How to Set Up Automated SEO Reports

Let me guess.

You’re working on your SEO and rank tracking, but you just can’t find a system that works for you that DOESN’T take up your entire day.

Join the club!

Almost everybody that has anything to do with SEO spends loads of time analyzing data and adapting their strategies.

But there’s a solution: Automated SEO reports.

Automated reports help you stay on top of your ranking data WITHOUT taking up all of your time or increasing your workload. In fact, automated SEO reports SAVE you time and IMPROVE your ability to track your ranks well.

Let’s talk about:

What’s the Point of Automated SEO Reports?
What Kind of SEO Reporting Tools Should You Use?
What Reports Should You Generate?
How to Use ProRankTracker to Set Up Automated Reports

What’s the Point of Automated SEO Reports?

Analyzing data and tracking progress can be time-consuming, especially if you have multiple clients or websites and you’re trying to track all that data by yourself.

Just how much time does it take? One study estimated that SEO can take business owners anywhere from 12-104 hours PER WEEK! Even at the lowest end, that’s more than 2 hours per business day!

However, if you want to improve your traffic and convert more customers, enhancing your website’s search engine rankings is essential.

Fortunately, automated SEO reports can help you save time, maintain clients, and improve your marketing strategy.

Before we jump into how to use them, let’s explore the benefits of automated SEO reports and how they can help you achieve your goals.

Automation Saves Time

Creating SEO reports manually is a tedious and time-consuming process, requiring you to gather data from various sources, analyze it, and create a report from scratch.

On the other hand, automated SEO reports automatically execute many tasks, including:

Data collection
Organization
Analysis
Other SEO tasks

This automation can save you hours of work.

Automated reports can be generated daily, weekly, monthly, or on-demand (depending on your needs), giving you real-time insights into your website’s performance. This allows you to quickly identify changes and make decisions without dumping hours of your time into rank tracking every day.

Maintain Clients

If you’re an SEO agency, you’ll have multiple clients to manage, each with unique needs and goals. Most of them will also want a variety of reports in their inbox regularly (some more often than others).

Automated SEO reports allow you to keep your clients informed about their website’s performance without overwhelming them with too much data.

By sharing automated reports with your clients, they can track their progress and see how your SEO strategies affect their website’s rankings. You can also set up an automated schedule so you don’t have to manually send regular reports (which saves even more time).

This also helps build trust with your clients as you can demonstrate the value of your services through data.

More trust = More clients stay with your service = You make more money

Improve Your Strategy

Without automation and reports, it’s tough to know when your strategies are working and when they aren’t.

On the other hand, a daily report that automatically shows you which of your ranks has dropped gives you essential info about how your strategy should change.

If your automated reports show that certain keyword/URL combos have dropped on the SERP, you can adjust your content strategy to focus on those keywords.

This helps you stay ahead of competitors and adapt to changes in search engine algorithms.

What Kind of SEO Reporting Tool Should You Use?

As businesses continue to further prioritize their online presence, SEO has become essential to their digital marketing strategy. And to measure the success of these endeavors, SEO reporting tools have become crucial.

Just take a quick look online at all the available SEO tools. There are dozens of options, and all claim to be the best.

With so many options available, it can be challenging to determine which tool to use. What features should you prioritize? How should you decide which tools you definitely WON’T use?

Let’s discuss the essential features to look for when choosing an SEO reporting tool that fits your needs.

White-Label Ready Reports

If you provide SEO services to clients as an agency, branding your SEO reporting tool is crucial to present your data professionally.

White-label-ready reports enable you to add your:

Logo
Company colors
Other branding elements

This feature presents your report as if you designed it in-house. If you use a white-label-ready tool, your clients don’t have to know your report was generated by a third-party tool – you’ll look like you have the resources of a much larger company.

For this reason, you should heavily consider an SEO reporting tool with white-label ready reports that’ll enable you to present data professionally and accurately.

Various Report Types

When it comes to reporting, a one-size-fits-all approach does not apply.

