Reporting SEO activity to clients

Hi Damian,

Your message is really spot on and we experienced the same issue about a year ago. We ended up spending so much time explaining the content of the report to the clients and the presentation did nothing to really convince them that this was worthwhile.

We decided to introduce a phased approach which you are more than welcome to make your own:

1. meeting to discuss with clients the kind of information they would need (sometimes we have to guide them)

2. run a few reports and 'train' them to read and analyse the information (face to face) and make decisions

3. agree the format moving forward i.e reporting 'as is' or written report with comments from SEO consultants, etc. (we charge more for the latter)

4. regular phone updates to ensure that clients is really making use of the information and not 'slipping'

I hope this is useful and let me know how you get on

Pascal

Pascal Fintoni, Head of Business Development, www.n-e-life.com

On 16:31:26 22 November 2006 damian_rees wrote:

 

I'm currently reviewing our overall SEO strategy and offerings and one thing I've been concerned about for a while is our reporting, As an agency we work on a number of different clients and we tend to report on a quarterly basis but the reports we use are cumbersome and inflexible. I'm looking to practice what I preach by conducting a review with the users of our reports, but in the meantime I was wondering if anyone was willing to share any tried and tested successes.

My main concerns are that the reports can be a little dry, and don't tend to provide a client with an accurate enough picture of what we've been up to and what result our activities have had. Have you found this and if so what have you done to resolve it?

Thanks in advance