Reporting 101

Creating sleek reports, establishing value, and setting goals

Once you're past the rigamarole of executing on your SEO tasks, good reporting is the absolute best way to set yourself up for success. Not only does it allow you to keep track of areas where you can improve and keep impressing your clients, but it also shows your progress and how far you’ve come.

However, it’s easy for reports to get out of hand. It's tempting to add all data points available, but that makes for overwhelmed analysis and glazed-over clients who don’t read all the information presented to them. Even with big changes that can happen over a short reporting period, recipients may fail to see how it can affect their goals and what they want to achieve with SEO. As with many things, quantity is not better than quality when it comes to reporting.

Many SEOs will include as much information as possible to make themselves look capable and smart, but this tactic often backfires as your client's interest and engagement wanes. It’s important to think of a report as a story that explains the journey your campaigns have taken over a set period of time. Clients that fully understand what reports are saying are much more likely to ask insightful questions and give feedback that is useful for the next reporting period.

Think of your best reports as ones that have been "KonMari’ed" — that is, reports that only contain the most valuable and insightful information that showcases actual results. Meaningful data is what your reports should be all about. It's just like anything else that clutters up your life, like clothes or tiny ceramic dog statues — just because data points are available to you doesn’t mean you should add them to your collection.

Achieving clean, effective reports isn't easy. Oftentimes we're cobbling together messy data from a variety of sources and platforms that don’t all use the same jargon or focus on the same aspects of SEO. This means you spend a lot of unnecessary time patching needed data points together into a report that offers a glimpse into what's been happening for the last reporting period.

Clean, easy-to-understand, white-labeled reports let your value and expertise shine through, even when the data doesn’t show large gains. Clients trust SEOs who are open, clear, and honest about their progress, even when there are speed bumps. Building trust through reporting can be a crucial juncture to get approval on a larger budget or bigger strategy. Once clients see the data in black-and-white terms, they're more likely to be more comfortable putting additional resources toward a project. Never try to fluff up the data or only show data points that show positive progress — inevitably, this will backfire and lead to a loss of client trust, which can destroy your relationship. Don't leave clients wondering what you aren’t telling them. It’s better to show the data and then explain what steps you're taking toward positive change than to try to make your efforts reflect imaginary or inflated gains.

Good reporting also gives you the opportunity to highlight your personality and uniqueness, which are often what attracted clients to you in the first place. If you specialize in a specific industry or aspect of SEO, focus on that in your reporting to show to clients the extra value they're receiving by continuing to work with your company. Many SEO platforms allow customers to white-label reports and add their own logo and branding. This is always a good idea because the reports look more customized and professional.

Within each report, be sure to include key takeaways from the data to make it easy to understand at a glance. Data alone can be impressive, but in general your clients don’t have the time, comprehension, or attention span to read and decipher all those numbers and graphs. For every section in the report, include one or two sentences about its relevance and why its readers should care.

Always make sure your goals are SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Your goals should always reflect those of your stakeholders and tie into what they want to accomplish while working with your company. If they're not strongly tied to goals, reports seem to float in space. Anyone reading them will be unsure of their purpose or conclusions.

Here’s an example of how a SMART goal can work:

• Specific: Increase the number of pages per visit.
• Measurable: Increase the average number of pages per visit by ten percent.
• Achievable: Since we increased it seven percent last month, ten percent is possible.
• Relevant: The number of pages per visit has a correlation to a higher conversion rate for this client.
• Time-bound: We want to increase the average number of pages per visit by ten percent in the next month.

Clearly defined report goals and analysis always lend themselves to the proper expectations of SEO maturity by clients. White-hat SEO often takes many months to bear fruit, but monthly reporting can help clients see not only what traction was gained, but what’s next for their campaigns. This close communication builds stronger relationships with clients and stakeholders.

Now that you've got a sense for the most important considerations in your SEO reporting process, let's go over one of the biggest benefits of good, clear reporting in Chapter 2: Building a relationship with clients, stakeholders, and prospects through reporting.