For many agencies, the monthly SEO report is the most expensive document they produce. It takes a few hours per client: pulling Search Console numbers, screenshotting rankings, remembering what the team did, and then writing a summary a business owner will actually read. Multiply by 20 clients and the first week of every month is gone.
RankThat drafts those white-label SEO reports for you, in plain English, from the data it already has. You still read, edit and approve each one. Nothing goes to a client until you send it. This article explains what happens behind the scenes, what you can change, and how a 20-client agency gets through report week in an afternoon.
The monthly timeline
Reports are drafted from fresh data, so several things happen in the first days of the month:
| Day | What runs |
|---|---|
| 1st | A site audit for every project not audited in the last 20 days |
| 1st | AI search scans of Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT |
| 2nd | Organic snapshot and Google reviews captured |
| 3rd | Last month’s report drafted for every project with Search Console data or tracked keywords |
When a draft is ready, the project owner gets a notification that the report is ready to review. If a report already exists for that month, it is never overwritten, because it may contain your edits.
Sending is always a person’s decision. That rule isn’t a setting you could get wrong; reports are simply never emailed automatically.
Finding and reviewing a report
For one client, open the project and go to Analytics & Reports › Monthly Report. Month chips across the top show each month’s status with a dot: grey for draft, blue for approved, green for sent. The status bar shows when the report was generated and, once sent, the date and the addresses it went to.
The buttons along the top are Save changes, Refresh data (pull the latest numbers and rebuild the PDF without touching your text), PDF, Approve and Send to client. A live preview beside the editor shows unsaved changes as you type.
Report settings
Each client’s report can be set up differently, and you can save the settings as that client’s default for future months.
- Layout. Automatic picks for you by spotting a WooCommerce store. Service leads with leads, maps and reviews (plumbers, dentists, law firms). Store leads with revenue and the searches that bring buyers.
- Tone. Optimistic celebrates the wins. Balanced gives the ups and downs equal space.
- Compare with. Previous month, the same month last year, three months earlier, or no comparison.
- Hide declines. Leaves drops out of the narrative. Turn it off for clients who prefer every number.
- Keyword table. Only keywords that rank, or the full table.
- Onboarding. A section for new clients describing the setup work done.
- Sections. Switch any section on or off. Sections with nothing to show that month are marked “(no data this month)”.
What goes into the report
| Section | Where the data comes from |
|---|---|
| Executive summary | Written from all of the below, in the tone you chose |
| Leads from search | Form submissions and taps on phone, email and WhatsApp links counted by the Bridge plugin, or Google Analytics key events |
| Work completed | RankThat’s own records of what was done (see below) |
| Content publishing | Articles published that month |
| AI search performance | AI Visibility scans |
| Search Console overview | Clicks, impressions and position from Search Console |
| Website traffic | Google Analytics 4: sessions, users, key events, channels, devices |
| Keyword rankings | The Rank Tracker |
| Local SEO map rankings | Local Rank Grid scans |
| Reviews and reputation | Google reviews |
| Backlink profile and audit | Backlinks & Audit |
| Site audit | The latest Site Audit |
Store layouts add revenue overview, top earning pages, email and SMS marketing results (from FunnelKit, through the Bridge plugin) and search query performance. Revenue is credited to the page where the visit landed.
Fair comparisons
A month with 31 days will usually beat a month with 30, and February looks like a disaster every year. RankThat compares Search Console clicks and impressions per day, so a shorter month isn’t reported as a decline that didn’t happen. The year-on-year option matters for seasonal businesses: an HVAC company should be compared with last July, not last June.
Work completed, without the typing
The work completed section is collected from what actually happened in RankThat: articles published and refreshed, audit fixes applied (including those made through the Claude connector), audit issues resolved, backlink decisions and disavows, keywords added, and the monthly checks. Measured results from Opportunities appear as “Results of earlier work”. You can add your own lines too, either for this month only or every month (useful for “Monthly Google Business Profile post” if the team does that by hand).
Editing before you approve
You can change every word. The executive summary has an opening line and a list of “the month in moves”, each with a headline and a short explanation that you can reorder. Add section notes, or up to 10 of your own sections, placed after the summary or at the end. If you change the settings after the summary was written, Save and rewrite summary brings the words back in line with the numbers. Editing an approved report puts it back to draft, so nothing changes after approval without a second look.
What clients actually read
Most clients read the opening line, the first two or three moves and the leads number, then skip to anything with their competitor’s name in it. Put the most important change of the month first, even if it is bad news, and say what you are doing about it. Long tables are for the client who wants to check your work; they are rarely what keeps the account.
Sending
Send to client opens a short form: the recipient addresses (separate several with commas) and an optional personal note. The email includes the opening line and the top moves, with the PDF attached, and replies go to your agency’s email address. The addresses are remembered for next month. When the client opens the email, the open date is recorded.
Clients with a login can also read every approved report in the client portal. They never see drafts.
Your branding
Set your agency name, logo, website, email, phone, address, a call-to-action and a footer note under SEO Audits › Agency branding. On Professional and Enterprise plans, reports and PDFs carry your brand rather than RankThat’s, and the AI-written text never names the tools behind it. More on the idea in white-label reporting.
A worked example: report week at a 20-client agency
It is the 3rd. An agency with 20 clients opens the global Monthly Reports page. The tiles show 0 sent, 0 approved, 19 drafts to review and 1 missing (a new client whose Search Console was connected yesterday). They click Generate missing for that one.
The account manager works down the list. Most drafts need two minutes: read the summary, delete one move that isn’t interesting, add a note about a client meeting. Coastline Plumbing needs more: Google clicks were down 12% per day after a core update, and she has switched this client to the balanced tone, so the summary says so plainly. She adds a section note explaining what the team is changing on the service pages in response.
Brightside Dental’s report shows its map rankings improving in two suburbs and three Bridge fixes listed under work completed. Bean & Barrel’s store layout leads with revenue from organic search and the top earning pages.
By lunchtime she clicks Approve all. That only marks reports ready; nothing is emailed. After a final look at two reports, she clicks Send approved. Each report goes to its client’s usual recipients. Reports with no recipients set are skipped and listed so nobody is forgotten. Later in the week, the page shows which clients have opened theirs.
For agencies that also want a technical deliverable, every Site Audit produces its own branded PDF, and Reports & Exports in each project links to both. Most clients only need the monthly report; the audit PDF is useful for a new client’s kickoff or a site rebuild.
What the reports don’t do
- They are never sent automatically. A person always clicks send.
- They need data. Projects without Search Console history or tracked keywords don’t get a draft.
- No call tracking integration. Calls come from tap counts or Analytics events, or you type in numbers from your call-tracking service.
- No Google Business Profile views or calls yet; that needs Google API access that isn’t in place.
- Email sending must be set up for Send to work.
- Opens are recorded once, the first time.
If you’re designing your own report from scratch, the monthly SEO report template guide covers what clients actually read. For agencies weighing reporting tools, see the AgencyAnalytics comparison.
Tip: write the opening line yourself, even if you keep everything else. One sentence in your own words is what clients remember.