SEO Consulting - Track & Report

I am looking for a simple way to analyze where the client's site and ranking is currently and how to effectively measure and track the results for the strategy I implement, so that I can deliver some sort of report to the client.

Let's not forget that there is only one thing you can "rank" for and that is keywords. So the first thing you have to do is identify the keywords the client wants to rank for or should be ranking for. Find out who the market leader is and run their site through the Google keyword tool to find out which keywords Google likes for them and use those keywords as a guide. Run your client's site through the tool and see how many of the same keywords Google finds them relevant for. Develop a list of keywords to target and a plan for creating engaging content around them.

Once you know which keywords you want to rank for, Market Samurai does all the rest. 

Plug those keywords into Market Samurai, add your client's URL to the competition module for each of those keywords and track your progress. The competition module will show you exactly where you need to be with backlinks, optimization, etc., etc. 

You're not ranking in isolation, you're ranking against the competition so they are your guide of where you need to be in terms of how many backlinks you need to have and mechanical stuff like that. As I told of of my clients... "The top site in your market has 20K backlinks. You have 200. They have 800 pages of content. You have 50. There is no magic here, you simply have to do better than they do at everything if you want to beat them." 

I always try to demystify this stuff as much as possible to keep their expectations realistic.

I like screenshots. I love to show people how they went from green to red in Market Samurai's competition module. "Green means you can be beat. Red means you're a force to be reckoned with."

As for keyword analysis, there are a couple of things to do. Load the keywords from the competition's site that have the highest number of searches and use them as "seeds" for keyword research to see if you can find any keywords of opportunity they (or you) have been missing. Also look to see which of the keywords they're doing well on represent the best opportunity for you to target first. In other words, if they're doing well for decent keywords that they aren't specifically targeting (you know that's true if those keywords are poorly optimized) then you have an opportunity to go after those keywords specifically and beat them by doing it all better.

I also look for Challenge style keywords of opportunity and I especially look for easy pickings long tails that you can rank for really fast. Always nice to be able to say that three weeks ago you didn't rank for these keywords at all and now you're number eight.

I hope this helps!