Reports for Clients?

What do you include in your reports for clients? How do you send your client reports?

You're not specifying the services been rendered.

Different services have different types of report to offer.

For example as an SEO expert, i send the full back link report of my clients finished work which can be in a notepad, winrar or excel, in cases where there is no report i let them know off hand and when the back links are not readily available like in the case of sites that needs to approve every submission i just provide a screen shot of the submission.

As a designer, i send the finished work to my clients and give them the chance for review.

I'm not trying to advertise myself here but portraying the differences..

Every profession or services have their own way of delivering finished work, i advice you find and talk to people in your niche, believe me, some people can be very artistic in things that you never have thought of.

For example, a web designer will simply just hand out the finished website URL but a few others will send it in a finished package, no doubt, presentation is key here.

john1444 said:

You're not specifying the services been rendered.

Different services have different types of report to offer.

For example as an SEO expert, i send the full back link report of my clients finished work which can be in a notepad, winrar or excel, in cases where there is no report i let them know off hand and when the back links are not readily available like in the case of sites that needs to approve every submission i just provide a screen shot of the submission.

As a designer, i send the finished work to my clients and give them the chance for review.

I'm not trying to advertise myself here but portraying the differences..

Every profession or services have their own way of delivering finished work, i advice you find and talk to people in your niche, believe me, some people can be very artistic in things that you never have thought of.

For example, a web designer will simply just hand out the finished website URL but a few others will send it in a finished package, no doubt, presentation is key here.

Click to expand...

didnt think i would have to specify the services rendered since this is the SEO section.. but i see you send backlink report. no analytics or traffic reports?

newyorkcity said:

didnt think i would have to specify the services rendered since this is the SEO section.. but i see you send backlink report. no analytics or traffic reports?

Click to expand...

That depends on the seller. Most commonly you will just get a report with your links and sometimes the progress on your SERPs after using the service. Giving more such as Analytics, advice etc is added value and although it is not compulsory, it adds that extra bit of value to your service.

I use SEO Powersuite to Generate

a) Website Audit
b) SERPs tracking

I combine the multiple outputs using Acrobat and contextualise the report in the email. If there are no on-site edits to be made, I won't send the Website Audit after the first time. It helps if the web Dev was done by someone else, then you can bill them hours in writing a Quote Request for the Web Devs (ie: adding Microdata in the CMS, what to change etc).

If you're doing a different type of report, ie Social Media engagement, that would be best done with spreadsheets. Having tracking done by either a free service like URL shorteners like bit.ly or paid such as socialflow help. (If you can building your own analytics, do so!)

Ongoing reports are different from one-offs like audits (ie: KW analysis could be a word doc with tables)

Just make sure you price accordingly, lock them into a monthly fee for reporting and maintenance. If they are an e-commerce site, you might track orders to see if your traffic converts (even for sign-ups, or other form submissions)


Stuff like Google Analytics is great for reports, but don't over do it unless you have budgeted for it.