A monthly report that ties organic search to leads or sales, for the client who pays for the work.
Plenty of SEO reports are an export with a logo on top: forty keywords, their positions, a column of arrows. The example here is the other kind, one a marketing lead can read in three minutes and repeat to their boss. It's a made-up month for a made-up window company, so borrow its shape and bring your own numbers.
Who it's for
Freelance SEOs and small agencies on a monthly retainer, writing to an owner or marketing lead who doesn't live in search tools. That reader is asking whether the money they pay you brought in business.
It's the wrong place for a technical audit. Crawl errors, redirect maps and the full keyword list belong in a spreadsheet for whoever fixes them.
What a good one contains
- A business number as the headline. The sample opens with 64 quote requests from search. Visits and positions explain how that happened, so they come second.
- Two comparisons: last month and last year. Search is seasonal. The sample's 64 is 25% up on October, but the fairer line is 68% up on last November.
- Thirteen months of that one number. Thirteen bars put the same month a year ago on the chart, and a summer dip stops looking like a failure.
- Pages instead of keywords. Six rows cover the site, each with visits, the change, quote requests and a one-line reason. A ranking appears only inside a reason: fell from 5th to 11th after a retailer's new page.
- The work, dated. Four dated lines, plus hours used: 19.5 of 20. Clients on a retainer wonder where the time goes, and this answers before they ask.
- What didn't work. The sample says the patio doors page lost half its requests and should have been rebuilt a month earlier. A report with only wins reads like an ad for the agency.
- Next month, and what you need from them. Three jobs with dates, a plain forecast (December is slow, 50 requests would be good) and one ask with a deadline.
Before you send it
Agree on what counts as a result before the first report, and print the definition at the bottom every month. The sample counts completed quote forms from unpaid search results and says phone calls are left out. Without that line, the first disagreement will be about counting, not search.
Add up the page rows and compare them with the headline. If six rows of visits don't come to the figure in the first band, the client finds the gap before you do.
Search data takes a couple of days to settle, so send in the first week of the month.
How to send it
With a password. It shows which pages bring a client their leads, and their competitors would enjoy reading that. Reuse last month's password, so the client is never hunting for a new one.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
