Solo SEO Desk

Walkthrough

One client's monthly report, step by step

Part A sets up a monthly report for one client site in Semrush. Part B is the free follow-up email setup this site itself runs on, built in systeme.io.

Menu and button names checked against each vendor's help pages on 28 October 2026. Vendors change their interfaces; if a name differs, the linked help page is the reference.

How to read this page: the numbered steps tell you what the official documentation says to do. We do not show client data; screenshots, where present, are full and unaltered and show only our own site.

Part A: a monthly report for one client in Semrush

Before you start: free account or 7-day trial?

You can learn the whole flow on your own site with a free account. Semrush's pricing page describes the free plan as one demo project and 10 reports per day; its pricing FAQ adds that a free user can monitor one site and track 10 keywords. Its help pages list, for accounts without an SEO toolkit, a Site Audit allowance of 100 pages per month and one Base report in My Reports, sent to up to three recipients.

You need a paid plan or the 7-day trial to set this up for real clients: the "SEO" plan allows five websites in monitoring tools at the same time and 500 tracked keywords in total.

  1. Create a project for the client

    Click + Create Project on the Home page, or use the Project selector inside a tool. Name the project after the client and add the client's domain.

    Projects are not the limit; Website monitoring slots are. A project uses one slot as soon as you set up a monitoring tool in it, such as Site Audit or Position Tracking. Once a tool is set up, the project's domain cannot be changed, and freeing a slot means deleting the project's SEO data, which cannot be undone.

  2. Set up Site Audit

    In the setup wizard, General settings holds the scope, Limit per audit (pages per audit), Pages to crawl (the website, a sitemap, or a URL list) and Schedule. Choose Weekly on a fixed day so each monthly report has fresh data, then click Start audit. The other wizard steps are optional. Site Audit starts automatically in your first project; later projects need this manual setup.

    To change the schedule later, use the gear icon in the Site Audit dashboard.

  3. Set up Position Tracking

    Step 1: Targeting. Pick the search engine, the Device and the Location, which can go down to a city or ZIP code. Choose carefully: the original location and device cannot be changed after the campaign is created.

    Step 2: Keywords. Use Import from to bring in a .txt or .csv list, or keywords from Google Search Console or Google Analytics. Review the list, then click Start Tracking. To add keywords later: Settings then Tracked Keywords.

    The keyword limit is shared across all campaigns. With 500 keywords and five clients, that is 100 per client if you split evenly. Semrush's Position Tracking help page lists tracking several locations or devices in one campaign as not available on its entry SEO toolkit, so a second city, or mobile as well as desktop, means another campaign, another monitoring slot and more of the keyword allowance.

  4. Connect the client's Google data

    Two documented ways: Organic Traffic Insights, where you click Connect Google account and pick the client's Search Console and Analytics properties; or the Google Analytics 4 and Google Search Console integrations in My Reports, which Base reports include.

    Ask the client to give you access to their Google properties first. Do not use your own login on a client's account.

  5. Build the report from a template

    Open My Reports from the sidebar and choose Use templates. In the Template gallery, pick Monthly SEO Report, enter the domain and database, and Semrush fills the report. Edit it in the Report Builder by dragging widgets from the left panel. Site Audit and Position Tracking data are available as integrations, if you hold the toolkit they come from.

    Reorder the sections to match the outline in the guide: summary first, requests last. The template does not write the summary or the "work completed" section for you.

    Base or Pro report? Base ($10 per report per month) covers the Semrush, Google Analytics and Search Console data, PDF export and scheduling. Pro ($20) adds Branding and white-labeling, external integrations and sharing by link. The reports included with paid toolkits are Base reports: three with the first paid toolkit, per the My Reports help page.

  6. Schedule the monthly PDF

    Click Generate PDF report, add recipients and an optional message, turn on Schedule report, choose monthly and the day, then Save settings (or Generate and send to send one now as well). Paid users can add up to 30 recipients; free and trial users up to three, with no links in the message.

    Send the first one to yourself. Read it as the client would before it goes to them.

  7. If you used the trial: keep or cancel on purpose

    The trial lasts 7 days, can be used once per account, and converts to a paid monthly plan unless you cancel. To start it you enter a card (virtual cards are refused); Semrush places a $1 authorization to verify it, which is not a charge but can take some banks days or weeks to release. Data exports are disabled during the trial.

    To cancel, send the Cancellation Form from your logged-in account, then click the confirmation link Semrush emails you. The link is valid for 24 hours; without that click, the cancellation is not processed. Semrush's Refund Policy says trial cancellations take effect within 3 business days of the request, so send the form by day 3 or 4. Payments from a converted trial are not refundable: the 7-day money-back guarantee only covers initial purchases of 12 months or more made directly on semrush.com with a credit card. After cancelling, the account drops to free limits and, after a 30-day grace period, keeps only the oldest project's data.

Who should not bother

See Semrush plans and the free trial Official site · not a paid link

Part B: the free follow-up setup behind this site

This is how the five-email series on this site works, on systeme.io's free plan. The same setup works for a consultant who wants to follow up with prospects who download a checklist.

  1. Create a free account

    No credit card is required, according to systeme.io's pricing page. Its help pages call the free plan "Freemium"; plan changes live under Settings then My plan.

  2. Authenticate your sending domain

    Go to Settings, Emails, Domains, and follow the link to authenticate your domain. systeme.io gives you three CNAME records and one DMARC record to add at your domain provider; the domain needs a live website, your DNS zone can hold only one DMARC record, and a domain can be authenticated in only one systeme.io account. After adding the records, contact systeme.io support, as its help article instructs. Then add and confirm your sender address under Verified email addresses. Free mailbox domains such as Gmail cannot be used to send.

  3. Turn on the unsubscribe link and set the footer

    Under Settings, Emails, tick Display "Unsubscribe from campaign" link; the help page describes it as an option, not a default. In Footer text, add who you are and your postal address. US law requires a valid physical postal address in commercial emails.

    On the free plan, the "Sent with systeme.io" line stays at the end of every email; systeme.io describes it as your affiliate link. Because it earns you a commission, label it as a paid link in your footer text.

  4. Write the campaign

    Emails, Campaigns, Create. Add each email with its subject and sender, then activate each one from its menu (..., Activate), setting which email it follows and the delay. The free plan allows one campaign, which is enough for one sequence.

  5. Connect sign-ups to the campaign

    The free plan allows one automation rule, so pick one of these:

    • Form on a systeme.io page: Sites, Sales funnels, Create, type Build an Audience, which creates an opt-in page and a thank-you page. Double opt-in is a checkbox in the form button's settings. Then Automations, Rules, Create: trigger Funnel step form subscribed, action Subscribe to campaign, Save rule.
    • Form on your own site (what this site does): the form here stores your consent, and a small function creates the contact in systeme.io through its public API and adds a tag. A rule with the trigger Tag added and the action Subscribe to campaign starts the emails. systeme.io's help pages do not say whether a tag added through the API fires that trigger, so test it with your own address before you rely on it.

  6. Optional: a booking link for first calls

    Connect Google Calendar under Settings, Integrations. Then CRM, Calendar, Events, Create new event, Individual event. Add the Calendar element to a page to show it. The pricing page lists one event on the free plan.

Free plan limits to plan around

See systeme.io plans Official site · not a paid link

Sources

All checked on 28 October 2026.