Can Keyword Ranking Data Help Agencies Retain SEO Clients?

Hard truth: You’ve got 30 days not to get fired as an SEO agency. Keyword ranking data might just be your best defense.

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You’ve probably been in one of those meetings.

The one where the client who signed 30 days ago looks very unimpressed because their rankings haven’t blown up yet.

And it’s not like you haven’t been working. You’ve spent the month buried in technical audits, fixing crawl errors, mapping redirect chains — all that hard but invisible work. You sent weekly updates, shared your strategy deck, and built them a beautiful dashboard.

But thirty minutes into your monthly check-in, they shift in their chair. The energy changes.

So, what exactly have we gotten for our investment so far?

Your stomach drops. You start talking faster, explaining site architecture improvements, keyword research depth, and content strategy. But you can see it in their eyes. They’re wondering if they made a mistake.

This doesn’t have to happen. Not if you use keyword ranking data to show early SEO wins before doubt creeps in.

Instead of scrambling to justify your work, you walk into that monthly check-in with screenshots of rankings that moved. Page 2 keywords now on page 1. New keywords breaking into the top 100. Real progress they can see and share.

Here’s exactly how to use keyword data in the first 30 days to win your client’s trust and make sure you don’t get fired.

Think of ranking drops like internal bleeding. When you see the symptoms (traffic loss), the damage is already severe.

Keyword data is your diagnostic tool that catches the bleeding early. It’s also your chance to act fast before traffic tanks and your client starts blaming you for what broke before you even came on the account.

Pull a 6-month historical ranking report and flag any page that dropped 3+ positions for high-value keywords. For each drop, check:

• Publication date: Content older than 18 months often needs refreshing
• Competitor analysis: Has someone published deeper, more current content?
• Technical health: Run the URL through Screaming Frog for crawl errors
• Internal links: Compare current internal links vs 6 months ago
• Intent mismatch: Pages where the search intent has shifted and your content no longer matches.

Use this as a framework for interpreting your data:

• Gradual 6-month decline = content freshness issue
• Sudden cliff drop = technical problem or Google update
• Steady competitor leapfrogging = content depth/quality issue

I found three pages that were ranking in the top 5 but have dropped to page 2. Here’s what happened to each one and my plan to recover them. Page recoveries often happen faster than new rankings because Google already knows these pages can rank well.

Fixing ranking drops proves you’re not just tracking numbers — you’re protecting their existing search real estate. Clients who see that you can diagnose and recover lost rankings trust you with bigger strategic initiatives.

Pull up a list of keywords where the client already ranks on page one but not in the top three. Focus on those with business intent: money keywords and transactional and commercial intent search terms. Here’s my exact keyword filtering process:

• Export all keywords ranking positions 4–10 on Page 1
• Filter for commercial intent (include “best,” “top,” “vs,” “pricing,” “services,” “near me”)
• Sort by monthly search volume, highest first
• Pick your top 5 targets.

Then:

• Optimize title tags with more specific targeting (“CRM Software for Sales Teams” instead of “CRM Software”)
• Add content elements competitors have but you don’t (FAQs, comparison charts)
• Strengthen internal links to the page

I found five keywords where you were already on page 1 but not getting the clicks you should. Here’s [Keyword] — it went from position 8 to 3 in two weeks. That’s an extra 200 potential monthly visitors actively looking for [their service].

Always connect the ranking movement to business impact. Position 3 vs. Position 8 means nothing to them. “200 more potential customers” means everything.

These wins create psychological momentum. When clients see you can move rankings in weeks, not months, they stop questioning your other recommendations. You’ve proven you understand their space and can create results. This pays dividends when you need later approval for bigger technical projects or content investments.

If your client’s traffic looks decent but conversions are nonexistent, go straight to intent data.

Export their top 20 ranking keywords (positions 1–10). Next, tag each keyword by intent:

• Informational: “how to,” “what is,” “guide to,” “tutorial”
• Commercial: “best,” “top,” “vs,” “comparison,” “review”
• Transactional: “pricing,” “cost,” “hire,” “buy,” “near me”

Calculate what percentage of their traffic comes from each category. Now you can explain exactly why their numbers look wonky.

