What reports do you typically provide your clients with?

[NickB-Tampa]

Beyond GMB Insights, what else could be compiled to flesh out a Local Search report for clients? Was considering pulling from the Aggregate ranking chart History in Bright Local.

 

[Conor Treacy]

Beyond GMB Insights, what else could be compiled to flesh out a Local Search report for clients? Was considering pulling from the Aggregate ranking chart History in Bright Local.

We generally only provide Google Analytics, and even from that end, we have a dynamic report configured in Google Data Studio so they can review the link at any time. In there, we can also pull from GMB and Google Ads.

We no longer provide Ranking data, haven't provided it in probably 4 years at this point. The reason being that the rankings change so often, and it's too specific if we're just looking at one or two phrases (or a dozen etc).

At the end of the day, it's all about how much traffic that's coming to the site, and ultimately, how many people filled out the contact form or called them. Everything else is irrelevant in the eyes of the customer.

 

[Eoghan_Aircam]

We generally only provide Google Analytics, and even from that end, we have a dynamic report configured in Google Data Studio so they can review the link at any time. In there, we can also pull from GMB and Google Ads.

We no longer provide Ranking data, haven't provided it in probably 4 years at this point. The reason being that the rankings change so often, and it's too specific if we're just looking at one or two phrases (or a dozen etc).

At the end of the day, it's all about how much traffic that's coming to the site, and ultimately, how many people filled out the contact form or called them. Everything else is irrelevant in the eyes of the customer.

Depends on vertical here.

With foot-traffic dependent national brands, online activity isn't as important to them as showing how the efforts are helping streamline more store visits

- Listing accuracy + completion rates:
(train client to expect not everything will be 100% accurate at all times due to dynamic ecosystem)

- Listing efficiency / CTR - how efficient are they at turning browsers into action takers?

- Local market reach (lines up with their existing media buying efforts)

- Local reputation health

- Recommendations to improve things where onus is on client to take action (e.g. invest more / pull finger out and get you decent photos to use etc. etc!

 

[JoyHawkins]

The main things we include in our reports are:

1. Leads
2. A list of all the work we did that month
3. What we plan to do next month
4. What's new with Google (news)

 

[dgrunited]

Beyond GMB Insights, what else could be compiled to flesh out a Local Search report for clients? Was considering pulling from the Aggregate ranking chart History in Bright Local.

If you plan to get their business, give them "doom & gloom" reports. If you've invoiced them & are now chasing for your payment, give them "good news" reports.

 

[NexstarNickR]

Hey Nick!

tl;dr: Use GA to pull Landing Pages from SEO. Leads/orders on different sections based on city. Make sure to give context to your numbers, and that they are meaningful to / actionable for the client. Don't "pad out" a report just to make it look bigger; the most valuable reports are short and meaningful.

What I push for is for the agency to provide data that is meaningful to the business, and this changes often. The list that @JoyHawkins gave is great, and very similar to what we ask for. I think reporting should come in two parts: metrics and work.

The metrics side should show 1) the key metrics that you agreed on, with the client, as the important growth factors. 2) it should give meaningful context to the numbers (growth vs. a comparable period). It should also relate to the work you are doing/have done for them.

In addition to your mentioned GMB Insights, pull a Google Analytics report of the Landing Pages, filtered to only show organic traffic from their local area. This will help them see what content on their site is working to drive traffic that could convert with them (best for companies who only serve the local area; if they sell nationally, then report nationally). You should also be showing them what parts of the site are working in different geographies, in case there are certain areas which are being underserved.

In addition to metrics reporting, include those things Joy talked about in points 2-3. Your report should be bespoke and sepcific to the needs and work of the company.

I like when an agency can explain the following points:

• What information you saw in the analytics that shows an opportunity for growth
• What work you are going to do to take advantage of that opportunity
• When that work will be completed
• What will be considered success
• When you will be able to see and share the success

I.E. "We looked at the numbers and saw that in this area, we aren't getting a ton of traffic to SECTION A of the site from SEO. We think that by updating the following pages with new images and text, we can improve the rankings and ultimately drive more organic traffic to that page. We should be able to get the content written and implemented this month, and should start to see the rankings & traffic improve 1-2 months after that".

