SEO report template: the one page a client actually reads

Most SEO reports are a tool export with a logo on it: forty pages of rankings, a traffic graph and nothing the client can act on, sent because the contract says a report is due. The client opens it once. The template below is the opposite: one page the client reads, seven tabs behind it that hold the evidence, and a rule that every number comes from an account the client owns.

Download the SEO report template (Excel, opens in Google Sheets)

It is free, it is not gated behind an email address, and you can change anything in it. If you send reports under your own brand, replace the name on the Summary tab and remove the Read me tab; the structure is the point.

What the template contains

Eight tabs, and the first one is the report. The rest explain it.

• Summary. The five numbers with this month, last month and the change, then four short sections: what changed, what we did, what is next, and what we need from you. This is the page the client reads.
• Enquiries. Every call, form, booking and chat that arrived, with its source, the page it landed on, the search if you know it, and the outcome. Fill this first. It is the report; everything else is supporting evidence.
• Search Console. The month's queries and pages with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and position, compared with the previous period. Pasted from the client's own account, so they can check it.
• Pages. Clicks per page against last month, and the enquiries each page produced.
• Business Profile. Calls, direction requests, website visits, messages, reviews received and replied to, from the profile's own insights.
• Work log. What was done, when, on which page, and whether it is done, waiting on the client or next. Kept as the month goes, so the report writes itself.
• Technical. Pages indexed and not indexed, sitemap status, the Core Web Vitals figures, broken links, duplicate titles, and the security and manual action panels, which should read empty every month.
• Read me. The rules and the routine, for whoever inherits the file.

The five numbers, and why enquiries come first

Enquiries traced to search, calls from the Business Profile, clicks from Google, impressions, and pages indexed. In that order, because the order is the argument. A client hires an SEO to get customers, and enquiries are the closest thing to a customer that the work can show. Calls from the profile are the second closest. Clicks and impressions explain where the enquiries came from and where next month's will come from. Pages indexed is the one technical number that belongs on the front page, because when it drops something is wrong.

Rankings are not on the list. They are a step on the way, and a ranking report is the easiest thing in the industry to make look good: track searches nobody makes, show them at position one, invoice. An enquiry cannot be faked that way, and neither can a click in an account the client can open themselves.

What changed, what we did, what is next

Three lines on what changed, leading with the enquiries and naming what moved and why: "Enquiries from search went from four to nine; six of the nine landed on the new boiler repair page, which reached the first page in its third week." Then what was done, as items rather than hours, taken from the work log. Then what comes next and why it comes next, so the client can see the plan rather than trust it. And last, what you need from them: reviews to ask for, pages to approve, the questions only they can answer. A report that asks for nothing is a report the client does not need to reply to, and the reply is where the relationship lives.

The thirty-minute routine

1. Fill the Enquiries tab from the client's inbox, phone log and booking system. If call tracking exists, use it; if not, ask the client for the month's calls that came from a search. Ten minutes.
2. Open Search Console, set the month against the previous month, and paste queries and pages into their tabs. Sort by clicks. Five minutes.
3. Copy the Business Profile insights across. Three minutes.
4. Check the work log is current, and the Technical tab against Search Console's pages and security panels. Five minutes.
5. Write the Summary last, with the numbers in front of you. Seven minutes, and it gets faster.

If it takes longer than that, the report is too long. The evidence tabs can be as deep as you like; the page the client reads stays one page.

What never goes in a report

Rankings with no enquiries beside them. Metrics nobody has defined, including the ones tools invent to look like a score. Traffic that does not lead anywhere. A screenshot from a tool where a sentence would do. Anything the client cannot check in an account they own. And any word that needs a glossary: a client who has to look up "impressions" was told about impressions instead of about phone calls.

Sending it under your own brand

Agencies that resell SEO send this report with their own name on it, and the structure works for that because nothing in it points at whoever did the work. The details that give a partner away, and the rules for keeping the line clean, are in the guide to white label SEO reports. What the arrangement looks like from the agency side is on the white label SEO page, and the numbers the report is built to track are the ones our SEO services are judged on.