SEO Tracking: How to Track & Monitor Your Clients’ SEO Progress

SEO tracking is a powerful way to unlock incredible results for your organic marketing campaigns. Unlike traditional offline campaigns, every single detail is meticulously tracked and analyzed, leaving no room for guesswork.

By tracking your SEO efforts, you gain an objective view of what's working like a charm and what needs a little fine-tuning in your clients' marketing campaigns. It's like having a trusty GPS guiding you toward success while avoiding any roadblocks along the way.

Most importantly, SEO tracking is critical in demonstrating the value of your services to your clients. When you present them with concrete evidence of their brand climbing the search engine ranks, their trust and loyalty skyrocket, leading to increased client retention for your agency.

With a wealth of data at your disposal, it's easy to feel overwhelmed, but don't worry! In this guide, we'll navigate the world of SEO tracking, focusing on the essential metrics, optimal review frequency, and how to present the data to your clients in the most efficient way possible.

Let’s get started.

What Is SEO Tracking?

Simply put, SEO tracking is the process of measuring the performance and progress of a client's campaign. 

Regardless of the type of client website you’re trying to rank in search engines, SEO tracking is essential to evaluate the success of that campaign. Your agency should have an SEO strategy in place before starting a client’s campaign for optimal results. 

To do so, it’s generally good practice to ask your clients a set of questions that will help direct your efforts, such as:

• Which of your products and services are most profitable?

• What sets your business apart from competitors? 

• What types of questions do you usually get from prospective customers? 

Before we get to the specific tracking tools, let’s review a few of the most important SEO metrics to keep on your agency’s radar. 

5 Essential SEO Metrics Your Agency Should Track

 A crucial part of SEO tracking is adopting a data-driven approach. Be sure to decide on: 

• Which metrics you’re going to track

• How often you’re going to review these metrics, and 

• How you’re going to report the performance to clients

If you’re unsure where to begin, here are the top five SEO metrics your agency should keep tabs on.

1. Keyword Rankings

Search engines are constantly changing, which means that the target keywords rankings for your clients also change often. 

To stay on top of this, a rank tracker tool will monitor daily keyword rankings in search engines, including Google, Google Maps, and Bing, and then present them in an easy-to-understand keyword ranking report. 

Daily keyword tracking is an excellent way to stay on top of the overall direction of your SEO efforts and also provides a clear snapshot of which pages should be improved.

Keep track of any keyword ranking changes, top queries, and top-performing pages with our keyword ranking report template. Try our Rank Tracker Tool on AgencyAnalytics–it’s free for 14 days. 

2. Organic Search Traffic

One of the strongest indicators that your SEO campaign is performing well is how much organic search traffic it's bringing to your client.

A high volume of organic traffic may lead to higher search engine rankings, increased brand visibility, and a solid brand reputation (provided your client’s inbound marketing content is authoritative). 

3. Organic Conversions

Getting organic traffic is one thing, but ensuring the quality of that traffic is equally important. One of the best ways to measure the quality of organic traffic is by tracking how many conversions it’s driving. 

Remember that a “conversion” could be different for each client—for one client, it could be making an online purchase, and for another, it could be a phone call to the business. 

To track conversions and the conversion rate from organic traffic, you’ll need to set up a relevant “Goal” in your Google Analytics account (which we’ll also show you exactly how to do in the next section).

4. Competitor Analysis

In addition to tracking your client's own metrics, tracking competitors is another valuable indicator for any SEO campaign. 

By tracking the keywords competitors are ranking for, their Domain Authority, and other SEO metrics, you identify new opportunities to improve your client’s website ranking.

Stay one step ahead by keeping tabs on your client’s competitors. Try our full suite of features on AgencyAnalytics–it’s free for 14 days. 

5. SEO Site Health 

A critical factor for rankings is how SEO-friendly the site is, including a way to find and fix common on-page and technical issues that could be standing in the way of your client and the top search results.

That's where an automated SEO Site Audit Tool comes into play. With it, run regular SEO health checks to identify and deal with any pesky technical issues.

