SEO reporting
SEO reporting: what to include, how often, and how to make clients read it
How to build SEO reports clients and managers actually read: the three layers of a report, the metrics that belong in each, cadence, attribution of work to results and what to leave out.
On this page
A good SEO report answers three questions in this order: did organic search grow, why, and what happens next. Everything else is supporting detail. Lead with non-branded clicks and the business result they drove, explain the biggest changes with the work or events behind them, and end with the next month's plan. Most reports fail because they invert this: forty charts first, and the conclusion nowhere.
The three layers of an SEO report
| Layer | Reader | Contents | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Summary | Owner, manager, client | Headline result, one-sentence why, next month's focus | Half a page |
| Performance | Marketing lead | Non-branded and branded trends, top movers, conversions from organic | Two pages |
| Work and evidence | SEO lead, specialist | What shipped, what it earned, issues found, the backlog | As long as needed |
Write the summary last and put it first. If a reader stops after the summary, they should still know whether to worry.
Which metrics belong in the report
- Non-branded clicks and impressions from Search Console: the clearest measure of what SEO earned. See branded vs non-branded keywords.
- Conversions from organic search from your analytics: leads, sign-ups, sales. The metric owners care about.
- Queries in the top 3, top 10 and top 20: a ranking ladder is easier to read than an average position.
- Top gaining and losing pages, each with a one-line reason.
- Work shipped and its measured effect, compared with the same number of days before.
- Technical health: only the issues that changed or matter, not the full crawl list.
The full list, with how to calculate each one, is in SEO KPIs.
What to leave out
- Third-party authority scores as a headline. They are tool estimates, not Google metrics.
- Rankings for keywords nobody searches.
- Total impressions without context. They can rise because you rank on page five for more queries.
- Raw crawl error counts with no priority.
- Charts without a sentence saying what they show.
How often to report
| Cadence | Use for | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Teams shipping SEO work every week; launches and migrations | A short update: what shipped, anything that broke |
| Monthly | Most clients and managers | The full three-layer report |
| Quarterly | Leadership, budget decisions | Results against the forecast and the next quarter's plan |
Connecting the work to the results
Clients keep paying for SEO when they can see which work earned which result. For each shipped change, record the date, the pages it touched and what you expected it to do. A month later, compare those pages' clicks over the same number of days before and after the ship date, and compare against the rest of the site to rule out seasonality and sitewide swings. A single sentence such as “the pricing page rewrite added about 120 clicks a month, while the rest of the site was flat” does more for retention than any chart.
Pair this with a forecast set at the start of the quarter, using the SEO forecasting method, so the quarterly report compares results with what you said would happen.
Start from a template
The SEO report template gives you the section order, the questions each section answers and a filled-in example you can copy into a document or slide deck.
Doing it with a reporting tool
Spreadsheets and Looker Studio dashboards work, but take hours a month per client to keep accurate. In AnotherSEOGuru App, Reports → Client report builds a branded, printable report for any site and date range with headline metrics, trends, wins, top queries and pages, and the work you shipped. On the Agency plan, reports are white-label with your logo and colours, and clients can have their own live portal. The live demo shows the report on sample data, without an account.
What should an SEO report include?
How often should I send SEO reports to clients?
What is the most important SEO metric for a client report?
Should SEO reports be white-label?
Do this on your own data
Connect Search Console once (read-only) and AnotherSEOGuru App runs this analysis for every site you manage, every week. Search Console features cost no credits on any plan.
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