SEO agencies are obsessed with their SEO reporting process. This is the primary way they share their achievements with their customers. Without it, clients may be left in the dark about their SEO progress – trust me, you No Want that.
In this post, I’ll share the structure of some real-world agency reporting that I’ve shared with you, and how agencies of different sizes approach SEO reporting.
SEO agencies need to juggle multiple clients, so the time spent on fixed tasks like reporting can quickly add up.
For example, let’s say your agency has five clients and spends two hours each month completing the entire SEO reporting process.
More than one day per month only Spend on SEO reporting.
So, as an agency owner, you want your clients to be paid well through standardized reporting deliverables, but this is often far from reality.
It usually looks like this:
Generally, the higher the budget, the more targeted your reporting will be.
Let’s face it: If an enterprise customer is paying $XX,000 a month, they’re probably not going to be impressed by a basic PDF report you can produce in 10 seconds using a third-party tool.
Likewise, if you give a client paying $1,000 a month a 60-page SEO report and connect it to a Tableau dashboard, they might not know where to start.
So, based on this, we can say that there are mainly two types of customer reports:
- Small and Medium Business (SMB) SEO Report
- SEO Report for Enterprise Business
But before we get into the details, let’s explore the key differences between SMB and SMB Enterprise SEO Report.
| element | Small and Medium Business (SMB) SEO Report | Enterprise Business SEO Report |
|---|---|---|
| scope | Typically, a domain within a business category | There can be multiple domains, multiple regions, and multiple business categories |
| target audience | Website owner, marketing team | Marketing team, development team, senior stakeholders, other teams |
| Key Performance Indicators | ROI, website traffic, conversion rate, leads | Different teams may have different SEO KPIs |
| suggestion | High-impact changes that are easy to implement | Incremental change leads to long-term growth |
In my experience, SEO reports for small and medium-sized enterprises usually contain three elements:
- SEO Dashboard – Allow clients to check their SEO performance or KPIs at any time – often fully automatically
- Search Engine Optimization Report – Regular updates on the entire SEO campaign, usually once a month. Focus on commentary and insights, report format may vary
- Promotional meeting – Often, video calls with clients to review reports and get feedback on SEO performance
Side note.
Sometimes dashboards and SEO reports are combined to create a hybrid format.
Agencies can easily automate their SEO reporting by using free and easy-to-use solutions such as Google Looker Studio (GLS).
For Google Looker Studio, there are three options:
| Options | difficulty | time investment |
|---|---|---|
| Set up your own dashboard | Moderate | time consuming |
| Use existing template | simple | Less time consuming |
| Using Ahrefs GLS Template | the easiest | at the lowest limit |
If you don’t want to create your own dashboard, we’ve done the hard work for you and provided three Google Looker Studio connector Get the best from Ahrefs.
if you don’t have confidence beewhich is one of the best ways to get data from Ahrefs so your customers can view it without time-consuming manual reporting.
SEO reports for small and medium-sized businesses are typically documents that provide regular updates on website performance.
So what content is usually included in an SEO report for small and medium-sized enterprises? In my experience, it can cover some or all of the following topics, depending on the client’s focus.
hint
Don’t know how to adjust it? Here are some real-life SEO agency reporting structure examples that you can draw inspiration from.
SEO Agency Reporting Structure #1
Many of the details of this report are in the Organic Visibility section, which breaks down visibility by department.
It’s also interesting that it details the links the agency acquired during the month in a classic links report – something that’s less common at the enterprise level, as corporate clients have been acquiring links without much effort.
SEO Agency Reporting Structure #2
This is a delivery-focused report. The Impact Analysis section is interesting because it details the impact of their landing page optimization efforts and concludes with two growth figures.
This is a great way to communicate to your clients the value of what you do.
Clients love to have their say on SEO calls – after all, they pay for it. For small and medium-sized businesses, ensuring a good return on investment is often their top priority.
At the SME level, the agency should be able to conduct a comprehensive assessment of a website’s SEO status and obtain feedback from clients.
For most SMB clients, the usual format is this:
- Weekly status update call
- Monthly reporting calls After submitting your monthly report
In my experience, it rarely deviates from this format.
