What to put in a monthly local SEO report for clients

A monthly local SEO report for a client should fit on one page and answer three questions in order: did the business get more enquiries from Google, is it easier to find in the places people search, and what did you do about it. In practice that means six sections: headline outcomes (calls, direction requests and website clicks from the Business Profile), map visibility across the area you serve, how often AI answers mention the business, reviews, the work done, and next month's plan. Everything else is either supporting detail or noise, and the hardest part of reporting is leaving the noise out.

Who the report is really for

Most monthly reports are written for the agency rather than the client. They prove effort: forty screenshots, every metric the tools produce, a ranking table with two hundred rows. The client opens it, scrolls, cannot find the answer to "is this working?", and closes it. Three months later they cancel, and they genuinely believe nothing happened.

A business owner reading a local SEO report wants to know whether the phone rang more, whether people can find them in the towns they serve, and whether you are on top of it. The report's job is to answer those questions in under two minutes, in their language, with enough evidence that they trust the answer. If someone at the client wants the detail, it can live in an appendix or a live dashboard. The page they read should not need it.

A good monthly report is short because someone did the hard work of deciding what matters, not because there was little to say.

The six sections, in order

This structure works for a single-location business and scales to a branch network with one extra table. The order matters: outcomes first, because that is what the client is paying for, then the measurements that explain the outcomes, then your work and the plan.

1. 1

   Headline outcomes from the Business Profile

   Calls, direction requests and website clicks for the month, each against the month before and, once you have a year of data, the same month last year. These are the actions people take on the profile itself, and they are defined consistently in Google's own reporting.¹² For a service-area business with no public address, drop directions: nobody can ask for directions to a business that hides its address.
2. 2

   Map visibility across the area

   For each of the client's main keywords, show how much of their area they appear in the top three map results for, now against last month's scan of the same area. A geo-grid makes this visible: a client who sees their coverage spread from the town centre out towards the next town understands progress instantly, in a way a single position never conveys.
3. 3

   AI answer visibility

   How often ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI answers mention or recommend the business across the same set of questions each month, which questions they were missed on, and which businesses were named instead. Keep the question set fixed so the month-to-month comparison means something.
4. 4

   Reviews

   New reviews this month against last, the average rating of the new ones, how many low ratings arrived, and how many reviews got a reply. Name a theme if one keeps coming up, good or bad. Clients care about reviews more than almost anything else in local search, because they read them.
5. 5

   Work done

   A short list of what you actually did: posts published, reviews replied to, profile fixes, photos added, citations corrected, pages improved. Group it, do not itemise every reply. This is where the client sees that the fee bought labour, and where you connect work to the numbers above.
6. 6

   Next month's plan

   Three to five priorities for the coming month, each tied to something in the report. "Coverage dropped on the east side for 'emergency plumber', so we are adding a service page and posts for those postcodes." A plan that follows from the evidence is what makes the next report worth opening.

Open the page with a short written summary above all six: two or three sentences in plain English that tell the client the headline before they look at a single number. Many clients read only that paragraph, so write it as if it is the whole report.

Where Search Console and Google Analytics fit

If the client has connected Search Console, a line on clicks and impressions from Google Search, with searches for the business's own name kept apart from everything else, adds useful context. If they have Google Analytics with enquiries set up as key events, website enquiries are the strongest outcome of all. Use them when you have them. Do not hold the report back when you do not: the Business Profile actions, map visibility, AI answers and reviews already tell a complete story, and an empty report waiting on an analytics connection is worse than a good report without one. Search Console's newest days can still be preliminary, so report complete months rather than the last few days.³

What to leave out

Every number on the page competes for attention. A metric earns its place only if the client would act differently, or feel differently about the work, depending on its value. Most of what tools produce fails that test.

The note about views is worth taking seriously. Google counts a person once a day however many times they look at the profile, and repeat impressions by one user in a day count once.¹² That makes views a measure of reach, which is shaped heavily by how many people are searching that month. Actions divided by views (how many people who saw the profile then called, asked for directions or clicked through) is more useful, because it does not simply rise when demand rises.

Averages that hide change

The most common reporting mistake is a single blended number that moves very little while everything underneath it moves a lot. An average map position across ten keywords can sit still while three keywords gain the whole town and two lose it. The client sees a flat line, concludes nothing is happening, and you have hidden your own best work. Report per keyword, say how many improved and how many declined, and only then summarise. When you compare, compare like with like: this month's scan of one area against last month's scan of the same area, never against a scan centred somewhere else.

How to handle a month that went down

Every client has bad months. Seasonality, a competitor opening nearby, a Google update, a holiday, a profile suspension. How you report them decides whether the client trusts your good months.

