Do you know what separates amazing SEO reports from mediocre ones? In many situations, the difference lies in shared insights and editing quality.
You can usually detect a bad SEO report – they are full of technical jargon, too many metrics, and misinformation.
Creating a great SEO report isn’t impossible, but it does require that you include concise information and provide information about what matters most to your client. Be sure to share the progress and growth opportunities and offer recommendations.
If you aren’t sure your SEO reports are up to par, now is the time to make some improvements. Here you can find tips to help you improve the SEO reports you provide your clients.
Determine Your Client’s Main Goal
You need to know your client’s goal. This is the base of any quality and informative report.
Focus on the metrics that matter to your client and their business. What’s the campaign’s main goal? Tell a story with your provided data to ensure your client fully understands the report.
You also need to find ways to connect the SEO metrics to objectives and KPIs that the business owner is concerned about. Usually, this is either sales or leads.
As you start adding metrics to the report, compare them to the business’s objectives. Ensure that what you are measuring is aligned with the business objectives and that the report fulfills the purpose of aligning it with the industry represented.
Service-based clients and those with products are going to have unique objectives. Regardless of how good your numbers are, you must ensure your report shows your client that you are working toward achieving the objectives. If this isn’t accomplished, then the report is virtually useless.
The end goal here is to show how your SEO efforts are helping your client meet their overall business goals.
Show Your Client the Big Picture
The best SEO reports will include an estimate of how the SEO efforts influence your clients’ ultimate goals. Usually, this will relate to revenue; however, it may also be resumes submitted, demos scheduled, or something else.
Even when you include a “best guess,” you should include how you arrived at it and then work with the client to help refine it. This can help you understand the inner workings of their business and industry. This information can be helpful when creating SEO reports.
If the report you give your client is only focused on SEO metrics, such as traffic, time on site, rankings, and things like this, it can be helpful; however, this is not enough information to defend your efforts if the client questions your SEO strategy.
Show How Your SEO Strategy Impacts Your Client’s Revenue
In some situations, the main KPI you should highlight will be the revenue generated or conversions.
You should always focus on revenue added thanks to your efforts in your SEO report. You can discuss traffic, rankings, and other factors; however, if you have not improved your client’s bottom line, they aren’t going to care about anything else in the report.
Be sure to show the revenue benefit of the work you provide. This is particularly important if C-level executives will see your report. These individuals see things in black and white – what was spent and how much the agency is helping them earn in ROI or revenue.
If your client can clearly see the dollar value of your SEO work, they will also understand the amount of time that goes into it.
Know Your Client’s Preferred Method of Communication
You need to know your client’s preferences. Some clients don’t want technical, while others want all the details. When you communicate with your client, be sure you provide the type of report they want.
Each report for each client should be unique. It should be simplified, organized, and adjusted based on their wants, needs, and preferences.
If you represent a tech firm, keeping tech jargon is fine; however, if you represent a restaurant owner who wants to optimize their website, be sure the report is simplified so they can understand it.
The most important part of your SEO report is ensuring that the client sees the business metrics they understand and care about.
Show Empathy
When it comes to empathy, be sure you discuss things in a way that your client will understand. If you work with an HVAC company owner, you can’t discuss things like bounce rate optimization or Schema markup because they won’t know what you are talking about. Be sure the report includes terms that matter to your client and that they will understand.
Meet Your Client’s Needs (and Exceed Them)
When you prepare an SEO report for a client, you need to know them. Each client will have a certain level of expertise and specific metrics they want to know about. It is up to you to know what is important to each client before you start any SEO campaign or try to create an SEO report. This will help ensure you deliver the best service possible for them.
While new clients may be interested in ranking locally and generating links, bigger clients will likely want to see results for certain pages and how they rank compared to their competition.
Find out what your client cares about most. Be sure that the report you create for them is focused on that particular client. In some situations, this will be revenue; others may be more interested in conversions, keyword rankings, or traffic. If you use cookie-cutter reports, they probably won’t offer much value.
We Can Help You Create Effective SEO Reports
When it comes to creating SEO reports for your clients, you need to make sure you customize them to what your client wants to know. This will help you show value and how your efforts are helping boost their traffic and visibility.
If you need help with this, be sure to contact us. As part of our affordable SEO for small businesses, we offer report generation for agencies. Contact us today to learn more about the services we offer.