So your tool shouldn’t force you into using the same report template every other business uses.

The right SEO reporting tool should offer various report types tailored to many different business goals. In other words, you should be able to make the tool work for YOU and your clients.

For example, you should choose a tool with many report templates you can imagine yourself using regularly. If it only has 1 report template (even if it’s highly customizable), you may spend a ton of time trying to make it work for your needs.

On the other hand, a tool with many templates could have you up and running in minutes (and the result will be closer to what you and your clients need).

Customizable Reports

While various report types are crucial, having an SEO reporting tool that allows you to tailor your reports to your clients’ needs is equally important.

Every client is unique and has specific SEO demands. That’s why customizable reports are essential: they allow you to tailor your reports to ANY client’s needs and wants.

Some customization options you should consider include:

Reordering data
Choosing what data makes it into a report
Customizing the report file type (XLSX, PDF, etc.)
Customizing the email that the report sends from (so your clients receive their reports from YOU instead of from your tool)

Consider other ways you might want to customize your reports and ensure that the tool you choose allows you those customization options.

Easy to Use

As you consider which SEO reporting tool to choose, simplicity is another factor.

The more you enjoy using your tool, the more you’ll ACTUALLY use it. Conversely, complex tools are rarely enjoyable to use. That means you should look for simple tools that are easy to learn and use.

An easy-to-use SEO reporting tool should have a user-friendly interface and save you time. The more time you spend figuring out how to use the tool, the less time you have to take care of your business or clients.

What Reports Should You Generate?

Every business needs accurate insights to make informed decisions, and generating reports is one of the most efficient ways to stay current.

Reports can help you:

Uncover hidden trends
Monitor key performance indicators
Track progress toward your business goals

They’re also handy for keeping your white-label clients happy without exerting hours of effort every day.

However, generating the right reports can be challenging. The number of reports available can seem daunting, so many people aren’t sure where to start.

Let’s quickly examine which reports you should generate to help you get the most out of your data.

Automated Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Breakdowns

One of the best ways to stay on top of your business metrics is to generate automated daily, weekly, and monthly overviews.

Think of it this way: if you don’t know what’s happening with your ranks, can you make sound strategic decisions?

Of course not!

Historical breakdowns can highlight key changes (like which ranks are going up and which are going down). Sending them on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis ensures that you and your clients have a complete view of their ranking success.

You could generate these manually, but automated reports save you time and ensure you get up-to-date information at a glance.

Comparison Reports

Comparison reports are ideal for comparing different scenarios and helping you understand why your ranks perform well in certain areas and poorly in others.

For instance, you might want to compare:

How the same keyword ranks for 2 different URLs
How the same URL/keyword combo ranks in different search engines, locations, or search devices.

Are you getting more traffic from certain areas in your city than others? Try using a comparison report to figure out why you’re ranking better in one location than another.

Notifications

Notifications are an essential component of any reporting strategy because they reduce the time it takes to act on new information. They alert you to important events or trends IMMEDIATELY, allowing you to take action without delay.

For example, you might set up notifications for:

Your ranks dropping or increasing by a certain number or percentage
One of your URL/keyword combos reaching a certain rank
One of your tracked terms falling off the first page of Google

Automated notifications save you time and ensure you stay on top of critical events. They can even help you avoid disasters by alerting you before a problem goes from bad to worse.

Anything Your Clients Want

Finally, you need to consider what reports your clients need. Understanding their needs can help you stay competitive and retain business.

In other words, you shouldn’t just assume that the reports YOU pick will satisfy your clients. You should ask them if their business has any specific reporting needs, then go out of your way to set up automated SEO reports to fill those needs.

By customizing reports to their needs, you can build stronger relationships and improve customer satisfaction.

A good reporting tool like ProRankTracker makes this infinitely easier by giving you quick access to premade report templates that save time setting up the perfect reporting schedule.

How to Use ProRankTracker to Set Up Automated SEO Reports

Monitoring your ranks can be time-consuming. Thankfully, ProRankTracker offers advanced tracking and reporting solutions to help you stay on top of your rankings.