• If 80% of their rankings are informational: Your traffic looks good because you’re ranking for research terms, but these visitors aren’t ready to buy yet. We need to target more commercial keywords where people are actively comparing solutions.
• If commercial keywords are stuck on page 2: Prospects can’t find you. Your commercial keywords are ranking on page 2, which gets almost no clicks. Moving just three of these to page 1 could double your qualified traffic.
• If they have no transactional keywords: You’re missing the bottom of the funnel entirely. When someone searches ‘[your service] near me’ or ‘[your service] pricing,’ you don’t show up. That’s where the conversions happen.

This diagnosis turns a frustrated client into a strategic partner. Instead of “why aren’t we getting leads?” they understand exactly which types of keywords drive conversions and why their current mix isn’t working. It positions you as the strategist who can fix their funnel, not just improve their rankings.

This one blindsides clients. Traffic’s down, rankings look stable, and everyone’s confused. Then you check their keywords, and yep — AI Overviews are answering the query before anyone even sees their result.

AI Overviews now appear for nearly half of all search queries, so it’s something to watch out for once you start working on a new account.

Use an AI visibility tracker to see which of their top keywords trigger AI Overviews. You’ll likely need to pull from multiple tools unless you use something like Keyword.com that tracks traditional and AI rankings in one place. Then, cross-reference with your ranking history data to see if traffic dips happened right around the time AI started surfacing responses for those search terms.

This gives you concrete data when clients panic about traffic drops. You can say:

Your rankings didn’t change, but three of your biggest keywords now get answered directly in AI Overviews. Here’s the data showing exactly when that started affecting your traffic.

It also opens the door to bigger conversations about AI search strategy, such as how to get cited in AI responses, optimize for ChatGPT and Perplexity, and prepare for the shift in search behavior.

When clients see stable rankings but dropping traffic, they panic. They start questioning everything, including your strategy, results, and whether SEO still works. Being able to explain exactly what’s happening with concrete data transforms that panic into confidence and makes you a more trusted partner.

Now and then, you find gold in the weirdest places — like a blog post from 2019 ranking on page 2 for a high-intent keyword the client’s never targeted. That’s a quick win gift-wrapped by Google.

I love finding high-value keywords with real potential that already rank without trying., Imagine what happens when you build content that actually targets them.

Here’s my exact process for discovering accidental rankings:

• Export all keywords ranking positions 11–30 (page 2–3)
• Cross-reference with their site map to see which pages are ranking.

Look for keywords where:

• The ranking page isn’t optimized for that term.
• The keyword appears only in passing (not in title, H1, or main content)
• There’s commercial intent but no dedicated conversion page.

For example:

• A blog post about “project management tips” that ranks #15 for “project management software.”
• An “About Us” page ranking #18 for “marketing agency Chicago”
• A case study ranking #22 for “email marketing ROI”

You’re already ranking on page 2 for ‘project management software’ — a keyword with 2,000 monthly searches. But the page ranking isn’t even about software. If we create a dedicated page targeting this term, we should rank on page 1 in a few weeks.

These accidental rankings are goldmines for quick wins. You can show clients immediate SEO ROI by optimizing for keywords they’re already close to ranking well for. Create a proper page for these keywords and you’ll often see them jump to page 1 within weeks. Easy wins that make you look brilliant.

Look, you’ve got client meetings coming up. Maybe it’s next week, maybe it’s in three weeks. But that meeting is happening whether you’re ready or not.

You can show up with the same old ranking reports and watch their eyes glaze over. Or you can spend the next two weeks finding pages that are bleeding rankings, grabbing some quick wins, and figuring out why their traffic doesn’t match their expectations.

The keyword data is sitting in your dashboard right now. The only question is whether you will use it to tell a story worth hearing.

Don’t let another month go by wondering if your client is happy. Go make them happy.