407-233-3387You do not need to understand SEO to verify that work is happening. You need to check whether things that did not exist last month exist this month. That is it, and you can do the whole audit in about twenty minutes without any tools you have to pay for.
Here are five checks, in order of how quickly they expose a problem.
Thinking of doing SEO?
We can help. Drop your info below and we’ll take a free look at your Google Business Profile and website, then tell you straight what’s holding your rankings back.
Prefer to talk it through? Call (407) 233-3387 or send us a message.
Check 1: count your pages
Open Google and search site:yourdomain.com. That shows roughly how many of your pages Google has indexed. Write the number down. Do it again in thirty days.
If your agency says they are publishing content and this number has not moved in three months, ask for the URLs of the pages they published. Not a description — the actual links. Pages either exist or they do not.
Check 2: ask for the link report
Backlinks are the most expensive line item in most retainers and the easiest to invoice for without delivering. Ask for a list of live URLs where a link to your site appears.
Then click three of them. You are checking that the link exists, that it points at your site, and that the page it lives on is a real page with real content rather than a directory nobody reads. Any agency doing genuine link building has this file ready. Reluctance here is the single most reliable red flag in the industry.
Check 3: open Search Console yourself
You should have your own login. If your agency controls it and will not give you access, that is a problem on its own — the property should be yours.
Look at the Performance report and switch the date range to compare the last three months against the previous three. You want to see:
- Total impressions rising — more people are seeing you at all
- Average position improving — even a move from 42 to 26 is real progress
- More queries appearing — you are becoming relevant for more searches
- Clicks following impressions — usually lagging by a month or two
Impressions climbing while clicks stay flat is normal and healthy early on. Everything flat for three straight months is not.
Check 4: look at your Google Business Profile
This one takes two minutes and it is the hardest to fake.
- When was the last post published? Should be within the last week or two.
- When was the last photo added? Should be within the last month.
- Are recent reviews answered? All of them, not just the good ones.
- Are your services listed individually, or is there one vague entry?
- Is the Products section populated?
An agency charging for profile management with a profile whose last post was in March is not managing anything.
Check 5: read the report like a skeptic
Reports are where weak agencies hide. Watch for these patterns:
- Only rankings and traffic, never leads. Traffic is not the product. Calls are.
- Rankings for keywords nobody searches. If you are number one for eight-word phrases, that is a chosen metric, not an achievement.
- The same numbers with a new date. Surprisingly common.
- Vague verbs with no counts. “Optimized content” is not a deliverable. “Published 3 pages” is.
- No section on what happens next month.
What a healthy month looks like
Specific pages published with URLs you can click. Specific links built with URLs you can click. Posts and photos on the profile with recent dates. Reviews arriving and being answered. Impressions and average position moving in the right direction. And a short note explaining what is planned next.
If the checks fail
Do not fire anyone on the first bad month — campaigns have quiet periods and some work is genuinely invisible. Instead send one email asking for four things: the URLs of pages published in the last 90 days, the URLs of links built in the last 90 days, Search Console access if you do not have it, and the plan for next month.
A good agency answers that email in a day with attachments. A bad one gets defensive, talks about strategy, or explains why those metrics are not the right way to look at it. The response tells you everything.
Keep reading
- Know what should be delivered: what is included in a monthly SEO package.
- Timeline context: how long SEO takes to work.
- Browse what we do on our SEO and web design services page.
- See recent builds in our project gallery.
- Ready to talk? Get in touch with Mamba Media.
Thinking of doing SEO?
We can help. Drop your info below and we’ll take a free look at your Google Business Profile and website, then tell you straight what’s holding your rankings back.
Prefer to talk it through? Call (407) 233-3387 or send us a message.