By Penny Beaty | Independent SEO & AI Visibility Consultant
To tell whether your SEO company is working, compare the work it agreed to do with the changes it actually made, then examine whether those changes are helping the right people find and contact your business. Rankings and traffic are useful evidence. They need context before they can tell you whether the investment is paying off.
The invoice arrives every month. So does a report with graphs, keyword positions, and a list of activities. But you still have a reasonable question: what am I getting for this?
You should be able to ask that question without becoming an SEO specialist yourself. Before you renew a contract, or decide to leave, here is how I recommend reviewing the evidence fairly.
What should your SEO company be able to show you?
Start with the agreement. A consultant hired to provide recommendations has different responsibilities from an agency hired to implement them. Check what you purchased, who was responsible for each task, and whether anything was waiting on your approval or your developer.
Then ask for specific examples of completed work. “On-page optimization” is a category. The addresses of the pages changed, the dates, and an explanation of the changes give you something you can evaluate.
| What the report says | Evidence to request |
|---|---|
| We optimized your pages. | The page URLs, what changed, and which customer searches each page is intended to serve. |
| We fixed technical issues. | The specific issue, affected pages, completion date, and how the fix was checked. |
| We published content. | Links to the published pieces and the business purpose of each one. |
| Your visibility improved. | The relevant searches and pages, comparison dates, and changes in clicks and positions. |
| SEO generated leads. | The tracking method, actual inquiries, and how spam or duplicate submissions were handled. |
| Your AI visibility improved. | The prompts, platforms, test dates, cited sources, and repeated results—not just a selected screenshot. |
An audit report can be a legitimate deliverable. It does not prove that the recommended repairs have been implemented. Keep those two stages separate when reviewing progress.
You do not need a minute-by-minute account of someone’s day. You need enough detail to understand what your business received and what remains unfinished.
Are you becoming visible for searches that could bring customers?
Ask to see search performance in your own Google Search Console account. Review the queries that show your website and the pages receiving clicks. Compare equivalent periods, and keep the country, device, and other filters consistent.
Google’s Search Console performance guidance explains the difference between impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average position. An impression means an appearance in search results; it is not a website visit. Average position is an aggregate, not a fixed ranking every customer sees.
Separate searches containing your business name from searches describing what you sell. Both can matter, but they answer different questions. A rise in searches for your name could reflect referrals, advertising, or other activity as well as SEO.
Then look at relevance. Are the searches related to a service you want to sell? Are visitors in a market you serve? Are your important pages gaining visibility? A report should help you answer those questions.
More impressions with very low positions can be an early sign that Google is testing your pages for additional searches. It is not the same as strong visibility that is bringing customers to your website.
Are the right pages attracting visitors and inquiries?
A useful review follows the visitor from the search to the landing page and, where measurement allows, to an inquiry or purchase. Ask which service, product, or location pages are receiving relevant organic traffic.
Educational content can introduce people to your business before they are ready to buy. It still needs a sensible role in the customer’s decision. A popular article about a loosely related subject should not be the only evidence offered for a successful campaign.
Consider this hypothetical example: a roofing contractor in Lafayette, Indiana, sees traffic increase after publishing DIY repair articles. Most new visitors are outside the service area. Local roof-replacement pages receive little attention, and qualified inquiries remain flat.
The traffic increase is real. The question is whether the strategy is helping the contractor win suitable jobs. I would review the topics, landing pages, service area, and inquiry tracking before recommending more of the same content.
Ask about lead quality, too. A form submission might be a sales pitch, a job application, or an existing customer asking for help. Counting every submission as a new sales opportunity can give you a misleading picture.
Could tracking or the website be hiding the results?
Before blaming the SEO, test the path a customer takes. Submit a clearly labeled test inquiry from your phone, check that it arrives, and verify that the agreed tracking records a successful submission. Check the spam folder as well as the inbox.
A form can appear to work while its notification goes unnoticed. A report can also count a button click even when the person never finishes the form. Neither gives you a reliable count of delivered inquiries.
For calls, ask how the business connects an inquiry to its source. Review call quality and booked work where that information is available. Website measurements will not explain every customer journey, so compare them with your own sales records.
If tracking is missing or unreliable, the immediate task is to repair it and establish a usable baseline. Missing data does not prove the campaign succeeded or failed.
When is slow progress reasonable, and when should you question it?
There is no single deadline that makes sense for every SEO engagement. A site recovering from technical problems, a new business in a competitive market, and an established site improving a few pages start from different places.
Review when the work went live, not just when you began paying. Recommendations that are still waiting for implementation have not had the opportunity to affect search performance. Seasonality, changes in demand, and changes elsewhere on the website can also influence the numbers.
What I would expect is a clear explanation of the starting point, the work completed, the obstacles, and the next decision. If results are disappointing, the provider should be able to explain what it plans to investigate or change.
Concerns worth discussing include repeated missed deliverables, reports that avoid your agreed goals, refusal to explain methods, and improvements claimed without a clear comparison. A disappointing month calls for investigation. A continuing lack of accountability deserves a different conversation.
Google’s guidance on hiring an SEO recommends asking how success will be measured and how changes will be explained. It also warns that nobody can guarantee a number-one Google ranking.
What questions should you ask before renewing?
Bring these five questions to your next review meeting. Ask for plain answers and supporting examples.
- What did you complete during this reporting period? Request the affected URLs or other deliverables, and separate completed work from recommendations and work in progress.
- What changed for the searches, pages, and outcomes we agreed to improve? Ask for consistent comparisons and an explanation of what the numbers do—and do not—show.
- What is preventing better results? Identify whether the obstacle is implementation, competition, content, measurement, the website experience, or something still being investigated.
- What will you prioritize next, and why? Ask how the next work addresses the evidence and when you will review its progress together.
- Do we have the access and records needed to make an informed decision? Confirm business-controlled access to the website and relevant reporting accounts, along with copies of the work and recommendations covered by your agreement.
The answers may support continuing the engagement, clarifying responsibilities, or changing priorities. You do not have to decide everything during the meeting. Request anything missing and agree on the next checkpoint.
When would an independent review help?
A second opinion is useful when the reports and your business experience do not line up, when recommendations conflict, or when you cannot tell whether a problem comes from the strategy, implementation, or measurement.
I offer an independent SEO & AI visibility review to help you understand the evidence and decide what to do next. That includes reviewing the work you have been given, your website’s performance, and the basis for claims about AI visibility.
A fair review can identify work worth continuing as well as gaps that need attention. The goal is to give you a clear basis for your next decision.