If the thought of starting your next monthly SEO report from scratch fills you with dread, you’re not alone!

A few years ago, we asked our customers working at agencies about the top things that they wished were automated about their job.

The top answer by a large margin was reporting, collecting data for reports, and report updates. 

In this post, we’ll show you how to make your own SEO progress report template and automate your reporting process. 

The Semrush My Reports tool lets you aggregate data from dozens of tools, build and save your own PDF report templates, and set up recurring emails. 

This tool also gives you the ability to: 

• Quickly create PDFs from our pre-set templates in a minute
• Modify a template to fit your specific needs
• Brand and white-label your report (with the Agency Growth Kit add-on)
• Add Semrush report widgets, screenshots, text, and formatting
• Add Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Business Profile data
• Create a report completely from scratch
• Save your customized reports as new templates to use in the future
• Schedule regular email delivery of the reports to a target email address

Why You Should Use SEO Report Templates

Creating templates for your reporting, whether you’re in-house or at an agency, can help you:

• Save time
• Onboard new team members and clients more easily
• Establish consistency in your workflow

Of course, saving time is always important for business, and the stress of starting a report from scratch every time can be crushing. 

But another reason you should use templates is that it’ll make it a lot easier for you to onboard new team members and clients. Instead of just throwing your new team members the task of coming up with their own report, you’ll be giving them an easy format to follow so they’ll feel ready to contribute.

Lastly, your clients appreciate consistency. Using a template lets whoever is receiving the report know what to expect. They won’t have to relearn how to navigate through your reports each month, which saves them time. 

Structuring Your SEO Report Template

Every contract and campaign has its own unique set of goals and KPIs. 

Likewise, your client will want their report to feel personal, with specific guidance. 

So, how can you keep your clients happy, while also making your reporting process smoother? 

Here are some tips:

1. Create different templates for different types of reports (SEO audit report, monthly SEO report, competitor analysis report, etc)
2. Make your reports specific and easy to understand 
3. Automate your data gathering 
4. Personalize the report with dedicated text-based areas for your comments and images/branding related to your brand and your client
5. Build your templates with clear sections so it’s easy to sub parts in and out depending on the focus of the month

Automating Data for Your Report Templates

The beauty of using a template for your SEO report is that the automation gives you more time to personalize the report.

While it’s possible to automate some SEO KPIs with dashboards and tools like Semrush, you wouldn’t want to automate your opening statements and commentary. 

Think of the KPIs and data as the “what” of the report and your commentary as the “why.” Why does 15% organic traffic growth matter? You can explain in one of the comments areas of your template.

When you build a template on Semrush My Reports, you can automate the input of data with Semrush and Google data widgets. 

These widgets can automatically populate your report with metrics like:

• A competitor’s keyword rankings and estimated traffic from Semrush 
• Site health and technical site issues from Semrush
• Keyword visibility & share of voice from Semrush
• Backlinks reported in Semrush 
• Goal completions from Google Analytics
• Users, sessions, time on page, and more from Google Analytics
• Search performance from Google Search Console
• User interaction and map views from Google Business Profiles
• And a lot more

Personalizing Templates with Text and Images

To add a personal touch to your reports, you can include space for your comments and explanations, as well as images and branding.

With Semrush, you can drag and drop widgets for text blocks to include your comments on each section of your report. 

You can also add images like your client’s logo, or even fully customize your report with a theme if you sign up for the Agency Growth Kit.

Templates for Each Type of Report

Because there are so many areas of SEO that you can work on, there will be different things to report.

So, you should have specific templates for the different services you offer. For example, you could set up unique templates for your:

• SEO audit reports (initial audit & follow ups)
• Monthly SEO reports
• Competitor SEO analysis reports
• Organic search reports
• Link building/backlink reports
• And more

The nice thing about My Reports is that we have a handful of preset templates to start with. 

Just open one up and start adding widgets to make the PDF report your own. 

Here’s an example of what you’d see automatically by using some of the templates above: 

Monthly SEO Template

This is a perfect starting place for general monthly reporting on an SEO client. Preset widgets include:

• Google Analytics traffic overview
• Daily sessions 
• Top traffic channels
• New vs. returning visitors
• Top pages by pageviews
• New and lost keywords
• Improved and declined keywords
• Backlinks summary
• New and lost backlinks

Site Audit: Full Report Template

This SEO audit report template dives deep into the results of a Site Audit, which could be great for technical SEO clients or prospects. Preset widgets include:

• Site health score
• Number of errors, warnings, and notices found
• Top issues identified
• Full breakdown of every single issue found in the audit

Full Organic Research Template 

This template goes into the organic search performance of any website, which is an easy way to create a competitive analysis report in minutes. Preset widgets include:

• Estimated organic traffic, keywords, and traffic cost
• Keyword rankings by country
• Organic vs. Paid traffic trend (all time)
• Top keywords and position distribution
• Top competitors
• Branded vs. non-branded organic traffic
• New and lost keywords
• Top landing pages for organic traffic

Customizing Semrush Report Templates

Now, what if you want to make your own templates from scratch, or change a preset template and save it as new?

This is also easy, by editing any report in the report builder and saving it as a template on the My Reports home page.

You can add more data from Semrush or Google to your report to highlight your specific KPIs, as well as text blocks, images, and formatting to add room for your comments on each section. 

To add Google Analytics data to your report, Semrush currently offers over a dozen widgets from the classic Universal Analytics version of GA, and a handful of connections for GA4 properties. 

Universal properties: 

• Overview 
• Metrics Charts
• Top Traffic Channels 
• New vs Returning Visitors 
• Conversions (ecommerce) 
• Top Page Views 
• Goal Completions Chart 
• Location 
• Language and Source/Medium 
• Referrals 
• Source/medium 
• Top Landing Pages 
• Campaigns 
• Device Categories 

GA4 properties: 

• Overview 
• Metrics Charts 
• Top Traffic Channels 
• New vs Returning Visitors
• Top Page Views

For specific steps on integrating your Google Analytics with your Semrush report templates, visit our Knowledge Base.

Once you’ve built your report on Semrush, hit the Generate PDF report button on the top right to save it. 

Then, you can save this report from the My Reports home page as a new template. Just find the gear icon beside the report you’ve made, and select Create Template.

Now that report will be saved in your templates list so you can access it and customize a new report for a new client starting from the same structure. 

Generate and Schedule Your Report

Once your report is ready to go, you can schedule this report to be sent to your client’s email on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

You can include a template for what you want to put in the email text itself and make sure to update that email text before it goes out each month.

Perfecting Your Template

How should you customize your template? 

The bare minimum you’ll want to cover in an SEO progress report is:

• What progress has been made
• What actions you’re taking 
• Recommendations for further growth 

After those basics, you might want to include any links to related reading or articles that explain some of your processes, in case the client would be curious to learn. 

Most SEO clients won’t be SEO experts, so you may want to include client education in the reporting process. When you do, it can help build more trust and engagement in the relationship. 

Follow some of these do’s and don’ts to make the template perfect. 

We have a whole blog post dedicated to the anatomy of a perfect SEO report to dive deeper with more examples of how to report on each aspect of SEO.

Regular communication, transparency, and showing that you care about your client’s success can go a long way to having a positive client relationship.