How Do I Know If My SEO Agency Is Actually Doing Anything?
You have paid eight invoices, read eight reports, and you still could not say out loud what was done to your website last month. That is the report’s fault, not yours. You may have searched “how to know if my SEO agency is doing anything”. In about an hour, with accounts you already have, here are six checks you can run. No one needs the agency’s assistance.
This guide explains:
- The six checks, and what each one proves
- What should happen in a normal month
- What an agency does when it is underdelivering
- A twelve-point red-flag checklist
- How to get a second opinion without firing anyone
How do I know if my SEO agency is actually doing anything?
Run six checks on accounts you already own: ask for a dated change log, check indexing in Search Console, compare your pages against an archived version, review new referring domains, read your profile’s own performance data, and count the enquiries.
How to check SEO work is easier than you think since all the checks are performed with an account you own or a free public tool.
| Check | Where you look | Time | What it proves |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. The change log | Ask for a dated list of changes from the last 90 days, then spot-check three on the live pages | 15 min | Whether work described in the report exists on the site |
| 2. Indexing and crawl | Search Console, Pages report: indexed count, and any new errors by date | 10 min | Whether technical issues are being resolved or accumulating |
| 3. The pages themselves | Compare three service pages against an archived copy from before the engagement | 10 min | Whether page content and titles have actually been rewritten |
| 4. The link profile | Search Console, Links report: new referring domains, and whether you recognize them | 10 min | Whether links are being earned, bought in bulk, or not acquired at all |
| 5. The profile data | Google Business Profile performance: calls, direction requests, searches, month over month | 5 min | Whether local visibility is moving, per Google and not the agency |
| 6. The business outcome | Your own phone log, inbox and booking system over the same period | 10 min | Whether anything in checks 1 to 5 reached the business |
Check 1: The change log
Request a list of all changes from the past 90 days, including page addresses. Take out 3 cards at random. If the changes are not there, you have learned the most important thing early.
Check 2: Indexing and crawl
Open Search Console, click on Indexing, Pages, and view the graph of indexed pages and the table of reasons pages are not indexed. Our page on crawl and indexing work you can verify explains what a closed issue looks like, so you are not relying on a single line in a report that you cannot test.
Check 3: The pages themselves
Visit three service pages and check the headings and primary text against older versions of the pages in the free Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The test is whether the wording was rewritten for a reason, and our page on changes made to the pages themselves explains what good page work looks like, so you can tell a real rewrite from a few swapped words in a title.
Check 4: The link profile
Go to Search Console, Links, External links, and then Top linking sites. There is no date filter on the report, so export the latest links and save a copy of the report every month for comparison. Google’s spam policies define link spam as “creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings,” so a sudden pile of unfamiliar links is a finding, not a win.
Healthy link building takes time and is specific in nature, and a backlink profile that gets built overnight should be met with hard questions. Our page on how links are supposed to be earned shows what a steady pattern looks like, so you can judge each new link and ask the agency where it came from.
Check 5: The profile data
Log in to your Business Profile, go to Performance and select the months you paid for. According to Google’s help page on performance, it will provide information about calls, directions, bookings, website clicks, and the searches people used; search terms will be updated at the beginning of each month.
See if those numbers match what the agency says, since if there is a difference, that’s something to discuss on the next call. Our page on the profile’s own performance data explains what each number means, so you can read it without help from anyone who is selling you the monthly report.
Check 6: The business outcome
Compare the number of calls, form fills and bookings during the same time period. If checks 1-5 are all good and this is flat, the work is possibly directed at the wrong target.
These checks tell you what changed, not whether the right things changed, and that is what a second opinion is for. Some valuable work leaves little trace in a month, so a quiet month is not proof of nothing, and a busy report is not proof of progress.
What should be happening in a normal month?
There are a handful of measurable things in a normal month: pages changed, technical issues closed, content published, links earned and a report that correlates these with calls and forms, not just rankings.
Don’t judge anyone until you have set a yardstick before them and use a neutral yardstick, not ours. Google’s own page, Do you need an SEO?, outlines the typical work that should be done each month, including reviewing site content and structure, technical advice, content development and keyword research.
Is my SEO agency working is dependent on what should occur in a month. The $750 engagement is purchasing a smaller number of countable items than the $5,000 engagement, so it’s not a fair comparison. The bands are set by our SEO pricing guide.
Every month should trace back to a written plan that is specific enough for you to check it line by line. Our SEO page explains how search work is scoped, which means a named list of deliverables for each month and not a general promise to improve visibility in search.
Your own plan should also provide you with a list of what it promises in plain language, and an agency should be able to provide you with that list as well. Our pricing page shows what a plan is supposed to deliver for each tier, so you can hold your plan up against a clear example of the same thing, line by line.
What does an agency do when it is underdelivering?
The underdelivering agency changes the report, not the delivery, reduces the number of contacts to one account manager, continues to lower the number of deliverables while the invoice is unchanged, and fills the monthly call with news.
