Hey guys, I'm just gonna go ahead and ask a rather general question, for those working in SEO. What do your clients want to look at? Raw metrics such as page rankings, traffic values, keywords, ranking URLs, competitor rankings? Or do they feel a more visual report is better? Graphs, trends and pie charts? I personally feel that a mix of both data and visuals help. Have you had any weird requests from clients looking to see how their money got spent?
I like doing a mix for my clients. People do respond to visuals, especially good ones, but I also include good numbers like % of growth last month over yearly average, etc. Most of the time I also just use screen captures from Google Analytics, so that they know its real and not just fabricated numbers for at least monthly traffic. If you're running a campaign for organic keywords, I also like showing some of the incoming searches. I did have one client that only cared about a single keyword, so our lists showed only that keyword (and variations of that keyword).
Definitely not their competitors rankings lol. Generated revenue could be good or bad, but I didn't vote for it. I did vote for everything else though lol.
Clients mostly focused on keyword ranking, monthly traffic segregated as organic , direct and referral traffic both in pictorial representation and data. backlink report is added advantage.
My most of the clients always ask me for keyword ranking, traffic data and generated revenue. Once one of my clients asked only for alexa rank and how many links made for their site. He was only concerned with these two reports.