Monthly SEO Reporting for Clients

written by Lindsay Halsey
posted on Jun 26, 2025

Monthly SEO reports are a key component of ongoing SEO services as they:

• Fulfill your client’s expectations. Most clients expect monthly reports. It’s an industry best practice.
• Keep lines of communication open. By sharing your insights on the campaign performance data, you ensure your client understands the results even if they are too busy for a call.
• Inform your overall strategy. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Reviewing the client’s monthly results ensures your action items are targeted for the greatest strategic impact.
• Build trust. By communicating the performance of your SEO campaign, you build a partnership with your client based on trust. This increases the value of your services.

Now that you know why monthly reporting is valuable, let’s explore how to create, analyze, and send monthly SEO reports.

How to Create a Monthly SEO Report for Clients

Google Analytics is the core data set that powers a monthly SEO report. It provides insights into the session volume, visitor engagement, and key performance indicators (key events or conversions).

This can be supplemented with keyword rank tracking data so your client can monitor progress in improving the keyword's visibility on Google.

We recommend automatically creating a monthly SEO report. This ensures a consistent finished product and saves time.

There are many software available to create SEO reports. Your first step is to decide which software to use. There are several key considerations, including:

• Ease of setup
• Customizability
• Price
• Third-party data integrations

Here’s an overview of the best automated SEO reporting tools for web designers and agencies:

Google Looker Studio

A free software, Google Looker Studio supports the creation of a highly customizable report template for your agency with connections to multiple data sources. There is endless flexibility, which is an advantage. Unfortunately, that also comes with a steep learning curve and a high time commitment. Google Looker Studio is best for agencies that serve medium to large businesses on retainers of $1,500/month or more.

AgencyAnalytics

A paid software that is focused on white-label reporting for agencies. AgencyAnalytics features many data integrations and templated reports to help jumpstart your efforts. While easier to learn than Google Looker Studio, creating the initial report for your clients is still a time commitment. AgencyAnalytics’ reports are best for agencies that service medium- to large-size clients on retainers of $1,500/month or more.

Monthly SEO Reporting Process for Agencies

With reporting being a key component of your SEO services offering that you include monthly, you'll want to create a standard process so your team can easily deliver monthly SEO reports and scale.

A process for monthly reporting includes:

1. Analyze the data. Review the automated report to get a sense of the trends. What data do you want to feature in your written summary for the client? What data requires more investigation? Can you tie any of the results to recent action items?
2. Explore any significant shifts or trends to understand the why. This may require opening Google Analytics and/or the Google Search Console. With SEO, there aren't always singular reasons why the results are what they are.
3. Write a summary of the data. Draft the content for an email to the client to deliver the monthly report. Include a mix of quantitative data with a qualitative summary so those clients who aren't comfortable with numbers still get value from your write-up.
4. Update the monthly action items based on any insights from the report. This is the project management component of monthly reporting. Determine what tasks will be completed this month and assign them to the proper team member.
5. Email the report to the client, including your summary. Export your client's report as a PDF and attach it to an email with your written summary.

Analyzing Monthly SEO Reports

A monthly SEO report contains the what. Your analysis allows you to communicate the why and the how, and these insights create value for your client. This is why we don’t recommend sending an automated report to your client without context. They need your analysis, a written summary synthesizing the information, and a PDF copy of the report.

Before you analyze a monthly SEO report, it’s helpful to understand the layout and metrics. The reports begin with the big picture of Website Performance, which includes data from all marketing channels. Then, we move into Organic Search Performance, highlighting the marketing channel that SEO impacted. Finally, we include Keyword Performance, which is the rank tracking data.

In each of these sections of the reports, you’ll see the same metrics. Here are definitions and ranges for what may be considered suitable for each:

• Sessions — Google Analytics records a session when a user visits your client's website. We don’t have a standard target for all websites on the number of sessions each month.
• Session Duration — The average time a user spends on a website. A session duration of over 1 minute is considered good for most websites.
• Engagement Rate — The percentage of sessions on a website that were meaningfully engaged. An engagement rate above 40% is considered good for most websites.
• Conversion Rate — The percentage of sessions that led to a visitor completing your desired actions. Most websites target a conversion rate in the 1 - 5% range.

Website Performance

Start by looking for trends. Are sessions increasing or decreasing compared to last month and year? Is engagement improving or declining? How about the conversion rate?

Then, explore these trends by marketing channel. Are specific channels responsible for the improvements or declines?

Here’s an example:

“Last month, the website recorded 138,828 sessions, a 39.9% increase from the previous year. Engagement remains strong, with the average visitor spending 48 seconds on the website. All traffic channels contributed to the growth in sessions.”

Organic Search Performance

Now, you can dive into the Organic Search channel in more detail. Did sessions from Organic Search increase or decrease?

Here’s an example:

“Organic search led to 33,062 sessions. This represents an 123.9% increase compared to last year. We’re pleased to see the category page about Lifestyle Bags as a top-performing landing page. This signals that our content strategy around content revisions is impactful.”

Keyword Performance

The final section of the report to analyze is Keyword Performance. This is rank tracking data, which can be a leading indicator of upcoming success.

Here’s an example:

“Also noteworthy is the improvement in keyword rankings for phrases related to Google Ads. This content was also recently updated and is a significant contributor to your website's lead generation.”

Additional Tips on Analyzing the Report

Our Google Looker Studio SEO reports contain high-level data that is meaningful for your client without being overwhelming. When you analyze the report, you may need to dive deeper into Google Analytics or the Google Search Console to provide context around the metrics.

How to Send a Monthly Report

With your analysis complete, you can email the report to your client. Export the Google Looker Studio report to PDF and attach it to an email. Then, complete your written report summary for the body of the email. Here’s an example:

Hi [Client Name],

I hope this email finds you well. I’ve attached the May SEO report.

...

Monthly Reporting & Project Management

Project management is part and parcel of monthly reporting. Without it, you don’t have a task list for the upcoming month.

How to Handle Traffic Declines and Down Data

The most challenging part of monthly SEO reporting is handling decreased sessions or conversions. Here are examples:

• Decreased Demand: Client has less demand for products leading to decreased traffic.
• Algorithm Changes & Search Engine Layout Updates: Changes impacting client’s rankings.

When you have a decrease in performance, help them understand the why and how you are adjusting their SEO strategy to help combat it. It’s about building trust and transparency.