What’s there to report?
Before you prepare a single interim SEO report or indeed formulate a strategy, it is imperative to agree with your client on the exact goals of the campaign. I cannot stress this enough. Once the goals have been set in stone (or on paper), you have to pick the right KPIs (key performance indicators) to help your client determine the extent of the campaign’s success. I cannot stress this enough.
Finally, list out all the on-page and off-page SEO activities, such as modifying Title tags, directory submission, and others that you plan to carry out to achieve key milestones. This is somewhat similar to the concept of WBS (work breakdown structure) in project management. They don’t need to be listed in the order in which you plan to carry them out, but do group similar ones together. It pays to be completely open with your client on this one. Don’t worry if you need to add new tactics down the line (called “gold plating” in project management) or cancel ones that don’t matter anymore (called “saving time and effort” in plain English) from the list at any time. This will only add to transparency.
SEO and social media campaigns are increasingly becoming synonymous with the marketing functions of advertising and branding. As a result, even though many of us are working with “Just show me the results!” type clients, it is important to articulate your short-term progress on paper. The vast majority of clients do want constant reassurance that their money is being spent wisely and they’re getting something in return. When Coca-Cola pays an advertising agency for a campaign, they don’t judge the outcome as successful based on a single rise in sales of cans; they’d have people monitoring how often the commercials appear on TV or magazines, how they’re received by the audience, and a host of other factors, wouldn’t they? (Legal disclaimer: I am guessing. I’ve never sold sugared water.) There will be occasions when clients, big or small, will want to know what you’ve been up to—especially around payment time. No matter what, it will do you a world of good to meticulously document every action and process that you follow, whether or not you turn it into a report.
Scrape around the web, and you will stumble on umpteen articles such as “10 Tools that God Uses to Create Mind-Blowing SEO Reports”; but dig deeper, and you realize that most tools produce giant gobs of numbers and stats (they have to, because they’re not free) that make Excel sheets look like pebbles.
Appreciate the fact that clients are just like us. They come in three flavours: Those who can count and those who can’t. (Yeah, I spell “flavours” with a “u” – Queen’s Vanilla.) By and large, they don’t fully grasp the concepts of analytics, “crawl errors,” or “talking about this.” Therefore, it is your responsibility, fellow SEO dudes (and chicks), to take the jagged mountains of data spewed out by your dazzling tools (and more importantly, Excel sheets) and present them to your clientele in an easy-to-understand, actionable way.
Last year, Jonathan Walker wrote a cool YouMoz post on what to include in SEO reports. To jog our memories a bit, it advised incorporating project overview, work completed, keyword progress, impact on traffic, goal completion / sales, ROI figures, and what happens next (upcoming actions). I shall endeavour to give some specific examples and breakdowns of the “work completed” part. As you will see, more often than not, this includes “keyword progress,” “impact on traffic,” and “goal completion.” So let’s get down to business.
Our approach at Maven Infosoft is to constantly try out any and all tactics applicable to the site/brand and possible within budget before zeroing in on the ones that work best. These activities largely come from within the list/breakdown that we agreed with the client at the outset. Please bear in mind that the SEO strategies (such as PR/article/directory submission, increasing PageRank, and others) that I’m going to use in my examples here only serve to drive my point home. Their effectiveness largely depends on what your client needs.
In your first interim report, devote a section to each task that you’ve undertaken. Say you configured Google Analytics (for a new site) and Webmaster Tools, submitted a press release or article about a company, and uploaded some videos to their YouTube channel. Each section can include the following components:
Note: All the text in the above image are belong to us. If you dare copy it, we will set hordes of smart lawyers on you! To steal is webmaster, to penalize is Google.
Note: I filched the text in the above image, from a site I cannot remember, only with intent of educational illustration. I promise not to use it for commercial purposes or to buy a Rolls Royce. My other car is a Bentley.
Screenshots (Comparison)
Closing in on your competitors? Falling behind? In what areas? You can also compare your campaign with another one run for the same company.
Each section would have a Title, Description, and Advantages, as these would be necessary for all the tasks. You can describe how you went about them and what results you got with screenshots, lists, charts, and tables.
To summarize, a completed report will look something like this:
Title: Incoming Links to Your Site
...Description of why back links are important...
Before you prepare a single interim SEO report or indeed formulate a strategy, it is imperative to agree with your client on the exact goals of the campaign. I cannot stress this enough. Once the goals have been set in stone (or on paper), you have to pick the right KPIs (key performance indicators) to help your client determine the extent of the campaign’s success. I cannot stress this enough.
Finally, list out all the on-page and off-page SEO activities, such as modifying Title tags, directory submission, and others that you plan to carry out to achieve key milestones. This is somewhat similar to the concept of WBS (work breakdown structure) in project management. They don’t need to be listed in the order in which you plan to carry them out, but do group similar ones together. It pays to be completely open with your client on this one. Don’t worry if you need to add new tactics down the line (called “gold plating” in project management) or cancel ones that don’t matter anymore (called “saving time and effort” in plain English) from the list at any time. This will only add to transparency.
My client wants results, not reports.
