Is it necessary to hand out SEO reports to clients?

[adamlobo1]

Hey friends,

When working on the necessary research for an SEO, how much information is it valid to be given to the client? Should I be giving all the data, statistics, numbers and keywords reported to the clients? Or am I to give them only certain bits and pieces of information about the process? How much information can be classified as too much information? I am not looking to cheat my clients, but at the same time do not want them to know about my techniques. I would really appreciate if you guys could tell me something more about these data. Please help me out here. I am confused.

Thanks

[healthstatus]

Give them the information you told them you would give them in your contract. If you don't spell it out in your contract or if you don't have a contract, it isn't good.

[lukemeister]

I've found that it's best to give clients what they want to see - in most cases they simply want to see their progress in relation to how they are positioned in the search results for targeted keywords

For a monthly report cycle, for example:

I like to create a PDF that outlines what position they were at for their target keywords one month ago and where they are at now, and then do that each month. Some rank tracking software makes it real easy to generate this

I also like to mention what techniques were used over the past month (submitting articles to blogs, commenting, bookmarking, etc.). I usually don't go into too much detail, but if possible I also report the number of each type of link garnered

and that's about it - they mostly just want to see how their ranks are improving

[theseoguys]

I think the client wants to know 2 things.

1.) Did you do the work you said you would?
2.) Is that work giving me the results I wanted?

I have heard my share of horror stories of so called "SEO companies" over promising, under delivering, and not even being accountable such as returning an email or answering a phone call, after they collected the clients money. It gives the industry a bad name.

[Promet_MKTG]

i always do. i use ibp and there are setting as to what you show them so that you dont give them all the goods but also keep them informed of the improvements you make