SEO reports are often actually valuable for SEO professionals. Various intensive Local SEO training courses at conferences all over the world & monthly reports always come up. Vendors never look to be truly satisfied with what they are offering to clients & clients never look to be really satisfied with the report they are given every month.
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The huge problem is that most of us live in our small Local SEO bubbles & do not fully consider how an amateur thinks about SEO. We live, eat, breathe & bleed SEO – some of you out there even name your pets after algorithm updates. No one ever stops to consider how to successfully communicate with somebody who has completely no idea how SEO works.
The majority of customers have put zero thought into how Google works, much less how to optimize to show up enhanced in search results. They merely know that if they have more visibility in searches, they get more business.
When we provide them reports filled with all the zippy SEO & digital marketing jargon, they get glassy-eyed. When they see chart after chart of data that means nothing to them, they totally zone out. As long as sales are not tanking, then they can assume that your service is valuable, but they are not sure & they are definitely not advocates.
If you want to keep a client for the long term, you have got to build reports that show real value to the client, not to your marketing mind. You can bring a stellar report that shows ridiculous growth in ranking & organic traffic a report that you would use as an example in future sales presentations, but if that client does not understand the lingo or the data, the report is ineffective.
It is even worse when you onboard a new client who is been brainwashed by reports filled with misleading or useless data in the past. They will expect the same junk report & you will spend important time over the first few months, easing them into your new reporting system.
Instead, if we all stop the madness, life would be much easier for all of us. Our clients would be happy & we’d have an easier time keeping clients around for a longer period of time. So let’s look at some of the significant points regarding reports:
Stop Talking About Links:
Clients want to know how their money is spent, they want to know what you really do for what they are spending. I cannot tell you how much monthly SEO reports merely list out the monotonous tasks that were performed in the month before. How does this assist a client to prove ROI?
In the same vein, listing links is pointless. Surely, it shows you got some links for the client, but again, that does not actually prove value in what you are doing. The vast majority of clients do not actually understand how links work or why they are necessary, so you do not actually need to include them in your report.
Stop With the Overload of Data:
We all get it, you are a whiz at Google Analytics & you can throw a ton of charts at your clients. But what does it all mean? You may even have a contact at the client’s business who actually loves the data, but when the owner checks in, it is glazed eyes & questions about why they are spending thousands on something that they do not understand.
If you have a client who wants all the data, provide it to them. If another client does not care, then change your report! You should not give the same report template to each customer.
Stop With the Dashboards Already:
For some reason, many of vendors have jumped on the dashboard train. Do not get me wrong, I think dashboards are excellent tools for internal teams. When you make a dashboard available to a client, they have got 24/7 access to look at what is going on. We have all had to defend an unexpected traffic drop or ranking drop when a client has a dashboard, those questions come to you regularly. Plus, most dashboards are overloaded with data, so it is even more confusing for a client who doesn’t get all the minute details.
Stop With the Ranking Reports:
Rank trackers are excellent tools only for internal teams. You definitely need to keep an eye on search visibility & any changes that happen.
Including rankings in your report does not mean squat. Rankings do not tie into the client’s bottom line. I can get a new client ranked #1 for hundreds of keywords in less than a week, of course, they’d all be highly obscure long-tail phrases that no human would really search, but would that look exciting on an SEO report.
It Is All About the Bottom Line:
If we boil it down to the simplest concept, our job as Local SEO is not to get our clients to rank better in the local searches it is to make our clients more money.
If you want to actually prove the value of your services to your clients, you should tie your reports directly to their bottom line. Your SEO efforts can result in greater visibility in local searches, which in turn drives to more traffic, which in turn results in more leads that hopefully amounts to more sales.
Realistically, your SEO report only requires a single page. You need to show how organic traffic improves over time & you need to show how leads improve over time.
However, if a client requires something else specific to really see bottom-line advantages, do not be afraid to set up a custom report. You might have a client that only cares about the number of repeat customers while another many only care about the number of inbound calls received in a month. One size does not fit all & your ability to create a custom report that actually shows the value of your services will go a long way toward locking in a long-term connection with that client.