How To Do SEO Tracking Through the Google Suite

This section will review how to set up two key SEO tools: Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Google Analytics

As discussed in our guide to SEO analytics, since your agency is generally trying to rank a client's website in Google, it makes sense that the first tool to set up is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is an SEO tracking tool for everything that occurs after someone has landed on your client’s website. This includes SEO campaign metrics like the time on site, bounce rate, exit rate, and many more. 

How To Set Up Goals in Google Analytics

Setting up Goals in Google Analytics lets you monitor important events on your client’s website, including purchases, email signups, and trial signups. Here are the steps to follow when creating a goal within your Google Analytics account. 

1. Create a New Goal

To get started, click on ‘Goals’ in the ‘Admin’ section on the left-hand menu. 

Next, click on ‘+New Goal’ as shown below. 

2. Decide on Goal Type

Now, you must decide what goal you want to build for your client. 

You’ll have the option to choose a template or create a custom goal. For this example, we’ll use a custom goal. Here are the four types to know about:

• Destination: This type of goal treats a pageview or screen view as a conversion.

• Duration: This measures user engagement by treating a conversion as a minimum session duration.

• Pages/screens per session: This measures user engagement by treating conversions as users who view more than a specified number of pages or screens per session.

• Event: This treats a particular user interaction with your site or app as a conversion

How to Track Organic Traffic With Google Analytics

To give you an example of tracking one of the essential SEO metrics mentioned in the previous section, let’s look at how to track organic traffic in Analytics. 

To do so, first, click on “Acquisition” and then “Overview ”in the left sidebar of the homepage:

From within the “Acquisition > Overview” tab, you’ll then find a link for “Organic Search", where you’ll find more granular data about the performance of each keyword in search engines, including the most important metrics like bounce rate, pages per session, and goal completions.

No need to dig through all of the right metrics– use an automated Google Analytics dashboard to save time each month. Sign up for a free 14-day trial of AgencyAnalytics today. 

Google Search Console

Monitor your client’s search traffic and performance with Google Search Console (GSC). This free tool lets you pick up on any website issues and optimize for favorable search rankings. 

GSC also tracks SEO-related metrics, including which queries, keywords, and specific pages that drive the most traffic to your client's website.

Here are the SEO metrics to track on GSC.

1. Top Queries

To find the top search terms driving traffic to a website, simply click “Performance” in the left tab. 

From there, the first tab below your performance chart is called “Queries.” 

Toggle on “Average CTR” and “Average Position” to review all the data for each query simultaneously.

2. Top Pages

The next tab over from “Queries” is called “Pages.” 

Here you’ll be able to sort by the highest-performing pages in terms of Impressions and Clicks so that you know which ones to prioritize when optimizing the user experience.

3. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

CTR is another valuable metric to track over time, as it often helps your agency identify “quick wins” for your clients For example, if one of your client's pages is ranking on the first page and has a high number of impressions but a low CTR, often by simply changing the title and/or meta description leads to a significant increase in traffic.

Here's what the founder and CEO of GetVOIP had to say about tracking CTR in Search Console:

If you're looking for low-hanging fruit, one of the easiest things you can do in Google Search Console is to look for queries where you're ranking in the top 3 spots, but your click-through rate is less than 10%. In those situations, often you can optimize your meta description and start getting a much bigger percentage of the traffic for that search term.

Use a visually appealing Google Search Console dashboard to automate your client’s SEO insights– try it when you sign up for a free 14-day trial. 

Now that we’ve reviewed two useful tools from the Google Suite for SEO performance tracking let’s look at how you tie them both together with AgencyAnalytics.

AgencyAnalytics is an invaluable asset for any SEO agency. The platform has seamlessly scaled our reporting processes, enabling us to efficiently handle a growing client base without compromising quality.

Alexa Rees / SEO Manager

How To Use AgencyAnalytics for SEO Tracking & Reporting

While AgencyAnalytics is known as an all-in-one reporting platform, another one of the features that digital marketing agencies use it for are the built-in SEO tools. 

Combining an SEO reporting platform with the tracking capabilities of the Google Suite, you offer your clients a much more comprehensive service.

Let’s review a few of the search engine optimization tracking tools and SEO report templates that are built into AgencyAnalytics.

Rank Tracker Tool 

One of the best ways to monitor how your SEO strategy is paying off over time is with a keyword ranking tool. Since search engines are constantly changing due to many factors, this is not something you want to undertake manually.

