How To Create an SEO Report for Clients: Step-by-Step Guide

Creating reports is a tedious but necessary communication task. Reports allow you to communicate important information to your clients. The main challenge with it is to communicate the results of your work clearly, especially in a field as little explored by higher executives as search engine optimization.

This guide will explain how to create an SEO report, both from the technical and communicative sides.

 

What Is an SEO Report?

An SEO report is a document that outlines the progress made in search engine optimization during a reporting period, typically a week, a month, or a quarter. More importantly, an SEO report is not simply a spreadsheet with raw data; it’s a communicative document.

Its goal is not just to show data, but to explain what is happening with SEO to the client and inform them about the state of affairs in a way that they can fully understand.

That’s why SEO reports should be tailored to each client. The first aspect is the metrics you report on. You should decide how many of them you’ll be reporting on and which ones with your client. If they rely on your expertise, suggest a set that would fit them.

The second aspect of SEO report personalization is at the client’s level of competence and interest. Clients with different levels of SEO knowledge will prefer to see either a detailed report on every component of optimization or a very basic report with more of an emphasis on progress rather than on smaller details.

This article mostly focuses on how to create SEO reports for clients, but SEO reports are also created for internal teams. The same tips would apply if you’re doing a report for your Head of Marketing or other company stakeholders.

 

Why an SEO Report Is Important

Creating an SEO report provides a lot of value both to the client and to a stakeholder who receives it and to your own team. Let’s look at both areas more closely.

SEO Report Importance for Clients

Your client doesn’t have the full picture and complete access to every SEO process you perform for them. At least, that’s the case for most client-agency relationships. An SEO report is one of the few things that can help them understand the progress you’re making on their case.

This lets them understand how well SEO efforts work, judge the amount of work you’re doing, and strategize for the future. SEO reporting explains what work was done, what results were achieved, and what to expect in the future, while also building trust with the client. 

Fostering relationships on a personal level when communicating with them one-on-one is important, but it can’t substitute for the language of facts. Clients can calculate the ROI of their SEO investments based on reporting. When they can see the value you provide, they will trust you more and will be more willing to stay with your company. 

SEO Report Importance for Agencies

Apart from fulfilling your part of the contract by communicating the job performance to the client, you can learn a lot by creating SEO reports.

A report shows you the bigger picture in every aspect of SEO, from competitor analysis to technical optimization, and helps you not to get lost in the details of day-to-day operations and data.

It lets you clearly see whether you’re achieving the goals set together with the client and what you can improve to do more.

 

Tools for Creating an SEO Report

Search engine optimization is impossible without the right tools, and so is SEO report generation. Here are the ones that will be most handful for creating reports.

1. SE Ranking Reporting Tool

The main tool you want to use for creating an SEO report is your main all-around SEO tool. It has all the SEO-specific data on case progress that might not be available in other tools. This includes data on keyword ranking changes, technical SEO audits, and competitor insights.

A good SEO tool would typically include a report builder to make the process of creating one fast and seamless. One good example of a tool like that is the SEO Report Generator by SE Ranking. It allows users to generate white label reports based on client accounts in a few clicks, customize them however they want, and share with the client with a guest link.

It lets you connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console to the app and display data imported from there on the generated report.

2. Google Looker Studio

If you’re creating reports from multiple data sources that lack native integration with your SEO tool or you want to use advanced data analytics or data visualisation features, you might want to use Google Looker Studio.

This free instrument gives you the tools to transform data into easy-to-understand and sharp-looking storytelling. You can create reports or an updated dashboard for your clients and have the means to customize it to your exact specifications.

3. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an important source of data on user behavior on your site. It can provide information on how people who visit it interact with the pages, what links they click on, how they browse the site, and how they convert. All this data can be used to understand whether SEO efforts work well together with sales.

It also provides conversion attribution data that allows your team to report on the number of leads SEO efforts have generated. 

You can use this data for your report by exporting it to Looker Studio or your SEO tool.

4. Google Search Console

GSC is another indispensable source of data you can use by exporting it. The best SEO reporting tools will integrate natively with GSC, and so will Looker Studio or another data analytics and visualization tool. It provides important search performance data—impressions, clicks, and keywords that people use to find the client’s website pages. This is a must for tracking SEO progress and might be useful for a report if you agreed to include these metrics.

 

Things to Include in an SEO Report

Your SEO reporting should be built around your client and the work you do for them. Tailor the metrics and how you present them to what the client’s needs are and to what level of detail they prefer to see in reports.

That said, there are some common areas that are typically included in SEO reports. Let’s go through them one by one.

1. An SEO Report Overview

The most important part of a report is the overview. Not every report is read from cover to cover, especially if a lot of people are going to see it. One stakeholder may read the report in full, while others will only take a quick glance.

They all deserve to have a level of understanding of the current state of SEO, and a brief and informative executive summary helps that.

Put it on the first page and include the most important information. That can be position growth for the most important keywords, improvement in impressions or organic traffic, or a number of backlinks built per reporting period. It depends on what matters the most for the client.

A report overview can also include a goal completion progress chart or your most notable achievement in the reporting period.

2. Keyword Rankings

Since a lot of SEO success comes from focusing on the keywords that attract the client’s target audience, keyword ranking figures are typically included in SEO reports. The exact metrics you should include depend on your arrangement with the client.

