How to make an SEO report for a client

A client report most often fails before it is written. If the client expects rankings and the agency reports enquiries, or the client counts sales and the agency counts sessions, every report starts an argument. Settle three things in the first month, in writing: what the client wants search to bring in, how it will be counted, and when a result can fairly be expected.

Google’s advice to businesses that hire an SEO lists the questions a client should ask: what results to expect and in what timeframe, how success is measured, how the two sides will communicate, and whether the SEO will share every change it makes to the site, with the reasoning behind its recommendations^[1]. Answer those questions before the client asks them, and the first report has something to be read against.

1. 1The goal, in the client’s own words: more booked appointments, more online orders, more enquiries from one region.
2. 2What counts: which calls, forms and sales, and how each is traced back to search. The detail, key events, the attribution model and the lookback window, is in the guide to SEO reporting in revenue.
3. 3The baseline: the last 16 months of every figure the report will carry, saved before the work starts, so that later months have something to be compared with.
4. 4The targets, stated as ranges, with the month by which the client can expect to judge them.
5. 5What the client must supply: approvals, content, access and one person who answers questions.

Be honest about time in the same conversation. Google says that some changes to a site can take effect in a few days while others take several months, and that no change is guaranteed to have a noticeable effect in search results^[2]. A client told that in the first month reads a quiet second month as expected; a client told nothing reads it as failure.

Write the answers onto the report’s definitions page, at the back of the template, and have both sides sign it off. When the client’s goal changes, a new product line, a new region, a sale of the business, the agreement changes with it, dated, and the report says from which month it applies.

The data behind a client report should live in accounts the client owns. While the agency works for the client, the client can check any figure for itself; if the agency leaves, the history stays with the business instead of leaving with the agency.

Search Console has two kinds of owner. A verified owner proved ownership with a token, such as a file placed on the site; a delegated owner was added by an owner without one. Both have full control of the property, and only owners can add or remove users^[3]. Below them, a full user can see all the data and take some actions, and a restricted user has simple view rights on most of the data^[3]. Google advises site owners to give an SEO only read access to Search Console while an audit is being done^[1].

In Google Analytics, access can be given for a whole account or for one property, with one of five roles from Administrator to Viewer, and with data restrictions that hide cost metrics, revenue metrics or both^[4]. A Viewer can see settings and data and build explorations, which is enough to check a report. A Marketer can also create and change key events and edit the attribution settings^[4], which is the access needed to change what the report counts, and so the access to agree with the client before it is used.

When the work ends, remove the agency’s access the same day. In Search Console, a verified owner whose ownership token is still on the site can regain access, so remove the token as well as the user^[3].

The first report a client receives sets how every later one is read. Sent at the end of the first month, it can show almost nothing the agency caused, and it should not try. Its job is to say where the site stands, what can and cannot be measured, and what the next three months will try to change.

• Where the site stands: the agreed figures for the last full month and the same month a year earlier, from the baseline saved at the start.
• What is measured and what is not: key events that fire, forms that do not, revenue that is recorded and revenue that is only estimated. A gap found now is a finding; the same gap found in month six is a failure.
• What was found: the problems the first weeks turned up, each with what it may be costing.
• What comes next: the first actions, in order, and the month in which their effect could first show.

Say in so many words that nothing in the first report is a result of the work. A client who is told that a rise in the first month is the season, not the agency, believes the agency when the agency later claims a rise of its own.

A client does not need more reports; it needs the right one at the right interval. A weekly report of search figures shows mostly noise, because a week holds too few searches for most sites to move in a way that means anything. A month is the natural unit of a report, and a quarter the natural unit of a decision.

Agree the day in writing and keep to it. A report that arrives on the fifth of every month is expected, read and discussed; one that arrives whenever it is ready teaches the client that the work is done whenever it is convenient. Why the first week of the next month is the right time is set out in Monthly SEO report: what to include.

The message that goes out as it happens matters more than the report. A client who hears about an outage or a sharp drop from the agency the same day, with what is known and when more will be known, rarely holds the bad month against it. A client who finds it alone does.

A busy client reads the first line, the table and the last page. Put the answer in the first line, the evidence in the table and the decisions on the last page; everything between is there for the client who wants to check. The sections themselves, and the fields of each, are set out in SEO report template.

