Typical reports given by SEO firm

[Splinter]

Can someone share with me what is a typical report of activities a client should receive from their SEO firm each month? I know with link builders you get a list of what links were built.

[Seekness]

Depends on the firm. Here are some things I'd want though.

List of links built and anchor text in each (with links to sites where built)
Distribution of link type (i.e. article marketing, blog comments, social bookmarking, etc.)
Tracking of positions of targeted keywords in SERPs and where they went each month relative to last
Indexing stats - how many pages has google indexed as compared to last month?
Backlinkwatch or Yahoo Site Explorer stats - how many backlinks do these sites acknowledge for each page?
Pagerank reports
Overall organic traffic and distribution of keywords that brought you that traffic
Goals for next month

I'm sure there are more, but these are what come to mind off the top of my head.

[textbox]

Any content changes done to the site or tag updates. For the most part, a client simply wants to see any changes in the SERPs and traffic as those are the two that will affect their sales and ultimately the ROI on the campaign.

[Splinter]

Thanks both for the good feedback. This is what I was kind of asking for and here is the response.

Splinter:
> I understand there is not much data since its only been 2
> months, but the other reason for getting a report is so that I can
> actually see what has been done for my £500 spend. As in how many
> article submissions, social bookmarking, back links etc. From
> experience on what I was quoted for by other companies as well as the
> reports I get from guys doing some SEO work on my other sites, I get
> this as a means to show me what they have done.

SEO Response:
This is something that we don't normally do at all, and not something that has been requested by other clients either. Our monthly reports are based from analytics and show traffic increase/decrease, referrals and movements in SERPs.

I will have a talk with Marlow and see what can be done, but i wont be able to get those details to you today as they are in my work spreadsheet and resource pool.

I will get back to you once i have heard back from Marlow.

[Seekness]

In this case, the proof is in the results. If you're not getting any noticeable action (even an increase in SERPs and not in traffic shows some progress), I'd suggest looking elsewhere for SEO help.

All of what they're doing for you can probably be done on your own anyway.

[Splinter]

Proof is in the pooding as they say. I am actually doing my own SEO work on 2 other sites I have running in the same niche by outsourcing small parts to various members on this forum...

I suppose I will hold back and see what results this SEO chap can produce for me over 3 months while I plod away in the background competing against my own site but for a much lower cost on the other 2 websites... I should be able to compare my results vs his then and make a call on where to better direct that £500 per month.

[EMGhb]

Originally Posted by dandee0014

Depends on the firm. Here are some things I'd want though.

List of links built and anchor text in each (with links to sites where built)
Distribution of link type (i.e. article marketing, blog comments, social bookmarking, etc.)
Tracking of positions of targeted keywords in SERPs and where they went each month relative to last
Indexing stats - how many pages has google indexed as compared to last month?
Backlinkwatch or Yahoo Site Explorer stats - how many backlinks do these sites acknowledge for each page?
Pagerank reports
Overall organic traffic and distribution of keywords that brought you that traffic
Goals for next month

I'm sure there are more, but these are what come to mind off the top of my head.

How do you find all of these things (esp. SERP position and # pages indexed by Google)?

[Splinter]

Quick update, it has now been 2 months and £1,000 later, there is not 1 backlink showing up in Yahoo backlink checker. I know a few directory links have been created as I receive the email notification of site registrations since I am setup as a member of that email alias. But no reports of the links created have been sent (he did say they only send Analytics reports).

Here are some comments when I raised the queries

=========================
ME: In the meantime while you wait for the Google change do you not think it is relevant to perhaps complete the on-page interlinking between articles?

SEO dude: there have been some heated discussion involving this matter on various SEO sites I use, as they have recently been carrying out some tests, and it is showing that once you reach a threshold (the amount yet to be confirmed) using Anchored internal links to the home page and other pages on your site its triggering a penalty – and this has been shown a few times of late, but they are rerunning the tests on the new Google to see whether this is a long lasting penalty or a bad side effect of a change made in the algorithm.


ME: I know the first months £500 was used for the on-page SEO and setting up but what about the month of August? What has been done to work towards the keywords as mentioned in the statement above?


SEO dude: There has been a lot of link building going to reiterate the keywords the pages have been optimised for. This has been submitting Fast-sale-today to various trusted directories and incorporating the same keywords, titles into the profiles so Google can see the citations as relevant and help to build fast sale today’s online presence.

SEO dude:Google is currently rolling out a brand new search engine which index’s in a whole new fashion – which is the biggest change since 2002 – so results are going in and out of Google at a rate of knots. It seems that having simple anchor based text from poor directories and article sites will not help you rank for keywords and can in fact lead to a -900 penalty for search terms. I am still confidant that we will be ranking along side some of the bigger boys on the 6 month mark – but as explained before it takes at least 3 months for links to mature and for Google to profile your site accordingly. The new search engine ‘Google Caffeine’ seems to be very localized based so I am keeping a close eye on the Beta version and watching the trends in comparison to the current Google.

Matt Cutts form Google has also stated that certain Paid directories are still fine to use for many reasons, they are also the ones I suggested before, so with your permission I would like to start using these as soon as possible.
You may find this interesting as I know you are interested int eh whole SEO process yourself: Matt Cutts on Directory/Paid Links - Search Engine Guide Blog

[TomBond]

Ultimately, for your £500 you are going to get a certain amount of time from your SEO guy. He can spend this actively trying to to improve your rankings, or he can spend it writing detailed reports about what he's doing to keep you satisfied.

Rankings should show some improvements after a month, and definitely two. If they are not, use someone else, and if they are, leave the guy to do his thing without the questions.

[Splinter]

Agreed and I suppose the reason I am asking for the urls of links created is to see what has actually been done as currently I am not listed on Google. The site has been up and running for 3 months now with 2 months of SEO been done by him. I come up for 2 terms in Yahoo.

[TomBond]

Your site doesn't come up in Google at all? Even fore the site:www.yourdomain.com command?

By using tools such as Link Diagnosis it should be fairly easy to keep track of his work without actually asking him. If you PM me details such as domain and keywords etc I'll check it out for you.

[Splinter]

PM sent. The site is indexed in google but no backlinks are showing up yet other than about 5 which I created from another similar site that I have running in the same market place. I am doing the SEO on this site myself and so far am up to page 5 - 10 for various keywords. The domain is 3 years old which might help me shine before the SEO chap does I guess?

[Joshua McCoy]

I'm sorry to say, but that seo firm sounds like a bunch of BS to me.

Man, for 500 Pounds I'll drive a bunch of links to your site. I got my friend's site ranked #2 for his biggest local term and #8 for the generic broad term. I'll even give you a though report of the results, keyword rankings, ect. It won't have a bunch of fancy logos on it, but I doubt that's what you wanted anyways. Sounds like you wanted the results and aren't getting any.

Normally I would PM such a message, but it seems like what's going on is just a bunch of BS so I chose to just write it right here on the thread.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Joshua McCoy

I'm sorry to say, but that seo firm sounds like a bunch of BS to me.

Agreed. The last time I saw this much manure I was planting a new garden.

[Splinter]

The company is doing a major update on one of my websites so I will wait for that to complete before telling them I am stopping my SEO campaign with them. The results I am getting myself from basic knowledge (learnt here) and suppliers offering WSO's is far greater and at lesser cost.

[youtring]

1. Tracking of positions of targeted keywords in SERPs
2. Indexing stats
3. Backlinkwatch or Yahoo Site Explorer stats
4. Pagerank reports
5. Overall organic traffic and distribution of keywords that brought you that traffic
6. Goals for next month