White label SEO reports

A white-label report shows the agency’s brand and no other. The phrase covers two different arrangements, and they raise different questions. In the first, the agency does the work and reports it through a tool, and white label means the tool’s name and look give way to the agency’s. In the second, a partner team does some or all of the work for the agency, and white label means the partner’s name does not appear at all.

The first is a question of design and of what a tool allows. The second is a question of accountability, and the report is where it shows: the client reads the agency’s name on a page whose figures someone else produced, about changes someone else made to its site.

Branding a report means its cover, its logo, its colours and fonts, the address it is read at and the name it is sent from. It never means changing what the figures say. The names of the data sources, the definition of each metric and the label on each revenue figure are facts about the data. A report that drops them to look cleaner has stopped being checkable, and a client who later opens Search Console and finds a different number will trust neither the report nor the brand on it.

Most reporting tools apply a brand through a theme. In Data Studio, a theme sets the fonts, the text and background colours, the borders and the chart palette of a whole report, and a custom theme can be extracted from an image such as a logo^[1]. The default theme is designed to be accessible to viewers with colour blindness^[1]. A brand palette that replaces it should still let every series on a chart be told apart, and should never make colour the only cue for up and down.

The labels on revenue matter most when the brand is the agency’s. A client reads a figure under the agency’s logo as the agency’s claim, so a modeled estimate printed as if it were known revenue is the agency’s mistake, whoever built the chart. How the four kinds are told apart is set out in the guide to SEO reporting in revenue.

Before promising a client a report with no trace of the tool behind it, check what the tool allows. Free tools seldom allow everything, and the limits are written in their own documentation.

• An embedded Data Studio report always shows the Data Studio watermark and the full-screen option, and neither can be removed^[2].
• Embedded reports appear in view mode: viewers can use filters and date controls but cannot edit, copy or share the report. If the report is shared with named people only, those viewers must be signed in to a Google account to see it^[2].
• A report can also go out as a PDF on a delivery schedule, or as a link. Link sharing lets anyone in an organisation, or anyone on the web, view the report without a Google account^[3].

If the brand must be complete, the report needs a tool that serves it from the agency’s own domain with no mark of its own, or a PDF built from the agency’s own template. Tell the client which of the two it is getting, and do not call a report white-label while another company’s watermark is on it.

A link that anyone can open is convenient and easy to forward. For a client report that carries revenue, share it with named people, or send a PDF, and agree with the client who else may see it.

White-label reporting tempts an agency to hold everything: the client’s data in the agency’s tool, the history in the agency’s account, the access in a partner’s name. That is convenient until the relationship ends, when the client finds it owns nothing it can read. The client should own its Search Console property and its analytics; the agency, and any partner, should hold users on them.

Which roles the client and the agency hold in Search Console and Google Analytics, and why the client stays the owner, is set out in How to make an SEO report for a client. A partner behind the agency raises two further questions: what it may see, and whose credentials the report runs on.

What it may see. A partner who builds reports needs to read the data, not to manage who else can. In Google Analytics, a role can carry data restrictions that hide cost metrics, revenue metrics or both^[4], so a partner who reports on traffic and key events can work with revenue hidden, if the client prefers that only the agency sees its revenue.

Whose credentials. A dashboard has a second layer of access: the account it uses to read the data. In Data Studio, a data source that uses the owner’s credentials lets people view the report without access of their own to the data, while one that uses the viewer’s credentials requires every viewer to have that access^[5]. Google warns to share a report or data source that uses the owner’s credentials only with people you trust^[5]. For a client report, the safe owner is an account the client knows about and the agency controls; the personal account of a partner’s staff member is not, because the report stops working the day that person leaves.

• The partner works in the client’s accounts, as a user the client can see, never through a shared password.
• The partner’s access is the least its work needs, and is listed in the contract.
• The report and its data sources belong to an account the agency controls, so that they outlive any one person.
• When the partner’s contract ends, its users are removed the same day, and the report keeps running.

Resale is common and legitimate: an agency sells SEO, and a specialist team does some or all of it under the agency’s name. What keeps it honest is that someone answers for the work, and that the client knows who that is.

Google’s advice to businesses is plain on both points: a business is responsible for the actions of any company it hires, and should be careful of a company that is secretive or will not clearly explain what it intends to do^[6]. For an agency that resells work, that responsibility passes through it: the agency answers to the client for every change the partner makes, as if it had made the change itself.

Agree these points with the partner in writing, before the first report:

1. 1Which accounts the partner may use, at which level of access, and that the access ends with the contract.
2. 2That every change to a client site is recorded with its date, the page, the reason and the state before and after.
3. 3That the report’s figures come from named sources, with the definitions the agency and the client agreed.
4. 4Who writes the explanation and the plan, and who signs the report off before it goes out.
5. 5Who answers the client’s questions, and how fast the partner answers the agency.
6. 6That the partner does not contact the client directly and does not reuse the client’s data.

Whether to tell the client that a partner does the work is a commercial choice, but the report must never claim work that nobody did, or results nobody checked. A “Prepared by” line names who stands behind the report: it should be a person or a team at the agency who can answer for every figure in it.

A client portal adds what a monthly report cannot: a view the client can open at any time, and a place to approve the changes the agency proposes. It is worth having when the client wants to follow progress between reports, or must sign off changes to its own site. It does not replace the monthly report, because a portal shows figures and the report explains them.

• The same definitions and labels as the report, so that the two never disagree about a number.
• Each proposed change with its reason, the expected effect and a preview, and three answers: approve, ask a question, reject.
• The changes already made, with their dates, so that the client can match them with the figures.
• Access for each person by name, removed when that person leaves.
• The agency’s brand on the portal as on the report, with the same rule: the frame is branded, the facts are not.

What the report itself should say, and how to report a bad month to a client, is set out in How to make an SEO report for a client; the fields of each section are in SEO report template.

White-label arrangements end, and the report is what each side argues over when they do. Decide at the start what happens to it, so that the end is an administrative task rather than a dispute.

The record of changes matters most at the end. A new agency that inherits a site without knowing what was changed, when and why cannot tell its own effects from its predecessor’s. A dated log with the state of each page before and after, a Change Ledger, is the part of the work that should leave with the client.

Branding is the smallest part of a handover and the one most often forgotten. A report the client keeps should still be readable when the agency’s logo means nothing to its next reader: its sources named, its definitions at the back, its revenue labelled.

1. 1The agency’s brand is on the cover, the theme and the sender, and no other brand remains, or the client has been told which one does and why.
2. 2Every table and chart names its data source.
3. 3The definitions page is present and unchanged, or each change carries its date.
4. 4Every revenue figure carries its label: known, influenced, modeled or incremental, or GA4-reported when it comes from analytics alone.
5. 5The data sits in accounts the client owns, and each partner holds the least access its work needs.
6. 6The person or team named as preparing the report can answer for every figure in it.
7. 7The report opens for the people meant to read it, and only for them.

A report that passes this list can carry any brand. One that fails it should not carry the agency’s.