Why Provide SEO Reports

Providing regular reports is an important part of SEO work. It can often take a while to see the fruits of your labour, so in the meantime it is vital the work you have done is recorded in an accurate and efficient manner. Not only will this help you keep the client informed of what's going on, it will also help you keep track of progress and plan for the future.

Any strong and focused SEO campaign should always start with a certain degree of research. This first step of research is basically intended to give an overview of the market on the search engines, plus analysis of the website raising any possible opportunities and or problems the site may have. Not only will this prevent any confusion with the client in the future with regards to your strategies and charging for any work to be done, it should also provide a good foundation from which to move forwards.

It's at this stage that the amount of work needed, time scales and budgets can be made clear. Due to the varying nature of every website, SEO campaigns are always of an individual nature. Some clients will come with a website that is fresh from the design studio, has no links and an extremely new domain. They may also require being seen for some very competitive keywords, and this kind of project will obviously require a large amount of effort over a substantial period. On the complete flip side to this, some clients will present to you a website that has been live for a few years and only offers local services. Local search is much easier to achieve results, and less time is needed.

Without the first initial stage of research you as an SEO consultant would not know any of this, and would effectively be working blind. This is not good for both the success of your campaign, or for customer service. The other important reporting stage is at the end of a set period of link building activities (month to month is recommended here). If you are working on link building activities, either manually or via link bait etc, it is important that you track these links and try to collate an as near to accurate list as is possible of acquired links. If you stick to this you should be able to stay in touch with what's going on and indentify areas which could do with more focus.

This is also an ideal oppertunity to track your results in the search engines. Depending on how things are going, this can either be an extremely satisfying exercise or indeed quite the opposite! If you are tracking results month by month, don't fret too much if your positions take a hit one month or don't climb as expected. Just try to logically work out why. Often the effects of any link building or SEO work can take a few months to come into play, so you should be looking more closely at quarterly results, however monthly reporting on results is a great way to keep clients 'in the loop'.