Agency KPIs: what to report to each client, and what to run your agency on
The KPIs an agency should report per client, the ones it should run its own business on, and how to keep both on one page without building a dashboard by hand.
Leon Missoul2 min read · Published 3 Nov 2026
In short
- Agency KPIs come in two sets: what you report to each client, and what you run your own agency on. Mixing them is why client reports get long.
- Report four things per client: leads, clicks from Google, whether AI answers name them, and the work with what it changed.
- Run your agency on four others: how long clients stay, revenue per client, hours against the retainer, and how many clients you’d be worried to lose today.
The KPIs to report to each client
A client pays for business results, and everything else in a report is there to explain them. Four numbers cover most marketing agency reports for website work:
| KPI | Why a client cares | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Leads, by source and page | It’s what they pay for | Your own tracking of forms, bookings and calls |
| Clicks from Google | Real visits from people searching, not just being shown | Search Console |
| AI answers that name them | Their buyers now ask ChatGPT and Google’s AI | Asking those assistants their buyers’ questions, repeatedly |
| The work, and what it changed | It’s why they pay you and not a tool | Each task’s numbers before it went live and now |
Every other number in a client report should explain one of these. Position explains clicks. Page speed might explain leads. If a number explains nothing, it can go.
The KPIs to stop reporting
- Domain scores. They’re a vendor’s estimate, a client can’t act on them, and they move for reasons nobody can explain on a call.
- Sessions from every channel, unfiltered. Bots and internal visits inflate them. Report people.
- Average position across the whole site. New searches lower it while the site is growing. Show the searches that matter.
- Tasks completed. A count of work done says nothing about whether it worked.
The KPIs to run your own agency on
These never go in a client report. They tell you whether the business is healthy, and most agencies only look at them when something has gone wrong.
| KPI | What it tells you | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Client lifetime | Whether clients stay long enough to pay back the work of winning them | Track it per service: a retainer client and a project client aren’t the same |
| Revenue per client | Whether you’re growing accounts or only adding them | Look at the trend, not the average |
| Hours against the retainer | Whether a client is profitable | A client always over their hours is a pricing problem, not a delivery one |
| Clients at risk | Who you could lose this quarter | Results flat, questions unanswered, or a call moved twice |
Client lifetime matters most, and it’s where agencies are weakest. In SparkToro’s 2025 survey of digital agencies, 25% keep clients less than a year and only 31% keep them longer than three.
How to keep client KPIs on one page
Use the same four numbers for every client, in the same order, so a client can compare this month with last and your team can read any account in a minute. A real monthly SEO report shows what that looks like, with the bad news left in.
If building that by hand is what stops you, Orbit measures it per site without exports: a client SEO dashboard your clients can log in to under your logo, a monthly report written from the same numbers, and a hub that shows your team every client on one screen. For the rest of the month, see how Orbit runs every client’s month.
Written by
Leon Missoul, Founder
I started the web agency Luniq in 2025 and built Orbit from the software we used to keep our clients’ sites growing after launch. I write about search, AI answers and how to prove what website work earns.
