Agency guides

How to Build an SEO Client Dashboard in 6 Easy Steps

An SEO client dashboard helps track important SEO metrics in one place and makes reporting much more accessible, whether you’re an agency or a freelancer. 

SEO dashboards not only save time but also provides concise and easy-to-understand, real-time search marketing data. 

Today, we’ll show you how to build an SEO client dashboard in just 6 easy steps, as well as which aspects to keep in mind when choosing your SEO reporting tool.

Whatagraph marketing reporting tool
Mile Zivkovic

Jan 22 2020 5 min read

How to Build an SEO Client Dashboard in 6 Easy Steps

Table of Contents

  • What is an SEO client dashboard?
  • How to create an SEO client dashboard in 6 steps
  • 1. Consider your reporting needs
  • 2. Determine your budget
  • 3. Consider your integration needs
  • 4. Grab an SEO template
  • 5. Customize your SEO dashboard template
  • 6. Hit send and automate
  • Start creating amazing SEO client dashboards today

What is an SEO client dashboard?

An SEO client dashboard is a document outlining the most relevant SEO metrics and KPIs for a specific client. It shows the SEO strategy and its progress and how the SEO campaigns are performing in terms of new backlinks, keyword rankings, organic search performance, the referral website traffic, and more.

An SEO client dashboard is a superb SEO analytics tool that makes it easy for agencies to report on their results and communicate progress to clients. These dashboards have many benefits, from transparency to being able to upsell clients when they see their SEO data shooting because of an agency’s hard work.

How to create an SEO client dashboard in 6 steps

If you’ve never created one, you probably don’t even know where to get started. A great SEO dashboard needs to have actionable data and KPIs about search engine performance that your clients can understand.

Just digging up their Google Search Console and Google Analytics data and throwing it in an Excel sheet sounds like a solid plan - but we’re not in 2010 anymore. Instead, you can easily create an amazing SEO client dashboard online in a matter of minutes.

Before suggesting which reporting tool to use, let’s go through the practical steps you need to take.

white-label report

1. Consider your reporting needs

If you want to create SEO client dashboards and you work in a marketing team that’s in-house, you’re going to have a different approach to creating an SEO reporting dashboard. You’re most likely going to need a handful of integrations to send a small number of reports every week or month.

On the other hand, if you run a marketing agency with a large number of clients, that’s an entirely different ball game. You’re going to need a reliable reporting tool that supports an unlimited number of reports.

So, put your needs on paper (or digitally) to determine what you need to get started. If nothing else, find out how many reports you need to send per month and what kind of tools (integrations/data sources) you need to accurately show your SEO performance.

2. Determine your budget

What is your budget? In an ideal world, you could create SEO client dashboards for free but our research has shown that it’s far from possible.

For example, a tool like Looker Studio (Google Data Studio) promises to be free but the moment you want to add a tool that is not in the Google ecosystem, you have to pay for additional data connectors or use a tool like Supermetrics.

So, it’s clear that an SEO client dashboard has to cost some money, which is why you want to choose a tool that has easy-to-understand and transparent pricing, such as Whatagraph.

The most affordable plan in Whatagraph is $223 per month, which gets you access to 25 data sources and 5 seats on your team. You can send unlimited SEO client reports and dashboards and choose which integrations you need.

This means that on top of SEO integrations, there is plenty of room for other social media, PPC, email marketing, and other tools you work on as an agency, so you can send these reports out as well.

3. Consider your integration needs

A great SEO client dashboard does many things right, but the most important one is: it has all the right data. And to have all the KPIs and metrics in one place, you need to choose a reporting tool that supports the integrations with the tools you use.

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For example, Whatagraph integrates with the following (SEO) tools:

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Search Console
  • Google My Business
  • Ahrefs
  • SEMRush
  • SEOMonitor

These are the basics you need to keep your SEO metrics and KPIs in one place. If you use some other SEO tools, choose a reporting tool that supports those integrations. Otherwise, you’re going to have to populate your SEO client dashboard manually, and where’s the fun in that?

cross-channel reports

4. Grab an SEO template

Each client is unique and so are their needs for metrics and KPIs. However, all clients need the same basics covered. So why would you create each SEO client dashboard from scratch?

Instead of starting from nothing, try using an SEO dashboard template. It’s just one of the 100+ templates that we have in the Whatagraph library.

Dashboard templates come packed with all the right:

  • Widgets
  • Metrics
  • KPIs
  • Visualizations (tables, bar charts, graphs, pie charts, etc.)

And everything else you need to create an amazing SEO dashboard in minutes. All you have to do is connect your clients’ sources and you’ll have a dashboard your clients will love without breaking a sweat.

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An SEO dashboard template includes all the necessary SEO metrics, such as:

  • Organic traffic
  • New and lost backlinks
  • Keywords and keyword movements
  • Bounce rate
  • Click through rate (CTR)
  • Page loading speed
  • Conversions and conversion rate (from landing pages and blogs)

And many others, depending on the specific client. If you prefer reports instead of dashboards, you can also grab an SEO report template. The great thing is that templates can turn hours of work into minutes of editing, whether you do link building or on-page SEO for ecommerce websites.

5. Customize your SEO dashboard template

If you send out just numbers in tables, don’t be surprised if your clients don’t even glance at all the amazing SERP results and search traffic you got them. You need to make your dashboards customized to match the specific client and their needs.

40+ data

This includes:

  • Changing the color and overall design of the dashboard
  • Arranging the widgets in the dashboard so that the most important metrics come first
  • Adding a summary so clients can understand what happened since the last time they read your report
  • Adding a client’s logo
  • White labeling your report and removing all Whatagraph branding.

All of these can be done very easily in Whatagraph’s intuitive report builder. Just a few minutes of personalization and editing here can go a long way in making your dashboards stand out. Your client reporting will become a great calling card for your business rather than a chore for your account managers.

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We would highlight the white label dashboard feature which is ideal for white label SEO agencies. You can create hundreds of reports every month and make them all look like your agency created them, and not Whatagraph.

More specifically, here is a white label SEO dashboard you can start using today with all the metrics you and your clients need:
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6. Hit send and automate

Your SEO client dashboard is done and ready to go. Now, all that is left is for clients to read it, and for that to happen, you need to send it out.

Sending dashboards out manually is a thing of the past. With Whatagraph, you can choose the intervals you want your dashboards to go out on. For example, weekly, monthly or any other customer interval your client chooses.

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Or even better, give your clients just one dashboard link and let them choose when to open it. If your clients want to make sure their digital marketing metrics are doing well, they can click a link to see real-time metrics.

40 data sources

Start creating amazing SEO client dashboards today

By now, we hope you realize that creating this type of marketing dashboard is not rocket science. If you do your preparation well, you’ll choose a great SEO reporting tool and create your first dashboard in the blink of an eye.

But why spend weeks researching the best SEO client dashboard tool when you can choose a great software for marketing reports and dashboards today? Sign up for your free trial of Whatagraph today and find out why more than 1,000 agencies and their clients love our dashboards and reports.

Published on Jan 22 2020

Whatagraph marketing reporting tool

WRITTEN BY

Mile Zivkovic

Mile is the head of content at Whatagraph in charge of all content and communications for Whatagraph’s marketing data platform. A marketing heavy with almost a decade of SaaS industry experience, Mile has managed multiple content marketing teams without losing an ounce of his writing passion. The author behind some of the most-read pieces on our blog.