• The headline names a figure and a direction, not an activity: “Enquiries from search rose for the third month”, not “We published four articles”.
• Every table and chart names its source, so that the client can open the same report and find the same number.
• Under every table come a few plain sentences: what moved, why, and what is being done.
• The words are the client’s, not the trade’s. “Pages Google has in its index” says more to an owner than “indexation”.
• A figure that rests on a handful of events is called small, and no trend is drawn through it.

Match the length to the reader. An owner who reads one page a month gets the one-page version; a marketing lead who works from the figures gets all of it. Ask, in the first month, who reads the report and what they do with it, and ask again when the person changes.

Every client has bad months. Whether the relationship survives one depends on who says it first, and how. If the client sees the drop in its own analytics before the report arrives, the report reads as an excuse; if the report names the drop, its likely cause and what is being done, it reads as control.

Google lists the main causes of a fall in search traffic: an update to its ranking systems, technical problems that stop pages being crawled, indexed or served, security and spam issues that can lead to a manual action, seasonality and changing interests, and faults in the reporting itself^[2]. Its advice is to widen the date range to the last 16 months to see whether a fall is a yearly pattern, and to compare the drop with a similar earlier period^[2]. Work through those possibilities before writing a cause into the report.

1. 1If the fall is the main change of the month, it is the headline. A fall hidden on page six is found, and remembered.
2. 2Put the decline next to the gains, in the same block, not after them.
3. 3Give the likely cause and how sure you are of it. A cause you have checked is a finding; a cause you suspect is a reading, and the report says which it is.
4. 4Say what is being done, and when you expect to know whether it worked. That is an expectation, not a promise, and the report calls it one.
5. 5Return to the same line next month, whether or not the figure recovered.

A seasonal fall is the easiest bad month to explain and the easiest to explain badly. Show the same month last year beside it: if that line is up, the month is a season, not a loss. If it is down too, the season is not the whole story, and the report says so. How the monthly report sets a decline beside its gains, page by page, is in the guide to the monthly report.

Some bad months are the agency’s own doing: a change that hurt, a deadline missed. Say so in the report, with what is being done to put it right. A client forgives a mistake it hears about first far more readily than one it discovers, and the next good month is believed because this bad one was not hidden.

A client who cannot see what changed cannot judge whether it worked. Google tells businesses to be careful with an SEO that is secretive or will not explain what it intends to do, and says that an SEO with access to the server should be willing to explain every change it makes^[1]. The report is where that explanation lives, month after month.

List each change with its date, the page it touched and why it was made, in words the client understands. Mark the larger ones on the chart. A dated log of every change with the state of the page before and after, a Change Ledger, lets the client match the work with the movement in the figures, and lets a new person on either side see what was done before they arrived.

Sending the report is half the work. A short call each month, or each quarter for a smaller client, turns it into decisions. Send the report a day before the call, so that the time is spent on what to do rather than on reading.

1. 1The headline, and whether it is what the client expected.
2. 2The one figure that needs explaining, which is usually the decline.
3. 3What the work brought in, against the target agreed at the start.
4. 4The decisions the client must take: approvals, budget, a choice between two priorities.
5. 5What happens next month, and what the client will see in the next report.

Write down what was decided and send it the same day, in a few lines. The next report starts from those lines, and a client who sees its own decisions carried through reads the next report differently.

The same questions come up in most client relationships. Answer them in the report before they are asked, or have the answer ready for the call.

• “Why is your number different from mine?” Because the two tools count differently, or over different dates. Name the source of every figure, and when the client’s own tool shows another number, show both and say why they differ.
• “Rankings are up, so why are sales flat?” Because rankings are a step on the way, not the result. Show which of the searches that rose bring buyers, and which do not.
• “Why does a competitor rank above us?” Answer with what can be seen, such as the page that ranks, what it covers and what links to it, and not with a guess about Google’s systems.
• “Can you get us to the top of the first page?” No one honest can promise that. Say what the work can change and how it will be measured.
• “What would happen if we stopped?” Give the honest range: the effect of past work fades at a rate nobody can state in advance, and what is left undone is not done by anyone else.

• Changing what the report counts without saying so, in the month it changes.
• Leading with activity, such as hours worked or articles written, when the client asked about enquiries.
• Explaining a fall with a cause nobody checked.
• Reporting rankings for searches that bring no buyers.
• Promising a ranking or a date. Google says that no one can guarantee a first place in its results^[1].
• Sending the report late in a bad month and on time in a good one.

For an agency that sends the report under its own brand, or resells another team’s work, the questions of branding and access are in White label SEO reports.