5 Tools Every SEO Agency Needs for Client Reports

SEO Client Reporting Tools

A good SEO agency knows their clients. They know what their clients know and don’t know, what KPIs are important to them, and how they like to receive information.

Some just want monthly traffic reports or keyword ranking updates. Others want every nitty-gritty detail like the amount of impressions for long-tail keywords from Namibia on Wednesdays.

The point is that different clients want different types of KPIs for agencies concerning their SEO performance.

How agencies relay that information depends on the reporting tools they’re using.

These tools should supply diverse solutions so that there are no grey areas with the amount of information they report to their clients.

Most importantly, reporting tools should save time for both the clients and agents.

Here are 5 SEO reporting tools that agencies should use to keep their clients happy and informed.

1. Google’s Data Studio

Google’s Data Studio is every marketing agent’s best friend. It’s a jack-of-all-trades analytical platform for those agents who are masters of none.

The tool allows users to compile data from a variety of source connectors like:

The community connectors allow users to integrate social media data along with other analytical dashboards for a beautiful analytical visualization that can be sent as a report to any client via an accessible URL.

What makes this reporting tool so valuable is that it’s:

  • Free
  • Fully interactive
  • Able to be integrated with outside APIs so you can include almost any data you want
  • Able to sent to anyone at any time

We all know some clients can be extremely picky about what kind of data they want updates on. Google’s data studio allows agencies to mix and match what type of data charts are displayed along with different metrics.

Just integrate each property or profile you need and the data is easily sorted once you choose a visual aid.

I find it extremely useful when I need to align reports with data from different sources.

For example, visualizing the relationship between Google Analytics’ pageview counts against the Search Analytics queries report from Search Console is easily done with a few clicks.

With many reporting tools costing a fortune to do much less, Google’s Data Studio gives marketing agencies the ability to report a diverse amount of data to clients with ease.

It’s like a full kitchen stocked with ingredients and utensils waiting for reporting magic to be made!

2. SERP Screenshots

Helicopter clients. Every agency has them.

There are clients that want to see just a general overview of clicks, sessions, or traffic. Then there are the clients that want to see their keyword rankings as they appear on the SERP.

Unamo SEO’s SERP Screenshots are fully interactive html pages that SEO agents can send to clients for concrete proof of their rankings.

They can also see the rankings for every URL that appears on the page associated with their domain.

Clients are often weary of rank tracking tools that don’t provide accurate daily rankings. This takes all of the anxiety out of the equation by providing realtime proof that the rankings are fetched daily and are accurate.

What’s more is that screenshots are downloadable so agents can send them to clients and add them to reports easily.

SERP Screenshots are the perfect solution for the clients that require detailed reports and insights they can interact with.

3. Cyfe

Like Google’s Data Studio, Cyfe integrates data from sources into a dashboard that can be shared with a link for client viewing purposes.

It differs in that it has more integrations that don’t require developers connecting APIs. However, the way you can interact with different metrics is much more limited.

But for clients that just want the most important metrics from different digital sources at a glance, Cyfe is perfect as a marketing reporting software.

The dashboard software integrates with a few SEO tools and most social media platforms. You can configure 5 widgets from any source they integrate with for free.

Users can toggle between different metrics within each widget, allowing them to give clients the most important metrics at a glance.

The value is that it’s easy to setup, can be configured for what the client deems is most important, and is easily shared.

4. Keyword and Traffic Reports

The bread and butter for every SEO agency comes in the form of keyword and traffic reports.

Almost every SEO tool comes with it’s own in-house reporting mechanism. How dynamic they are varies from platform to platform, but each SEO solution at the very least should provide clients with reports on:

  • Daily rankings and their averages
  • SERP Links
  • Traffic Reports
  • Local SEO reporting
  • Competitor rankings

Depending on how frequently clients want to be updated, these reports can be automated to send at whatever intervals an agency chooses.

As some clients’ SEO knowledge can vary widely, it’s important to have the flexibility with reports to send information that clients can understand and value.

5. Technical SEO Reports

If you’ve got some SEO savvy clients that want an all-encompassing look at their website from top to bottom, then you can supply them with technical SEO reports so they can visualize where their site needs to improve from a technical standpoint.

Many technical SEO tools will provide a singular page crawl that will give an in-depth look at a website’s technical SEO performance.

Some technical tools I would run home to mom about include:

  • ScreamingFrog
  • SEOmatOr
  • Deepcrawl
  • SEOptimer

Each tool is a paid option, but they all provide easily sendable reports that give in-depth insights on an entire website.

Most clients who hire SEO agencies will require that the agency be the one to fix any technical issues found in the report. However, a top-to-bottom report to understand the severity of some issues is of interest to clients that know SEO and can be used to benchmark future success.

Conclusion

The tools an agency chooses to use should reflect what kind of reports their clients want.

Know your clients, agencies!

Then choose a toolset that checks as many boxes as possible on the data clients want to be updated with regularly.

These reports are the foundation of every marketing agencies relationship with their clients; they can make or break any relationship depending on how that information gets relayed.