Create Beautiful Reports with AWR Cloud and Prove the Value of Your SEO Efforts It can be difficult sometimes to show your clients the value that they get from your service. Your job, as an SEO, is to help people improve their online presence, and increase their revenue. So, when you get a new client, you start optimizing their website and send periodic reports on your progress. You focus on achieving higher rankings and more visitors, confident that you can deliver the expected results. But does your client recognize the success you drive for their business? Naturally, there is a gap between the SEO efforts you make, and your client s understanding on the value they get from your work. In this worksheet, you ll learn how to present your results using beautiful reports that your client can easily read and understand. Step 1: Decide what you would like to present to your client When it comes to reporting your progress, it s best to choose first the details that will help your client get the best value of your results and goals. So, for now, just create a list with the kind of data you would like to present. With AWR Cloud, you have a wide choice at hand: Analytics Dashboard helps you show the overall visits, conversions and revenue that your client gained from different traffic sources. Keywords Evolution presents a summary of your keywords activity in the search engines Keyword Ranking displays the ranking positions of the keywords monitored, side by side with search volume data and organic visits. Website Ranking shows the evolution of specific landing pages you have optimized. Websites Comparison helps you present your progress in search engine rankings, in comparison to your client s competition. Search Engine Comparison displays the keyword rankings compared side by side on multiple search engine markets. Visibility helps you show your client how discoverable his website is, across all the keywords and search engines targeted. 1
When choosing the types of SEO data to include in your report, focus on the outcome that your work has brought to your client. Did you grow the site s traffic? Great! Make sure you include the Analytics Dashboard in your SEO Report. Next, let s move to Step 2 Step 2: Create the report in AWR Cloud Once you have decided what to present to your client, it s time to create the report in the AWR Cloud. Log into your account (if you don t have an account yet, you can easily sign up for a 30 day free trial) and navigate to the Reports > Edit reports menu. Now, click on the New report button from the upper right corner of the screen and enter the details for creating a PDF report: 2
Next, choose the report sections you want to include in your report by simply clicking on the Sections button. This is where you can use the list created on Step 1. For example, the report you saw presented in our video contains the Cover Page, the Analytics Dashboard, Keywords Evolution, Search Engine Comparison, Website Ranking and Keyword Ranking sections. The order in which you select them will be further preserved in your report. Now it s time for Step 3 Step 3: Add a personal touch This part is the key, and can be a bit time consuming. But the outcome is definitely worth it. Let s take each section at a time: Cover Page: This section includes your report title, the subtitle and the cover page content. You can use it to present the scope of the report, and explain how the sections are organized. 3
Here s an example: Analytics Dashboard: In this section you can include the visits, revenue, and transactions pie charts, showing your client the overall traffic growth and the distribution by traffic source. Here, you can also compare the visits evolution in time to the site s visibility score in the search. What s the visibility score? Simple! It is a metric automatically calculated by the AWR Cloud to show how easily a website can be found in the search engines targeted. You can see the visibility score formula in this Help section inside your AWR Cloud account. To help your client better understand the above metrics, you can also add a summary page before the Analytics dashboard, explaining what the section is about, presenting your findings and the actions you plan to take during the next reporting period. 4
Here is the example we used the Analytics Dashboard in our report sample: Keywords Evolution: This is the place where you can definitely impress your client! The number of keywords on the first page, Top 1 to Top 20 positions, and a beautiful chart with the number of keywords over position range are just some of the items that provide you with great visual support for your keywords activity. 5
For the Keywords Evolution section is our report sample we used the following example: Search Engine Comparison: In this section you can show your ranking improvements in comparison mode, showing your client the results obtained on the targeted search engines side by side. This section is highly customizable, allowing you to select the sorting and filtering options that you want to apply, and 6
also define a custom date range. Here is the example is our sample report: Date range, sorting and filtering Keyword groups and Summary page 7
Website Ranking: This is the place where you can make your SEO work feel tangible. Your client can see the specific landing pages that rank in the search engines, and the type of content they promote. For a higher visual impact, you can also add a time chart presenting the evolution of the landing pages over time. Here are the options for the Website Ranking section in our report sample: Date range, sorting and filtering Columns and Summary Page 8
Keyword Ranking: This section provides you with a detailed keyword analysis helping you to show your client how high their website ranks for the most profitable keywords. This is achieved by comparing side by side the ranking positions to the average monthly searches, the competition and cost per click. But this is just one way to use this section. When applying a not ranked filter, you can actually present your client the new keyword opportunities for which the website is not yet optimized. 9
This is how we used the Keyword Ranking section in our report sample. Columns and Summary page All done? Awesome! Let s move to Step 4 10
Step 4: Brand your report Once the report sections have been customized, it s time to brand the report with your own logo and a personalized footer. To do this, choose a brand template in the Report Settings tab of your report. If you don t have a personalized brand template created yet, you can quickly create one now. Navigate to the Reports > Brand templates menu and click on New brand template. Then enter a name for your template, the URL to your logo image, and an optional text that is displayed in the footer of your report. This template will be available for selection in the report you ve just created. In the report settings, you can also choose who will receive the report, and how often this will happen. 11
You can share reports either by email, by simply selecting the E mail radio button and entering the email address of your client, or you can create a user account for them. You can find more details about creating users for your clients in this Help section inside your AWR Cloud account. When it comes to sending the reporting emails, there are two ways to do this: Use the AWR Cloud mail servers. The reporting emails to your client will be sent from reports@awrcloud.com, or Send the emails from your own email address, by enabling the whitelabel mode in your AWR Cloud account. When creating a new report in AWR Cloud, you have the possibility to schedule it to be sent automatically to your client, on a weekly or monthly basis. Simply select the Send report automatically check box and choose the reporting frequency your client prefers. Your client will receive an email on the selected day of week, or day of month, announcing that a new report is available. The email contains a short text that you can customize from the Profile settings > Profile templates section in your account, and the link that your clients can use to see the report online. We re coming close to the end :) so here is Step 5 12
Step 5: Refine your report data When you are monitoring a large number of competitors, keywords or search engines, the reports that you send to your client may become difficult to read, because they have too many pages. One way to solve this is to include only the sections that show aggregated data (for example, Analytics Dashboard and the Keyword Evolution sections in AWR Cloud). But if there are important details you need to show to your client, regarding a specific competitor, or a specific group of keywords, you can easily refine your data in the Report Data tab. To select only some competitors, for example, simply click on the All websites check box and choose the websites you are interested in. It works the same if you want to choose only specific keywords, or search engines. That s about it! Now all there s left to do is share this report with your client. If you want to see what it looks like before sending it, click on the Preview button from the upper right corner of the screen. 13
The AWR Cloud will generate a sample with the sections you selected. This report sample will contain partial data, and it will not be counted to your monthly reports quota. When you are ready to send the report, simply click on the Run report button. At the end of the day, reports will be your friend! Giving your client access to comprehensive data will help you prove the added value that your work brings to their business. 14