Showing Clients Results

I'm curious, for those of you providing regular ranking reports to your clients, which engines do you show them their rank on?

Obviously Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Beyond that, I've generated reports on engines that compile their own SERPs like Ask and Teoma, but clients typically aren't tuned in to other engines.

I generally only show Google. I tend to base my results off of increased traffic (and conversions) rather than ranking as it is more relavant to the overall sucess of the SEO program IMO. However, this typically with inhouse arrangements, so YMMV.

Me also currently gives them Google SERPs only,,.. but i would like to know which tool you are using to track them in Y and MSN... Since I failed to find any reliable one..

Web Position works fine. Although Yahoo does present some problems as it denies search quiries from the same IP after a handful of missions.

Also, in regard to MobyKnows' comment on basing results on traffic, I've found that my clients respond much better to seeing that their website ranks well in the SERPs.

I look at traffic, as it helps me see what's happening and make adjustments to the program. And, traffic usually comes with good rank.

Most clients, in my experience, don't care about numbers because they are busy running their business. They trust us to analyze what's happening and make sure the SEO program is working for them. When we show them that they're #1 on Google, they'll renew!

How do you report traffic to your clients?

http://www.prsearch.net/msnmass.php - reliable search of the MSN rankings for multiple KWs
http://www.prsearch.net/yahmass.php - Yahoo rankings search - single KW

It was our thought awhile back, that perhaps a members only site could be developed with the following areas of expertise. THat a member could login to their own area, run ranking reports for as many clients as they had, have those reports automatically posted in a Client Rankings area (logins too) and or emailed directly to their clients. We looked at that with some depth, and did a bus plan based on same. We presented same here in our own community at our VentureCap bus breakfast, and got not one bite....ie no one there even knew what a SE was....let alone the value of top rankings for keywords and what that could mean to a bottom line...sigh.

So from that background, I can tell you you HAVE to show G. Then depending on where you are, there are other important ones too...MSN of course and even Sympatico up here in Canada too.

My advice is to discuss it with the client up front - ie as a factor of the Scope of the SEO job, you must identify the engines first....and then work to those ends...

Jim

PS if anyone thinks that this SEO members idea is a good one, cool! we still do too!