Moving ahead, we SEO blokes (and birds) must understand our clients’ approach to reporting data—figures that they expect to see, in formats with which they are comfortable. Some clients just want to see the ROI on a piece of tissue, while others are keen on detailed week-by-week reports of all your link building, social engagement, and other activities, complete with charts and tables. Consciously resist forming biased opinions such as “busy people and corporate honchos are only interested in the outcome” or “I’ll flood the mom-and-pop business with so much data, they’ll think I know best and won’t bug me.”SEO and social media campaigns are increasingly becoming synonymous with the marketing functions of advertising and branding. As a result, even though many of us are working with “Just show me the results!” type clients, it is important to articulate your short-term progress on paper. The vast majority of clients do want constant reassurance that their money is being spent wisely and they’re getting something in return. When Coca-Cola pays an advertising agency for a campaign, they don’t judge the outcome as successful based on a single rise in sales of cans; they’d have people monitoring how often the commercials appear on TV or magazines, how they’re received by the audience, and a host of other factors, wouldn’t they? (Legal disclaimer: I am guessing. I’ve never sold sugared water.) There will be occasions when clients, big or small, will want to know what you’ve been up to—especially around payment time. No matter what, it will do you a world of good to meticulously document every action and process that you follow, whether or not you turn it into a report.
Scrape around the web, and you will stumble on umpteen articles such as “10 Tools that God Uses to Create Mind-Blowing SEO Reports”; but dig deeper, and you realize that most tools produce giant gobs of numbers and stats (they have to, because they’re not free) that make Excel sheets look like pebbles.
Appreciate the fact that clients are just like us. They come in three flavours: Those who can count and those who can’t. (Yeah, I spell “flavours” with a “u” – Queen’s Vanilla.) By and large, they don’t fully grasp the concepts of analytics, “crawl errors,” or “talking about this.” Therefore, it is your responsibility, fellow SEO dudes (and chicks), to take the jagged mountains of data spewed out by your dazzling tools (and more importantly, Excel sheets) and present them to your clientele in an easy-to-understand, actionable way.
OK, now show me the money ...um, report.
We have found that sending an interim SEO report to clients on a fixed date every month, whether they ask for it or not, keeps us in good standing. Weekly reports don’t give you enough time for results. Or for actual work. Quarterly reports tend to keep you away from your dear stakeholders for too long. Thus, monthly reports are ideal. Plus, if you make your reports interesting (and are able to produce cool upward-pointing graphs every time), your clients will actually look forward to read them. Don’t believe me? Read on.Last year, Jonathan Walker wrote a cool YouMoz post on what to include in SEO reports. To jog our memories a bit, it advised incorporating project overview, work completed, keyword progress, impact on traffic, goal completion / sales, ROI figures, and what happens next (upcoming actions). I shall endeavour to give some specific examples and breakdowns of the “work completed” part. As you will see, more often than not, this includes “keyword progress,” “impact on traffic,” and “goal completion.” So let’s get down to business.
Our approach at Maven Infosoft is to constantly try out any and all tactics applicable to the site/brand and possible within budget before zeroing in on the ones that work best. These activities largely come from within the list/breakdown that we agreed with the client at the outset. Please bear in mind that the SEO strategies (such as PR/article/directory submission, increasing PageRank, and others) that I’m going to use in my examples here only serve to drive my point home. Their effectiveness largely depends on what your client needs.
In your first interim report, devote a section to each task that you’ve undertaken. Say you configured Google Analytics (for a new site) and Webmaster Tools, submitted a press release or article about a company, and uploaded some videos to their YouTube channel. Each section can include the following components:
Title
Describe the SEO activity and why you’re doing it. In about five words.Description
Give an explanation on the nature of the task. Why are you doing it? How are you going to go about it? What can it do for the rankings or visibility? Who else is doing it? Try not to be boring.Note: All the text in the above image are belong to us. If you dare copy it, we will set hordes of smart lawyers on you! To steal is webmaster, to penalize is Google.
Advantages
Follow up the description with a clear portrayal of what goals or conversions you expect to achieve with this particular activity. Point out the benefits and outline which ones you hope to attain, and to what extent, for the campaign at hand.Note: I filched the text in the above image, from a site I cannot remember, only with intent of educational illustration. I promise not to use it for commercial purposes or to buy a Rolls Royce. My other car is a Bentley.
Lists (for link building, site submission, etc)
Length does matter. You might want to skip loooong lists and provide links to downloadable documents. Just mention the total number of items here—such as “6000 new followers”—to make an impression.Screenshots (Task completion or Achievement)
Maybe you gatecrashed into the PR-8 club. Or got 500 Likes. Or the most common keywords Google found when crawling your site were the ones for which you want to rank. Paste the images here.Screenshots (Progress)
Jump in rankings? Increased traffic? Better results quarter on quarter? Let’s see it.Screenshots (Comparison)
Closing in on your competitors? Falling behind? In what areas? You can also compare your campaign with another one run for the same company.
Tables (for search query performance, country-wise page traffic, etc)
Again, if you have multiple, large, unwieldy, or ugly tables, you might want to link to downloadable spreadsheets or the like.Each section would have a Title, Description, and Advantages, as these would be necessary for all the tasks. You can describe how you went about them and what results you got with screenshots, lists, charts, and tables.
To summarize, a completed report will look something like this:
# COVER PAGE #
--Page Break--Title: Incoming Links to Your Site
...Description of why back links are important...
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