e SEO tools for clients in Looker Studio //

You’re bound meet DIY marketers with the large number of clients you have. These marketers would rather have you teach them how self-sufficient they are than relying on you for all their questions.

These clients can be a blessing, but they can also be dangerous. It is difficult to find the right balance between giving clients the data they need and making them feel like they don’t need you.

This is where Google’s Search Studio tools are useful.

Looker Studio is primarily used for general reporting. Looker Studio’s real appeal is its versatility.

You can create tools for your clients to help them do the research necessary to achieve SEO, while still offering that essential maintenance and guidance that comes from experience.

This article demonstrates how to create free dashboard templates that you can share with your clients.

How to modify your branding

Before we get into the details, it is a good idea to change the branding and logo on your dashboard. This is a simple process.

Click on your logo to open a menu. Select “Extract theme” at the bottom of the menu. You will be presented with three color schemes. Choose the one that best represents your brand.

This will change most colors automatically and take you to the end of your Looker Studio design. You may need to update some charts and texts.

1. Auditing technical SEO

It can be hard to track technical SEO efforts. It’s possible to track it in a spreadsheet but this is not client-friendly.

Since years, SEOs have tried to create dashboard trackers that can show changes in site health over time.

Our friends at Screaming Frog finally solved the problem of the perfect technical SEO dashboard. The best thing? It’s free! It can be viewed here.

How to copy the dashboard

Copy the dashboard

1. Click the three dots at the top of the screen
2. Make a copy
3. Choose your data source (don’t worry, you have the option to update later).

How to set-up the technical SEO tracker tool

Screaming Frog published a guide to setting up the Looker Studio tool. They will guide you through the following:

• Scheduled crawls
• Configuring the export from a Google Sheet
• Connecting the Google Sheet to Looker Studio dashboard

The tutorial is available here.

2. Keyword research

There are many ways to present keyword research. The most common form of keyword research presentation is the spreadsheet. While some people create keyword maps for each topic or page, others have a shorter list.

Looker Studio is a powerful tool that can analyze larger sites with thousands to millions of keywords.

Google Sheets is not recommended for millions of keywords. BigQuery is a better way to manage your keywords.

Here’s the Link to the Dashboard.

Step 1: Setting up your source information

First, import your keyword research into Google Sheets. You will need to add the following dimensions and metrics to your Google Sheet in order for you can use the template I made.

• Keyword
• Position
• Previous position
• Search Volume
• Keyword Difficulty
• CPC
• URL
• Keyword Intents

This is the original data source that you can use for the dashboard. All data comes from Semrush.

Step 2: Copy the dashboard

You’ll need to copy the dashboard as we saw in the previous dashboard. Then connect your data source (either BigQuery or Google Sheets) with it.

This tool from Looker Studio has important features

The tool offers many unique features that can help you drive your on-page SEO strategy. These features can be tailored to show different types of data or categories depending on your strategy.

Boolean Buttons

This tool’s three buttons are based upon custom boolean formulas. They work with true/false statements. Let’s take one look at each.

This function will only display long-tail questions that begin with the question word in our formula. This formula uses regex with two very important symbols.

• The circumflex () is a regex function which basically means “if the keyword begins with this.”
• ) symbol is another regex function that means “or.”

This formula can be used to create many different types of checkboxes. ) to help display keywords in those categories for the SEO and PPC checkboxes.

Custom search box

This tool has a powerful, yet simple feature called the custom search box. It can help you quickly narrow down your search to find keyword opportunities. Additionally, it can use regex to personalize your search.

Intent dropdown

You can filter the keywords by intent using the keyword intent dropdown. It’s really that simple.

This filter can be swapped easily by any dimension within Looker Studio. This filter can also be used to swap out other keyword categories.

Funnel

This funnel allows you to visualize the search funnel according to intent. The funnel and metrics above will automatically adjust to the intents when you apply other filters.

3. Tracking tool for link building

SEOs avoid link building because it is one of their most difficult topics. Link building is difficult to achieve and can be very challenging to manage.

Transparency is the best way to build trust with clients, stakeholders and other parties. Instead of hiding the link building data, give the keys to the stakeholders and let them discover the data.

This is one the simplest Looker Studio tools that we can create. To illustrate your point, you can combine any number of dimensions or metrics.

This is a link that will take you to the free template.

The Google Sheet supporting my use is a simple SEMrush backlinks analysis report. You can also feed the report with your own link-building tracker. Make sure to include the acquisition date in the date range.

The Google Sheet that feeds the tool can be viewed here.

Conclusion

Looker Studio is a powerful reporting tool that can be set up quickly and still has some very robust features. It’s free, making it an attractive platform.

This begs the question: Why go to all that trouble for clients or other stakeholders?

These tools can improve trust by creating a greater sense of transparency. This creates a stronger partnership between you, your stakeholders.

The most difficult part of SEO is not the work but communicating value. You should think of creative ways to show value to clients from now on. Even if you’re just using Looker Studio.

The post 3 SEO Tools to Build for Your Clients in Looker Studio was first published on Search Engine Land.