Reporting terms in an SEO agreement: what to promise in writing

The reporting terms of an agreement for an SEO company fit in one clause with four promises: what you'll send, how often, which data it's built on, and who may see the client's data. Write each promise in plain words a client can check. Then have a lawyer read the clause before a client signs it.

Which analytics reporting terms belong in an SEO company's agreement?

Four terms belong in the reporting clause: what's sent, how often, which data it's built on, and who may see that data. Write each one so the client can hold it up against the report that lands in the inbox.

What's sent

Name what the report holds. A client SEO report can hold five things:

• Rankings: where the client's pages sit for the searches you track.
• Visits from search: how many people came in through a search engine.
• Leads or sales from search: what those visits turned into.
• The work done that month: the tasks you finished.
• What comes next: the plan for the month ahead.

Pick the ones you'll send every time, and list them in the clause by name. Leave off anything you can't send each month.

The reporting clause is one part of a longer document. For what each part of the contract says, see the parts of an SEO contract.

Which data it's built on

Name the source of each number, so a word like "position" means the same thing to you and to the client. Take Google Search Console as an example: its performance reports show four numbers.

• Impressions. Google's help page gives the meaning as "How often someone saw a link to your site on Google".
• Clicks. This one counts how often a person clicked a link on Google that led to your site.
• Average position. It's a relative ranking of where your link sits on Google, where 1 is the top spot.
• Click-through rate. That's clicks divided by impressions.

Google also says the position shown is the topmost spot a link to your site held, averaged across all the searches where your site appeared.

So a clause that promises "average position, as Search Console shows it" promises that one number, worked out the way Google's help page says. If a number in your report comes out of another tool, name that tool in the clause too.

Three more things to write down about the data:

1. Which accounts the numbers come out of, and whose accounts they are.
2. What you'll do when a source changes the way it counts.
3. What the client gets when a number can't be pulled that month.

If your clause started out in someone else's document, check that the sources it names are the ones you use. For what to change in a borrowed template, see SEO contract templates.

Who may see the client's data

Say who on your side may sign in to the client's accounts and read the reports: staff, a contractor, a partner firm. Then read what California's privacy law says about data and helpers. For the law's own words, see Which California rules apply when a helper works under my brand?.

That law calls a person a "service provider" when the person handles personal information for a business and a written contract covers it. The law says the contract bars that person from selling or sharing the information. That's the first item on a longer list in the law, and it's the only one we name.

On helpers, the law says two things. If a service provider gets another person to help it handle the data, it must tell the business. And the helper must be under a written contract that carries the same limits. We show these words for every choice that puts someone behind your brand, and our own team is one of those choices.

The law names the businesses it covers. A covered business does business in California, and it meets one or more of three tests.

The first test is yearly revenue above a set amount. The law's base figure is $25,000,000, and it's adjusted over time. By the page of California's privacy agency, the adjusted test is $26.625 million or more, effective January 1, 2025.

The second test is buying, selling or sharing the personal information of at least 100,000 consumers or households in a year. The third is getting 50 percent or more of yearly revenue from selling or sharing personal information.

Under the law, information counts as personal information when it "could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer or household". The law's list names search history and a person's use of a website. It also names an email address and an Internet Protocol address.

The law says the term leaves out deidentified data and aggregate consumer information. Aggregate data is about a group. Single people's identities are removed, and it can't be linked to a consumer or household.

Whether a report or a client list falls inside the term is a question for a lawyer. So is whether your agency is a "service provider" under the law, and whether a helper signed in to a client's tracking account handles personal information. Ask the same lawyer whether the law's words on helpers apply to a report tool you use.

Questions the clause can answer, with a lawyer's help:

• Who on your side may sign in to the client's accounts?
• Which helpers and tools will see the data, and does the client get their names?
• What may the data be used for, other than the report?
• What happens to logins and saved reports on the day the agreement ends?

What should the agreement say about monthly SEO reporting?

For a monthly report, put five things in the agreement: the day it's sent, the dates it covers, who gets it, how it arrives, and what happens when it's late. Write each one as a plain promise.

1. The day. Pick one day of the month and write it down.
2. The dates. Say which dates each report covers, such as the calendar month before.
3. The people. Name who gets the report on the client's side, and who sends it on yours.
4. The form. Say how it arrives: an email, a file, or a login to a dashboard.
5. The late case. Say what you'll do when a report runs late or a data source is down.

If a call goes with the report, give it a line too: who's on it, and how often it happens.

Keep the clause about the report itself. What the numbers will be is a separate matter, and the results part of your contract is the place for it.

If a helper builds the report, count back from the day you promised the client. The day the helper hands the report to you goes in your agreement with that helper, with room for you to read it first.

The clause says when a report is due. Which kinds of report a client gets, and at which points in the work, is a wider question. For which reports to send, and when, see SEO reports for clients.

This isn't legal or tax advice.