Don't just "pad out" a report with metrics unless they are meaningful. The more junk you give them, the more they will get distracted from what is really important, because in most cases, they don't even know what these numbers mean, or what they should do now that they have them.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Beyond GMB Insights, what else could be compiled to flesh out a Local Search report for clients? Was considering pulling from the Aggregate ranking chart History in Bright Local.

Hi Nick, I think that I'll respond with a @Greg Gifford answer "it depends"

Our reporting is very similar to @JoyHawkins, but at least for our agency we found out the hard way that pretty "eye-candy" reports are sometimes needed simply for pro-active retention.

Up until a couple years ago, we took the simple approach and all of a sudden, in matter of a couple of months, we lost a few clients to different competitors because they came in making presentations to those clients with pretty reports that were obviously tailored to show "everything we were doing wrong" and the type of reports that they would get every week/month from their agency. Not all our clients need this type of reporting, but for the newer ones that may have been burnt by another agency, it definitely gives them a security blanket. We also sometimes tailor those reports to satisfy the (perceived) individual needs that the client wants to see each month.

We've got some very technically proficient people on our staff, full fledged programmers, but we ultimately decided for our reports to go with a dedicated solution. We use a combination of Bright Local and Dash This and our customers are very happy with their reports and we are too. We often use those same reports to spot trends that we otherwise might have missed. I would suggest trying Dash This, they have a trial period and simply fantastic customer service. Plus they actually listen to suggested improvements, they've incorporated a few of ours. Also, although we don't use them Local Viking has some nice reporting tools, but we have found that Bright Local has most of the same functionality (plus citation building).

Hope this helps!

 

[NickB-Tampa]

Hey Nick!

tl;dr: Use GA to pull Landing Pages from SEO. Leads/orders on different sections based on city. Make sure to give context to your numbers, and that they are meaningful to / actionable for the client. Don't "pad out" a report just to make it look bigger; the most valuable reports are short and meaningful.

What I push for is for the agency to provide data that is meaningful to the business, and this changes often. The list that @JoyHawkins gave is great, and very similar to what we ask for. I think reporting should come in two parts: metrics and work.

The metrics side should show 1) the key metrics that you agreed on, with the client, as the important growth factors. 2) it should give meaningful context to the numbers (growth vs. a comparable period). It should also relate to the work you are doing/have done for them.

In addition to your mentioned GMB Insights, pull a Google Analytics report of the Landing Pages, filtered to only show organic traffic from their local area. This will help them see what content on their site is working to drive traffic that could convert with them (best for companies who only serve the local area; if they sell nationally, then report nationally). You should also be showing them what parts of the site are working in different geographies, in case there are certain areas which are being underserved.

In addition to metrics reporting, include those things Joy talked about in points 2-3. Your report should be bespoke and sepcific to the needs and work of the company.

I like when an agency can explain the following points:

• What information you saw in the analytics that shows an opportunity for growth
• What work you are going to do to take advantage of that opportunity
• When that work will be completed
• What will be considered success
• When you will be able to see and share the success

I.E. "We looked at the numbers and saw that in this area, we aren't getting a ton of traffic to SECTION A of the site from SEO. We think that by updating the following pages with new images and text, we can improve the rankings and ultimately drive more organic traffic to that page. We should be able to get the content written and implemented this month, and should start to see the rankings & traffic improve 1-2 months after that".

Don't just "pad out" a report with metrics unless they are meaningful. The more junk you give them, the more they will get distracted from what is really important, because in most cases, they don't even know what these numbers mean, or what they should do now that they have them.

Thank you for the detailed response, very helpful!

 

[NickB-Tampa]

We generally only provide Google Analytics, and even from that end, we have a dynamic report configured in Google Data Studio so they can review the link at any time. In there, we can also pull from GMB and Google Ads.

We no longer provide Ranking data, haven't provided it in probably 4 years at this point. The reason being that the rankings change so often, and it's too specific if we're just looking at one or two phrases (or a dozen etc).

At the end of the day, it's all about how much traffic that's coming to the site, and ultimately, how many people filled out the contact form or called them. Everything else is irrelevant in the eyes of the customer.

That's good to know about the ranking data reporting, thanks!