SEO Report Template: 6 Essential Metrics That'll Impress and Retain Clients

It's time to create your dreaded SEO reports again.

They're cumbersome, fiddly and a total waste of resources which could be better spent optimising your clients’ websites.

Worst part is, your clients probably won't spend more than 30 seconds looking at it - if at all.

As you're probably aware, the process for creating SEO reports goes something like this:

• Open 12 different tabs of data sources, software tools and Excel sheets
• Start copying and pasting data across into sheets/Excel for the next 4 hours
• Send sheet to client (which they won't read or understand)
• Spend an hour explaining what the metrics mean during your monthly progress call
• Repeat ad infinitum

The result is usually an unsightly mess.

But it doesn't have to be.

Which is why we're sharing not one, but 2 SEO report templates you can use to wow your clients and ensure you retain their business.

The best part is it only takes 15 minutes to set them both up.

1. Data-Driven SEO Report Template

We designed this template to include the metrics and insights businesses want to see on an SEO report.

Later on, we dive deeper into how we've improved upon this report internally, to measure the metrics that directly impact revenue.

Follow these easy steps to make a copy of our template for your clients and business.

1. Hit File> Make a copy
2. Give the template a name of your choice, choose where you want to save it (on your Drive etc), then hit OK
3. You will now have a fully-editable copy of the file on your Google Drive.

2. Visual SEO Report Template

This visual SEO report template is built using Databox - Business Analytics Platform & KPI Dashboards.

Here’s four, simple steps to use this SEO report template:

• Sign-up for a free Databox account
• Install our databoard from the marketplace
• Connect your external data sources
• Watch the data populate live.

This template is perfect for SEOs who measure the same metrics every month and need a simple solution that creates reports automatically.

Once your data sources are connected, your metrics are updated live, up to the minute.

This will save you and your team hundreds of hours, as your reports will be created for you, per your requirements.

The Anatomy of a Great SEO Report Template

Now that you've got your SEO report template, it's time to go over the key metrics and details you should include for your SEO clients every month.

1. Monthly Organic Traffic

An obvious one, and what you've been hired to help grow.

Showing how website traffic has grown (or declined) compared to previous months is a good place to start for your monthly SEO report.

It helps set the precedent for meetings with your clients whilst keeping them informed of the progress of the project.

2. Number of keywords in top 10, 20 and 50

Your clients will want to see how your work is impacting the rankings of their most prized pages. Each month your goal should be to get more keywords into the top 10 SERP.

I would also complement this by showing how your on-page changes have lead to increased visibility in search against your competitors.

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Tools such as AccuRanker and SE Ranking show the "Share of Voice" or "Search Visibility" of a domain. 

Which is essentially, an indicator of how your most important keywords are performing. All keywords that rank between positions 1 to 20 are used for the calculation. The average CTR for the position is multiplied by the search volume of each keyword, allowing you to see if a high traffic keyword is losing rank.

3. Most valuable pages (leads and revenue)

Clients want to know which pages are most valuable, so they can double-down by upselling complementary products or pumping more resources, such as CPC advertising to generate even more revenue and profits.

It's also worth including the total value of your traffic in monetary terms in your SEO report template.

This metric shows how much your client would have to spend on CPC advertising to acquire the traffic you’ve generated from SEO since working with them.

It really helps to put things into perspective for clients who don't truly understand the value of SEO and content marketing.

Ultimately, you should aim to increase this, as it shows your client in real terms, how valuable your service is to them.

4. Number of leads generated this month

The goal of SEO is ultimately, to generate leads.

Not to generate traffic, shares or links.

Whilst they are important and essential, they don't necessarily translate into new revenue.

If you can't show how your strategies are generating business value in the form of leads and revenue, you won't last long. Similarly to how any company without leads will struggle to stay in business.

Leads will make your clients happy. Sure, you can 10x their organic traffic, but if that doesn't translate to targeted, quality leads for their sales team to follow up with, what good is it?

Setting up goal tracking in Google Analytics makes this possible. You should do this for your clients if they haven’t done so already.

5. Revenue Generated from SEO

Clients want to see how SEO helps move the needle in their business.

Rather than just reporting on top level metrics like traffic and leads, you must also show the impact these improvements are having on their bottom line.

New revenue is the lifeblood of a business, and if you can't show how your work is adding value, your clients may well prefer to invest what they're paying you into paid advertising instead.

Most SEO agencies don't or can't report on the direct financial impact their services provide.

Be better.

Tools such as Clickflow, ChartMogul and Google Analytics (if set up correctly) enable you to track and monitor the financial impact of your SEO campaigns.

6. Insights and Recommendations

If there's one section on your SEO report template that clients will read, it's your summary, insights and recommendations pages.

In your SEO report, you must explain what insights you've discovered or learned over the last month.

• What tactics and strategies did you implement this month?
• What did you learn?
• What do you want your client to know?
• How can your client help you move things forward?

This is the perfect opportunity to make recommendations to your clients to help move things along faster.

For example, for a recent client of ours we recommended they switch their CMS from Squarespace to Webflow.

Their current setup was clunky and lacking the tools to fully control their meta tags, redirects and all the other technical aspects of SEO most people overlook.

Since making the switch, organic traffic has increased by 23% in just two short weeks.

Are your SEO Report Templates Helping You Keep Clients or Lose Them?

Feeling more confident about your SEO reports now?

Good! 

Now let's work together to get you more clients who will actually read them.