In a basic report, you can include changes in positions for a handful of transactional keywords that are the most important for a client or search visibility figures.

For a more advanced one, you can show the number of new keywords a client’s site ranks for, a positive change in average position in SERP, the number of keywords in the top 10, or a breakdown of competition for the most important target keywords.

3. Website Traffic

Website traffic is another important area that you can report on, as generally or in as much detail as you and your client wish.

At the very least, you want to show the general organic traffic numbers. It’s best to show not only the figure as it is today, but also compare it to traffic figures from the previous reporting period. This helps establish what progress has been made.

If there’s a negative trend in traffic, explain whether that’s due to a seasonal fluctuation in keyword search volume or because of losing positions in SERP.

For an advanced report, you can showcase metrics like:

• New vs returning visitors.
• Pages with the most traffic.
• Keywords that bring the most traffic.
• Organic traffic conversion rates.

4. Backlinks

If you’re doing link building for a client, showcase your successes in the report. Report on the number of backlinks built and average backlink metrics. You can add a few notable cases.

If you have a specific link-building campaign running, like distributing an infographic or an authoritative piece of content, you can report on how many backlinks that asset has earned.

For advanced reports, you can dive into PR territory and showcase podcast appearances, mentions in news articles, or in notable industry publications.

5. Website Health Score

The four categories above cover most of the on-page and off-page SEO that you’ll typically do for clients. You can add a short technical optimization report by including a website health score.

This metric summarizes all elements of technical optimization, like crawlability, Core Web Vitals, or duplicate content, into one weighted metric. This allows you to gauge the client site’s technical optimization compared to others and track progress on its improvement.

6. Google Business Profile Metrics

If you do local SEO for your client, a Google Business Profile activity overview is a crucial addition to the report. You can include the following metrics in this section:

• Number of profile views.
• Keyword positions in local search.
• Number of product views.
• Number of converting actions taken.
• Breakdown of converting actions.

For a more basic overview, you can stop at showing the increase in profile views and interactions.

7. Technical SEO Overview

Most clients won’t be interested in the finer details of technical optimization as long as SEO keeps improving and bringing in leads. For those who are, you can include a separate section in the report that breaks down your optimization efforts.

Since an average site has too many issues to realistically cover in a report, you should focus on something specific. You can either highlight the issues that were fixed on the site or show progress on large issues that the client wanted to fix.

In every section, it’s important to remember that raw data doesn’t tell much without context. 6,000 monthly visitors isn’t that impressive, but if there were only 3,000 in the last reporting period, it’s great progress.

Show data compared to previous figures and use data visualization where possible to highlight progress and changes made to the site. This makes the report more informative and easier to understand.

 

How to Create an SEO Report for Your Clients

SEO reporting has a clearly defined audience—your client. That’s why talking to them is the first step to creating a report that serves both you and them, not just a standard template.

1. Set SEO Goals for Your Clients

The first step is goal setting. Most clients come to you with goals like:

• Increasing ranking positions across the board.
• Increasing website traffic.
• Increasing leads gained through organic traffic.

If your client is a bit more SEO-savvy and knows exactly what they want, they might have more concrete goals. For instance:

• Build X links monthly.
• Reach the top 10 for a specific set of keywords.
• Resolve a specific set of technical issues.

Your first goal-setting session with your client defines what you report on. Each major goal you’re working on should be in the report.

2. Set the Scope of SEO Reporting

Once you know all the major goals of this project, define the scope of the report. This means deciding on two areas: what metrics you’re going to report on and how you’re going to report on them.

Both choices typically depend on who your client is, who you’re reporting to in the company, what their reporting requirements are, and what their level of SEO knowledge is.

So if your client is a small company where the CEO handles marketing and doesn’t know much about the day-to-day SEO operations, your report should cover the bigger picture. If you’re doing it for a larger company and report to the Head of Marketing or the Head of SEO, they’re far more likely to be interested in seeing detailed data and less likely to need an explanation.

Ask your client how to create an SEO report for them. If they don’t have any preferences, settle on a basic report with an emphasis on the overview and tracking progress towards a goal. If they have something specific in mind, provide those metrics in the report.

3. Craft an SEO Report

When you know what the report should contain, start crafting it for the first reporting period. Begin by laying out the sections of your report dedicated to different parts of the report. Populate them with raw performance data and add data visualisations that highlight progress made.

The data visualization can take many forms depending on the context and information being communicated. It can be a graph like this.

Or a table with highlights for areas of growth, stability, or decline.

Add a short comment to each section if your client needs that explanation.

In the end, create the overview by showcasing the most important progress areas, showing a collection of the main metrics, or writing a short paragraph that highlights what happened thanks to your efforts.

4. Automate What You Can

You don’t have to create the report manually every time. The best SEO reporting tools, like SE Ranking and Looker Studio, have a way to automate most parts of the report creation process. You can automate both the data imports and report generation for set dates.

If you need to provide a lot of comments in the report, that’s the only part that you’ll have to do manually.

5. Share Your SEO Report With Your Client

After a report is created and polished to the client’s specifications, send it to them. You can do it either by downloading a PDF and sending it as an attachment in an email or a Slack message, or by sharing a link to the digital version of the report.

 

Summary

Creating SEO reports helps you communicate the progress you’ve made to the client. To make it more effective, decide what exactly goes into the report together with your client, automate the parts that you can, and provide a brief summary at the beginning of each report.