Instead, using a tool helps your agency automatically pull data from various SERPs like Google, Google Maps, and Bing daily. 

Use the AgencyAnalytics rank tracker tool to:

• Create data visualizations of how keyword rankings are changing during a specific time frame

• Track keyword rankings based on multiple locations and languages (which is especially useful for local SEO campaigns)

• Provide tremendous SEO insights to your clients and prove your worth

Get that extra edge by using the AgencyAnalytics Rank Tracker Tool to monitor your clients’ SEO campaigns. It’s free when you sign up for a 14-day trial. 

Backlink Monitor 

Another key metric to track your agency's off-page SEO efforts or link-building campaign is new and lost links to your client's website. To automate this tracking process, AgencyAnalytics pulls data from the SEO backlink checker Majestic, which gives you a detailed profile of each client. 

On top of just tracking changes in backlinks, this tool also helps you discover which links are the most valuable by tracking more advanced metrics like Trust and Citation Flow. 

Once you’ve set up the backlink monitoring tool, add these metrics to an automated SEO report that can be delivered daily, weekly, or monthly.

How to Monitor Backlinks in AgencyAnalytics

To monitor backlinks with AgencyAnalytics, first, you need to enable it from within a campaign by clicking on the “Integrations” tab. 

Next, choose “Backlink Manager” and click the “Enable” button.

SEO Site Audit Tool

Website audits are one of the best ways to find early SEO wins to deliver to your clients. 

An SEO Site Audit Tool allows you to simply enter a URL and analyze, discover, and eliminate any issues affecting rankings.  In particular, a few of the most common website issues that a site audit tool help with include:

• 404 errors

• Duplicate images

• Broken links

• And many more

Site audit tools should automatically check for issues that affect website performance. These audits are either be done on a one-off basis or scheduled regularly, ensuring you’re always on top of the important SEO metrics that influence organic search results. Be sure to highlight any findings in your clients SEO reports.

Competitor Analysis

After you’ve set up keyword tracking, backlink monitoring, and performed a site audit, tracking and analyzing competitors is another valuable tool for any client's SEO campaign. 

By identifying what their closest competitors are ranking for, you quickly identify new opportunities that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. A few examples of how to use this tool include:

• Comparing the total number of backlinks for each competitor

• Comparing their Trust Flow and Citation Flow

• Crawling competitor sites to make recommendations for your clients' site modifications

How To Analyze Competitors to AgencyAnalytics

To analyze competitors for a campaign, first, you need to enable it from within “Integrations”. 

Next, go to the “Competition” module under the SEO section.

From there, you’ll have the option to “Add Competitors” or choose from our suggested list of competitors. 

The Time-Saving Power of Effortless SEO Reporting

When dealing with multiple clients, the task of preparing in-depth SEO reports often feels like a relentless clock-chewing monster. Extracting the most valuable information, formatting it into an engaging visual narrative, and customizing it to suit every unique need of the clients, make the process seem never-ending.

The SEO Report Template transforms the intricacies of SEO reporting into a streamlined and captivating experience. No more juggling with endless data and time-consuming report preparations. With AgencyAnalytics' white label SEO reports, SEO reporting is better, faster, and more compelling.

Use this professional SEO report template to streamline and improve your agency's SEO reporting. Try AgencyAnalytics free for 14 days.

The Takeaway

As we’ve discussed, one of the best ways to demonstrate the value of your agency's SEO efforts is by tracking and reporting the performance over time. 

SEO performance tracking gives you an objective view of the performance of your clients' campaigns so that you know what’s working and what needs improvement.

To recap, be sure to:

• Start with the Google Suite, including Google Analytics, Google Lighthouse, Google Page Speed, and Google Search Console

• Decide on your client’s top SEO metrics to track beforehand

• Use an automated reporting tool like AgencyAnalytics to simplify and automate your client’s most important insights 

• White label your SEO reports to reinforce the agency brand

Tracking SEO performance is just a click away on AgencyAnalytics! 

Create an SEO dashboard that lets you see the bigger picture and showcase the benefits of SEO to clients. Try the automated tool used by over 6,500 agencies–with a free 14-day trial.