The digital marketing arena is a competitive landscape. With thousands of agencies competing for clients and attention, having a leg up on competition is what guarantees a marker of value, loyalty and long-term relations. Educating clients and other stakeholders of your company’s activities, and sharing data in a way that provides insight, is often the decisive factor when securing new business and, ultimately, proving value over time. Emphasising impact, for example, can be crucial when outlining the topic of the report because clients tend to want to know how their business has been impacted by services, not just presented data on how things have changed. When ripping through hundreds of reports, your own personal brand depends on the length of time you get to read your own reports. With a singular focus on how your latest client has been impacted, for instance, those reports will not only be informative, but also impressively concise! In this step-by-step guide, I’ll show you how to create SEO reports that inform and impress clients, communicate SEO activity and results in an engaging manner, and ultimately help you demonstrate how well your strategies are working to achieve client goals.
Understand Your Client’s Goals
Knowing your client’s goals is where your SEO report should be able to make a great impact. Etsy’s brand focus is very different to Old Navy’s, so the same approach to getting SEO data wouldn’t work for them. Before anything else, really sit with your clients and get to know their goals—launch as soon as possible. Ask them if they want to increase website traffic, increase conversion rates, improve rankings for specific keywords in the search results, or any other goal. Knowing their goals allows you to make work and reporting that’s relevant to them, and they’ll see the direct effect of the work you’re doing on their bottom line.
After understanding what your client values, you can highlight certain metrics and achievements in your SEO report that coincide with what you know matters most to them. If one of your clients is committed to enhancing their local search presence, for example, make sure to highlight local keyword rankings and movements, Google My Business engagement and local traffic trends. Customising to this extent allows you to demonstrate your attention towards their business goals and showcase how your SEO efforts align with them, ultimately strengthening the confidence and trust your clients place in you.
Use Clear and Concise Language
If you want to write an SEO report that blows your client’s socks off, you need to find a language that isn’t too technical. Sure, your client will have a basic understanding of what you do (certainly more than their web designer does), but chances are your client doesn’t have an SEO background. It’s your job to translate keywords, backlinks, metadata and other jargon-y terms into plain English. Start each section of your report with a summary about what the data refers to and why it’s important. You’ll show that you can provide digestible information for data that can otherwise be very esoteric and hard to explain to someone without an SEO background.
Furthermore, using charts, graphs and infographics will make your report more visually appealing to clients. Indeed, visual representations of statistics allow them to immediately and intuitively understand trend lines, patterns and comparisons between data, making it easier to digest. For instance, a line graph illustrating growth in organic traffic over the last half a year might give your clients a better sense of how successful your SEO efforts have been. By presenting clear language supported by clear visuals, your report will be comprehensible and engaging, which can help clients better appreciate your work.
Highlight Key Metrics and KPIs
Part of the art of writing a good SEO report is selecting and reporting on KPIs and metrics that will be meaningful for your client. There are so many metrics that you could include, but simply showing data isn’t useful for the client because they won’t have any insight into what the figures mean, and how it affects what they want to achieve. If you can concentrate on the metrics that bring you closer to achieving what they want to happen then this will vastly increase the value of your report to them. At a basic level, organic traffic, conversion rate, bounce rate and keyword ranking are KPIs that a client would want to see reported on. You can present them in clear and easily understandable charts.
Along with the raw numbers, include context and insights for each of the most important metrics. Pair the data with an explanation of what it means, in relation to your client’s business goals, as well as the industry at large. If the number of organic traffic sessions increases significantly, for example, be sure to link it to efforts you may have taken in the form of a specific strategy or campaign. In this way, clients can see their investments clearly reflected in the results, which in turn further solidifies the great value of your SEO work. By focusing your report on key metrics and providing helpful background insight, you can be assured of a thorough yet persuasive SEO report.
Include Actionable Insights and Recommendations
Presenting data is not enough for an outstanding SEO report – you also have to supply actionable insights and make recommendations based on it. After pointing out the performance metrics, identify opportunity areas and offer specific action items for pulling the levers to capitalise on the opportunity. For example, if a keyword is performing magnificently, then offer ideas on how they could continue the momentum in optimising content around the keyword. Or if you identify a page with a high bounce rate then offer ideas on how the content or the user experience on the page could be improved to lower the bounce rate. Actionable recommendations demonstrate that you are proactive and don’t just bring the data as is and leave it there but also attempt to offer improvements for the future.
A section that identifies and outlines future strategies and recommendations further increases the benefit a client receives from your SEO report. You’ll demonstrate to them that you’re not just reporting on what has already occurred. Instead, you’re thinking about the future, and planning to maintain success over the long haul. Communicate the steps you’ll take to solve problems as well as the actions you’ll take to sustain positive trends (such as local search traffic increasing, and how you’ll improve local SEO to maintain it). Besides providing clear, actionable insight, you also provide a roadmap for the work that needs to be done. This reminds your client that you’re not only an objective ‘outsider’, but that you’re their dedicated partner in the journey of their business’s long-term health.
Showcase Success Stories and Case Studies
One easy way to include interesting elements in your SEO report is with stories of success and examples of case studies. Bringing this level of specificity into the report might just be what sets it apart from all the others. Success stories, relevant to the current client’s industry (or aims), of how your work has translated into real results for other clients are a powerful testament to the work you’ll do for them. For example, if they’re in the e‑commerce space, point to a case study that illustrates how you increased online sales for another e-commerce client.
Think about it like this: if you’re presenting a case study with the details of who you were working for or what the problem was, present it with some specifics on how you went about the work and the results you got. Were you able to make the website mobile responsive after years of struggling with a horrible mobile template that powered it? Was the number of visitors incredibly low prior to the site redesign but is now outperforming the competition? Does a funnel for on-site conversions work well and does it convert lots of customers? Can the visits be translated into more subscribers to a site’s newsletter or even more hard-cash sales? Provide data or other visuals that will illustrate the before and after during your project. This will clearly show your clients what to expect from you and your performance. Success stories and case studies are your letters of recommendation!
Regularly Update and Customize Reports
To keep working clients happy – and to give them confidence that your team knows what’s up.
They should also be updated on an ongoing basis – perhaps with monthly or quarterly reports, but perhaps more often depending on the client’s needs and the nature of the business.
Second, customisation is equally important. Not only should you update your reports as often as possible, you should also personalise each one to match the recipient’s needs and preferences. For example, you could focus on metrics that are important to your client, use a branded report template, or offer insights that are relevant to their particular industry. In short, by personalising your reports, you demonstrate that you are dedicated to fulfilling their requirements. You also come across as a highly professional and considerate service provider.
Conclusion
Writing SEO reports that your clients will be impressed with means you need to understand what they want, communicate clearly and concisely, emphasise key metrics, offer concrete recommendations for action, share case study results, and tailor these reports for your clients on a regular basis. The combination of the above will produce reports that will not only inform, but also educate, inspire confidence, and build long lasting client relationships and ROI for your SEO services.