• Say it in the first sentence of the summary. A client who discovers a drop on page three assumes you hoped they would not notice.
• Separate demand from performance. If views fell but the share of viewers who called held steady, fewer people searched; the profile did not get worse.
• Check the same month last year before blaming anything. A seasonal business that dips every August is not in trouble in August.
• Look at the map scans per keyword. A drop concentrated on one keyword or one side of town points to a specific cause; a drop everywhere points to the profile or a wider change.
• Name what you know and what you do not. Do not invent a cause to fill the gap.
• Finish with the response: what you are changing next month because of it, and what you will look at in the next report to see whether it worked.

Avoid claiming causation in either direction. "We published four posts and calls rose 12 per cent" invites the reply "so when calls fall, it is your fault". A safer and more honest framing puts three things side by side: what you did, what happened, and what the wider market did. The client draws the connection; you supply the evidence.

Keeping it to one page

One page is a discipline rather than a rule, but it is a useful one. It forces you to decide what matters this month instead of including everything in case it matters.

For a client with several branches, add one table with a row per branch, ordered weakest first, so the branch that needs attention is at the top rather than buried in a twelve-page pack.

How often to report

Monthly is the right default for most local clients. Weekly reports are too noisy: profile actions in a single week can swing on a handful of calls, and you end up explaining randomness. Quarterly is too slow for a client who pays monthly and wants to see the work. A rhythm that suits most agencies looks like this.

How SearchOps handles monthly client reports

Everything above can be done by hand with exports and a document template. It just takes most of a day per client, and the numbers drift as people copy them. SearchOps builds the report from the data it already tracks, so the structure in this post is a starting template rather than a monthly chore.

• A Reports Library with ready-made templates. The Monthly Client Report template follows the shape above: a summary, what we did, Google Business Profile, Google Search, leads from the website, map visibility, AI answers and reviews. Other templates cover leads, a branch league table, town by town, service by service, Search Console rankings, results since we started, and AI visibility.
• It adapts to what the client has connected. A template leaves out any section the location has no data for, so a client without Google Analytics still gets a full report from their profile, scans, AI checks and reviews.
• Map visibility compares like with like. The map block compares each keyword's latest geo-grid scan with the previous one in the same area, and counts how many keywords improved and declined, rather than blending them into one average.
• AI answers as share of checks. The AI answers block shows how often ChatGPT and Gemini named the business across its checks, the questions it was missed on, and who was named instead.
• Work done comes from the work. Completed tasks, published posts and audits for the period are pulled in automatically, so the "what we did" section matches what actually happened.
• A drafted summary you edit. The agent can draft the opening paragraph from the report's own figures. It lands as ordinary text you edit before anything is sent.
• Print, PDF and schedules. Save any report as a PDF, with your own branding on Agency and Enterprise plans, or schedule it to email itself daily, weekly or monthly to the people who need it.

Reports are included on every paid plan and building, printing or scheduling one does not use any of your allowances. See how it fits together on the Reports page, or compare plans on the pricing page.

Frequently asked questions

What metrics should a monthly local SEO report include?

Calls, direction requests and website clicks from the Google Business Profile; map visibility per keyword across the area served; how often AI answers mention the business; new reviews and replies; the work done; and next month's plan. Add Search Console clicks and website enquiries from Google Analytics when the client has them connected.

Should I include keyword rankings?

Include map visibility per keyword, measured across the area with a geo-grid, rather than a single position from one spot. Local results change street by street, so a single position describes where the check happened to run, not where customers are. Keep it to the client's main keywords.

How long should a client report be?

One page for the part the client reads, with detail behind links or in an appendix. If the summary and outcomes do not fit on the first screen, there is too much on it.

What if the client has not connected Google Analytics?

Send the report anyway. Business Profile actions, map visibility, AI answer visibility and reviews make a complete monthly picture on their own. Mention in one line that connecting Analytics would add website enquiries, and leave it there.

Should the report show results in pounds?

Only if the client has given you a value per enquiry they trust. A revenue figure built on your guess at their average job value invites argument. Counts of calls, directions and clicks against a stated period are harder to dispute.

How do I show results for a new client with no history?

The Business Profile keeps historic performance, so outcomes can be compared with the months before you started. Map scans and AI checks begin when you start measuring, so label the first month as the starting point and compare from the second month on.

The short version

Write the report the client would want to read: outcomes first, then the visibility that explains them, then your work and the plan. Report changes per keyword and per area rather than averages, compare whole settled months, and say plainly when something went down and what you are doing about it. Keep it to a page. If building that page every month is what is eating your time, start from the Monthly Client Report template and spend the hour on the summary instead.