How to tell if your SEO agency is doing the work

You can check whether an SEO agency is doing the work in ten minutes without asking them: search site:yourdomain.com and read the titles, open Search Console and look at the last three months, open your Google Business Profile and see when it was last edited, ask for the log of changes, search your customers’ questions and see who is in the box, and read the last report for numbers that fell. An agency doing the work passes all six.

The six checks

site:yourdomain.com in Google. Every page should have a title that names the service and the town. Duplicates, "Home," and missing descriptions mean nobody has touched the site.
Search Console, Performance, last 3 months versus the previous 3. Impressions and clicks should be moving. Flat for a quarter with an agency on retainer needs an explanation.
Google Business Profile. Open it as the owner; the edit history shows when services, hours, and photos were last updated.
The change log. Ask for the list of what was changed, by date. An agency doing the work has it; one that does not will send a summary instead.
The answer box. Search five questions your customers ask. If a competitor holds the box for all five, ask why.
The report. It should show your own Analytics and Search Console numbers, including the ones that went down, with a reason.

What a good report contains

This month against last month, from your own accounts. What changed on the site, listed. What moved and what did not. What is next. If the report is a dashboard of green arrows with no changes listed, it is a dashboard, not a report.

What to do with the answer

If the checks fail, ask for the change log and a thirty-day plan. If those do not come, the audit we run for every new client will show you exactly where the site stands, and you can take that anywhere.

Questions people ask

How long should SEO take to show results?

Titles and the profile move within weeks. Rankings for competitive terms take months. Nothing at all for a quarter is a problem.

Is a rankings report enough?

No. Rankings without clicks, calls, and changes listed tell you nothing about the work.

Should I be able to log in and see everything?

Yes. Analytics, Search Console, and the Business Profile are yours. An agency that will not give you owner access is a red flag.

Want this done for you?

This is the work we do for every client: search, answer engines, and AI assistants, on one plan with one monthly report. Tell us about your business and we will tell you what we would do first.

Let’s talk