ProRankTracker is a top choice for over 60,000 SEOs and website owners worldwide with its state-of-the-art algorithm, daily automatic updates, and powerful reporting tools.

Before we wrap up this post, we’ll show you how to use ProRankTracker to set up automated SEO reports so that you can spend more time on strategy and less on manual tracking and reporting.

Add Your Keyword/URL Combos

The first step is to add all your keyword/URL combos to ProRankTracker, and the easiest way to do that is within the Add Wizard tool.

Click on the Add Wizard tool in the left-hand toolbar.
Fill in the URL, Keywords, and Group/Tag fields
Click “Next Step.”
Select your desired options for search device, search engine, location, language, and Snack Pack
Click “Save.”

That’s all there is to it! Just repeat that process for each URL/Keyword combo you want to add. If you have a lot to add at once, try using the Advanced Add tool for its bulk add feature.

Create a Reporting Strategy

Now that you’ve added your keywords, it’s time to consider your reporting strategy.

ProRankTracker offers more than 20 types of customizable reports, including ranking history reports, comparison reports, and overview reports. Consider which reporting options are most relevant to your business needs and set up your reporting preferences accordingly.

As we mentioned earlier, you should ask your clients if they have any specific reporting needs you can fill using ProRankTracker’s automated reports.

A reporting strategy isn’t one-size-fits-all, so make sure to tailor this step to your needs and those of your clients.

Edit Your White-Label Settings

If you’re an SEO agency, you’ll want to customize your reports with your branding and colors. It gives you a more reputable look and helps you impress clients.

ProRankTracker offers white-label report settings, which allow you to add:

Your agency’s logo and colors
Headers and footers
Cover letter
Custom domain for Shared Reports

You can access these settings under the White Label tab in the settings menu. To get to the settings, click the gear icon in the top right corner, then click “PRT Settings.”

Some customization options available for reports are also available in the “Templates” tab in the Reports Center.

Create and Customize Your Reports

Once you’ve added your keyword/URL combos and set up your reporting preferences, it’s time to create and customize your reports.

As mentioned earlier, ProRankTracker offers more than 20 pre-designed reports, which you can customize with your branding and data. Just select the reports you decided on when you were creating your reporting strategy and customize exactly how you want the report to appear.

For example, the Overview Report above requires you to select particular info like:

Organizational info like email, file type, template, and language
What data the report will draw from
What columns the report will include, and in what order it will display in

You’re in complete control of what the report includes and how it arranges it, so take some time getting these just how you want them.

Set Up Your Trigger Notifications

If you want to stay on top of any significant changes in your website rankings, set up trigger notifications in ProRankTracker. Getting notifications when anything important occurs is the best way to stay completely current.

You can receive a notification via email when your website rankings increase or decrease beyond a specific limit. You can also use other criteria to set precisely when a notification will send.

This feature will help you avoid major issues or manage changes (like Google updates) by making necessary adjustments before bad goes to worse.

Connect ProRankTracker’s API with your other reporting software

Finally, if you’re already using different SEO and organizational tools, you may want to integrate ProRankTracker’s API (offered at the agency level) with those tools to get even more comprehensive data.

For example, many business benefit from integrating ProRankTracker with the following types of tools:

Spreadsheet/data management tools like Google Docs
Data visualization tools like Google Looker Studio
Social media management tools

ProRankTracker offers easy API integration, allowing you to pull website ranking data into your existing software or upload data from your other tools directly into ProRankTracker.

Ready to Automate Your SEO Reporting?

SEO is time-consuming no matter which way you slice it, but it doesn’t have to be all-consuming.

Setting up automated SEO reports, as outlined in this article, makes time management easier and improves your SEO by keeping you up to date.

Additionally, agencies can benefit massively from automated SEO reports because they impress clients and improve retention and client acquisition.

What are you waiting for? Try signing up for a free 30-day trial of ProRankTracker today and see how much automated SEO reporting can revolutionize your SEO efforts.

Good luck!