The first rule of enterprise SEO reporting is that there are no rules. So, generally speaking, what the customer wants, the customer (usually) gets.
Here are some examples of scenarios that can happen when a business client joins your agency and starts talking about SEO reporting:
- “We already have our own internal reporting. You can use our template (Sending you a terrible looking template).“
- “Our previous agency has this report, can you do something similar?”
- “We need dashboard reporting so we can monitor results instantly.”
- “Integrate your SEO reports with our existing tools.”
- “We want SEO reporting to be integrated with PPC.”
- “We want SEO to be included in regular performance reports.”
Since an enterprise SEO report is usually just one chapter of a larger performance marketing report, the SEO section must be customized to the client’s needs with zero falsehoods.
When it comes to dashboard reporting, enterprise customers typically expect PicturePowerBI or custom solutions, as well as some information from Google Looker Studio.
Here’s a snapshot of what it looks like:
I use Tableau when working with enterprise clients and find it very useful for SEO reporting.
The deliverables of an Enterprise SEO report are largely the same as those of an SMB report, but as always, the devil is in the details.
In short, there are usually:
- more personalized business to customers
- Use more tools – Instead of having one or two trustworthy SEO reporting tools, use “Big Six” Institutions will be able to access most, if not all Best Enterprise SEO Tools in the market
- More reports created and share it with different teams
Here are three examples of enterprise SEO reports for inspiration.
Media Organization Reporting Structure #1
This reporting example shows that it focuses primarily on performance and technical SEO. The agency reports there is a separate content report that they share with the content team.
Media Organization Reporting Structure #2
In this example, the customer has set up Tableau and Google Looker Studio dashboards and gets most of the data from these two sources.
The purpose of creating reports is to communicate SEO activities within the enterprise and educate stakeholders on their value.
As you can see, this report focuses on organic performance, technical SEO, competitor performance, and discouraging customers from self-sabotage (AMP).
Another thing to note: There is no executive summary.
Customers just want a first-hand look at organic performance, and here are the screenshots and comments directly from the Tableau dashboard.
The client operates in approximately 20 major international markets and needs to summarize the most important changes in these markets.
This report is primarily used to introduce the benefits of SEO to other stakeholders and gain support for further SEO improvements to the website. The Industry Updates section helps with this.
Media Organization Reporting Structure #3
Although using spreadsheets for reporting may seem a bit outdated to some, here’s what it means Enterprise SEO Customers have always done it this way, and they’re not prepared to change.
In this example, spreadsheet reporting is a weekly requirement, and the client also requires monthly and quarterly reports in slide format.
Presenting your report to an enterprise client is a big deal, and you’ll typically present your findings to multiple teams over the course of a month.
Here are three examples of report presentation schedules I’ve had with some previous clients. As you can see, for most enterprise SEO clients, a single report or dashboard is not enough.
Customer 1
- daily performance report Core KPIs for Adobe Analytics/GA 360, if necessary, call
- Weekly review updates Highlight SEO performance with Ahrefs, Pi Datametrics, GSC, and other tools
- Weekly performance call Discuss this week’s performance
- Call every two weeks Discuss priorities with the development team using comments written in submitted Confluence and Jira tickets
- Monthly multi-channel performance report Slides for in-person presentations highlighting key results and discussing strategy
Customer 2
- weekly report Marketing team records calls on Trello
- Weekly reporting spreadsheetdata from Adobe Analytics, discussed on the call
- Monthly multi-channel performance report In person or video call
- Quarterly Business Review Discuss strategy in person
Customer 3
- Weekly calls with notes Write and submit JIRA tickets for development requests on Confluence
- monthly report Use slides and present via video call
final thoughts
The type of SEO reports an agency provides usually depends on the client’s budget. At the SMB level, it’s easier to standardize elements of SEO reporting, but at the enterprise level, sometimes you have to throw your trusty template out the window and start from scratch. Because every client is different, so will their reporting needs.
For many SEO agencies, SEO reporting is an art form. If done well, clients will give underperforming SEO campaigns a second chance. But if you don’t do it right, you’ll almost certainly take a hit when your contract comes up for renewal.
Have more questions? tell me on X. 🙂