This is something we have seen as an agency. It can happen to any agency, even your current agency, and even us, and it’s typically not because of bad intentions, but rather because of something very common.
The reports change shape: They begin to be led by metrics that are continually increasing, such as impressions, as that template hasn’t been reviewed in a year.
One person takes every call: The account manager becomes the only contact, because a team stretched across too many accounts cannot attend every meeting.
The deliverable count drops: Fewer pages change while the invoice stays the same, because the client never asked for specifics.
The call fills with news: Algorithm updates take over the agenda, which feels informative and shows nothing about your site.
None of this is usually fraud, and that is exactly why it persists for months. Use the list below to score your own situation, because SEO agency red flags are easier to see on paper than on a call.
| Flag | Present? |
|---|---|
| The report shows rankings and traffic but never calls or forms | [ ] |
| You cannot log into Search Console or Analytics yourself | [ ] |
| The deliverable count has dropped but the invoice has not | [ ] |
| The monthly call is mostly industry news and algorithm updates | [ ] |
| Nobody technical has ever been on a call with you | [ ] |
| The same three recommendations have appeared in the last four reports | [ ] |
| New content is published but you were never asked to review it | [ ] |
| You cannot name a single change made in the last 60 days | [ ] |
| The agency holds your Google Business Profile ownership, not you | [ ] |
| Reporting arrived late, or not at all, more than twice | [ ] |
| Questions get answered by an account manager who checks and comes back | [ ] |
| Progress is described in metrics that cannot go down | [ ] |
Score one point for each flag. Three or more is a conversation, and six or more is a decision.
What if the work is real and the results are not?
Real work without any result points at scope, timing or the wrong target, so ask if the work selected was ever able to deliver the outcome that you were promised.
A site may have all the above checks and still receive nothing, and vice versa; a panicked owner may think that an SEO agency is not doing anything when it actually is.
The first is a technical debt that is so deep it can consume a year of content. The first is a technical debt that’s so deep that it can eat a year of content. The second is a keyword set that a business could never be the winner, such as a national phrase for a one-town business.
The third is a conversion problem downstream of search. More traffic won’t help if your website isn’t converting visitors into calls, and you could be holding the agency responsible for a year, and you may be incorrect.
What if I cannot tell either way?
One hour of the time of an independent specialist to read the last three reports and change log is the cheapest decision that can be made, and is less expensive than most retainers for one week.
We sell this, but you don’t need to purchase this from us. Someone without a stake should read the documents, and that help matters most for owners without a marketing team to ask, who have nobody in the building to judge whether a report makes sense or is just full of charts and long words.
Inquire from the reviewer if a work described exists, and if it was the right work.
What should a monthly report contain?
A report should open with calls and form submissions, then show what was delivered against what was planned, then rankings and traffic as supporting context rather than as the headline.
A report ordered by what the client cares about differs from one ordered by what is easy to export, and the order tells you who wrote it for whom. For the standard, ask for a program with named deliverables, where each line in the report matches a line in the plan, and a named person is responsible for it each month.
What do I ask on the next call?
Request a change log for the past 90 days, the number of items delivered vs. the plan, the owner of each account, and a face-to-face meeting with the technical person.
Read these out loud:
- Please send a dated change log for the last 90 days.
- How many deliverables did we plan, and how many shipped?
- Who owns each account, and who does the technical work?
- Can that person join the next call?
A reasonable agency will find none of these offensive, and the reaction is itself information. If you did not ask these before you signed, many owners do not. Our guide to the questions that should have been asked first also covers what a good answer sounds like, which answers should worry you, and what to do about them before you sign anything new.
How do I get a second opinion?
Commission a short independent audit scoped to one question, which is whether the work being paid for is happening and whether it is the right work, and keep the incumbent in place while it runs.
Should I fire my SEO agency is a fair question, but hold off until the audit is back. We don’t want to lose a sale by saying it, but don’t fire the agency first. A gap between suppliers loses momentum, and an audit run while the incumbent is still working gives a better document than an audit run on a dormant site. If the 6 checks leave you with a question, the next step is easy and doesn’t require a new supplier. Ask for an independent read on the work that answers your one question, with findings in priority order and a yes or no on each deliverable, so you know what to keep, fix or stop.
The honest limits are in full effect: only what is shown on the site and in your accounts will be seen during an audit.
Knowing whether your SEO agency is doing anything, in order
How to know if my SEO agency is doing anything comes down to these steps, in this order.
- Get the change log.
- Check indexing.
- Compare the pages.
- Check the links.
- Read the profile data.
- Count the enquiries.
- Score the twelve flags.
- Then decide.
Need another pair of eyes on your reports, not from someone who has an interest in your decision, before you make one?
Pink Socials in Cypress, Texas can view your last three reports and your change log, and will be able to tell you exactly what you did and whether it was good or bad.
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