuals. Using the web analytics report and the SEO reports side by side, helps us show our clients a correlation between SEO and Traffic. We merge this data with a custom template that tracks conversions, and stripe data to show that traffic growth–from SEO and PPC–does have an impact on the number of conversions and revenue (Their bottom line).

Ruben Roel, President, Investigator Marketing

Key Considerations for Selecting an SEO Reporting Tool

When exploring options for an SEO reporting tool, several factors come into play to ensure you choose a solution that aligns with your agency’s needs and objectives.

Here’s what to look for:

Customization and Flexibility: The ability to customize reports is essential. Your chosen tool should offer a high degree of flexibility, allowing you to tailor reports to each client’s specific goals and preferences. Look for features that enable the customization of report layouts, incorporation of branding elements, and selection of which data points to highlight.

Comprehensive List of Integrations: An effective SEO reporting tool integrates seamlessly with a wide array of SEO and digital marketing platforms. This integration capability makes it easy to pull data from sources like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, social media platforms, and keyword ranking tools into a single, cohesive report.

Real-Time Data and Automation: Timeliness and accuracy of data are non-negotiable. The ideal tool provides real-time data updates and automates the reporting process to save time and reduce the risk of human error. Automation features should include scheduled report generation and the ability to send reports directly to clients, ensuring they receive timely insights with minimal effort on your part.

Data Visualization: A crucial aspect of an effective SEO reporting tool is its data visualization capabilities. The ability to visually present complex data in a simple and straightforward way significantly enhances the impact of SEO report templates. Look for a tool that offers a variety of chart types, graphs, and customizable widgets to represent different metrics and trends.

Client Access and Collaboration: Consider tools that offer client access features, allowing your clients to view their reports and dashboards at their convenience. This transparency builds trust and facilitates ongoing communication about the SEO strategy’s performance. Collaboration features also enable clients to provide feedback directly within the tool, streamlining the review process.

Scalability and Support: As your agency grows, your reporting tool should scale with you. Choose a solution that can handle an increasing volume of clients and data without compromising performance. Additionally, reliable customer support is crucial for resolving any issues swiftly, ensuring that your reporting process remains uninterrupted.

Cost-Effectiveness: Finally, evaluate the tool’s cost relative to the features and benefits it offers. The best SEO reporting tool delivers significant value for its price, fitting within your agency’s budget while providing all the necessary functionalities to enhance your reporting workflow.

By carefully considering these factors, agencies select an SEO reporting tool like AgencyAnalytics that streamlines the reporting process and empowers them to focus on what they do best–improving their clients’ SEO performance.

With automated reporting, all of our customers enjoy high-quality reports. We keep growing, and our reporting needs to grow with us. Luckily, AgencyAnalytics grows with us every year thanks to the new functionalities they introduce.

Nico de Jong, CEO, Forward Marketing

With the right tool in hand, agencies save time, improve client satisfaction, and ultimately, drive better SEO results.

Ready to Level Up Your SEO Reporting?

AgencyAnalytics is more than just an SEO reporting tool; it's a pathway to streamlining your operations, impressing clients, and reclaiming valuable time. Remember, reporting isn’t as simple as just delivering the data. What’s important is delivering it in a way that aligns with your agency's values and your clients' expectations. 

The only regret we have about switching to AgencyAnalytics is not doing it sooner. It has saved us an incredible amount of time and makes us look polished and professional.

Kim Walker / Founder

Don't waste another minute on manual SEO reporting. Dive in, explore, and take your agency's reporting to the next level with other customizable report templates like a Client Report Template or a Demand Gen report template. With AgencyAnalytics, you have everything you need to excel–try it free for 14 days.